As we enter a lazy Labor Day news cycle, Anne Thompson picks up on her Variety blog the press release that THINKfilm CEO Mark Urman is leaving the troubled distributor and will join Senator Entertainment as the head of its new theatrical distribution company.

Here's the press release:

Effective October 1, veteran film industry executive Mark Urman will join Marco Weber’s Senator Entertainment US as president of his newly formed distribution company. The teaming with Urman follows Weber’s recent acquisition of all shares in U.S.-based Senator Entertainment Inc. in order to focus solely on the production of English language films and to establish this U.S. based distribution entity. The company will be fully bi-coastal with main offices in both Los Angeles and New York.

Urman co-founded THINKFilm in 2001, heading the company’s theatrical division and serving, most recently, as president. Prior to that, he was co-president of Lionsgate Releasing. Urman will work side-by-side with Weber in establishing all windows of distribution for the company’s slate, allowing Weber to concentrate on the original productions the company is making with a broad spectrum of A-list actors and filmmakers.

“I believe this is the perfect time to launch a company of this shape and size,” says Urman, “and I’m thrilled to be joining Marco in this exciting new endeavor. We start with an exceptional line-up that combines commercial crossover films with classically niche-oriented ones, and we’ll have the ability to alternate wide releases-- involving hundreds of prints--with prestige titles that expand from exclusive platforms. By building a company that can be big and bold when it wants to be, but streamlined and strategic when it needs to be, we plan on being the best possible combination of a studio specialty division and a true independent.”

Weber commented, “Mark’s expertise in the independent film world is without rival. He has proven consistently that he understands how to design specific campaigns for movies that are high quality, yet challenging to release successfully. It is our good fortune to have secured him as a partner to work with us as the company prepares to release its first slate.”

In this terrible distribution environment, it's great that there is a new theatrical distributor. But what will become of THINKfilm and the filmmakers and vendors who are owed money? Will owner David Bergstein find that rumored next round of financing and hire a replacement? Or does Urman's exit signal the company's imminent demise?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/29/2008 05:44:00 PM Comments (0)

During this election season I recommend taking a break from the cable talking heads and reviewing some of the independent media that has been produced over the last couple of years about American foreign policy. One of the best documentaries is Charles Ferguson's Academy Award-nominated No End in Sight. As Ray Pride report at Movie City Indie, Ferguson is streaming the film free on YouTube.

Pride reports:

No End in Sight is being made available free to the public to reveal the facts about the Bush Administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq to voters concerned with the issues of national security and the adverse economic impact of the war when making decisions in this crucial election. NO END IN SIGHT condenses and clarifies the murky decisions made before and after the invasion and is invaluable to the public’s understanding of what went wrong. The film is both an analysis of an ill-conceived war and a plea to consider the impact of future military actions. According to the film's director, Charles Ferguson, he underwrote the exhibition of the film on YouTube because, "I wanted to make the film, and the facts about the occupation of Iraq, accessible to a larger group of people. My hope is that this will contribute to the process of making better foreign policy decisions moving forward in Iraq and elsewhere. During this election year, it’s important to examine the leadership mentality and policies that caused Iraq to descend into such a horrific state that after 4,000 American deaths, at least a quarter million Iraqis killed, 4 million refugees, and over $2 trillion spent, Iraq remains in a state of near collapse."

Beginning September 1 you can watch the entire movie on this YouTube channel.

I interviewed Ferguson a year ago for our Summer, 2007 issue. Here's my intro, and you can read the entire piece at this link.

In the current debate over the Iraq war, Charles Ferguson’s debut documentary, No End in Sight, takes what is perhaps the most troubling position of all: the war could have gone right. Largely sidestepping questions about the justness of the war and focusing on the few months leading up to and immediately following the invasion, Ferguson pinpoints the mistakes that laid the groundwork for the current conflict. And while it’s commonplace to view Iraq’s violent civil strife as being just as inevitable as the discovery of WMDs was once believed to have been, Ferguson assembles a convincing group of talking heads — including General Jay Garner and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage — who assert otherwise and lay blame accordingly.

