A Thousand Pardons began at the beginning. I wanted it to be one continuous, almost breathless kind of story. In order to do that, it's really hard not to begin at the beginning. There's such a chain of consequence to everything that happens to main characters - it's very hard to break it apart and still be able to hold the plot in your head.
By the way, today with digital cameras and editing on your laptop, and things like that, you can make a feature film, a narrative feature film easily for $10,000.