For news-aware viewers, Ferguson’s basic argument will be familiar. Insufficient troop levels, the failure to stop Iraqi postwar looting, poor advance planning and the decision to disband the Iraqi military combined to create an active, deadly insurgency that the U.S. military was unequipped to handle. What makes Ferguson’s doc revelatory and necessary, however, is his gripping and exact detailing of these failures and his giving voice to the government officials (largely from the State Department) whose realistic counsel was deliberately ignored by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

With a Ph.D. in political science from MIT, Ferguson was well versed in the arcana of foreign-policy-speak, but before beginning No End in Sight he had never made a movie. Having achieved success in the technology field — in 1996 he sold his company Vermeer Technologies to Microsoft, which incorporated Vermeer’s FrontPage into its Microsoft Office software — he self-financed his film, bringing on a talented team headed up by executive producer Alex Gibney, whose own documentary on Iraq, Taxi to the Dark Side, is being released later this year. I sat down with Ferguson at New York’s Mercer Hotel to discuss making a first doc, post–Michael Moore political filmmaking and the future of Iraq. Magnolia Pictures opens the film in late July.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/28/2008 05:05:00 PM Comments (0)

I like Aaron Sorkin, but I don't know what to make of the fact that he's so loudly publicizing the fact that he knows so little about the online world he'll be writing about in his Scott Rudin-commissioned script on Facebook. I've listened to interviews with Sorkin before in which he's talked about capturing the rhythms of intelligent speech and about how one doesn't have to know all the details of a character's profession in order to write that character. And yes, often an outsider's eye can be the best when it comes to entering into a world and finding the moments of drama that will connect with a larger audience.

But did he have to go so far as say that his dead grandmother knows more about the internet than he does?

You can visit Sorkin's Facebook group here.

Labels: net neutrality

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/28/2008 01:11:00 PM Comments (0)

Everyone's talking about small screens -- what it's like to watch movies on mobile devices like cell phones and iPods. Mark Cuban's musings about the Olympics and The Dark Knight, however, lead him in the opposite direction:

Of course it would also not be a stretch to place the biggest screens in existence in open air locations where huge gatherings and related events can take place. Would families pay 50 bucks for a day of Olympics fun outside on 100 acres? Olympicsalooza anyone ? Why should it be any different than all the events that take place SuperBowl, or NBA or MLB All Star weekends ? Make it a huge party. In 100 cities across the country.

Could you sell 20mm tickets to attend out of home Olympic events at an average of 20 bucks each ? That's 400mm minus the cut to the theaters, locations, etc of 50pct, or 200mm. Plus of course there is all the non stop advertising that will be built into all of these events. On screen, at stadium/field/farm/theater.........

NBC proved that the Olympics can still be a communal event in the USA. Dark Knight proved that if enough people get excited about the same event, if you make it a special event, they will leave their homes to see it. Sports leagues have done an amazing job of building specialty events around the main event. Could technical advances in large stadium screens be a tipping point in the economics and presentation of the Olympics ?

How big can a screen be in 2016 and at what price ? Why not a panoramic emerssive experience in the new Cowboys stadium ? Or a 10 story tall 3D presentation of Olympics Basketball in the American Airlines Arena ? 20k or 50k or 100k people screaming U-S-A and watching on a screen that makes you feel as ifyou were there, is that worth 20 bucks ?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/27/2008 12:21:00 AM Comments (2)

A couple of weeks after organizations for the disabled attacked Tropic Thunder for an epithet used in the movie, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is objecting to the title of Alan Ball's new film, Towelhead, which opens next month. But Eric D. Snider at Cinematical argues that the film's title shouldn't be considered offensive as it can't be separated from the intentions of the film itself:

I think CAIR's objections could be remedied by simply watching the movie. Over the course of it, the girl (played amazingly by Summer Bishil) comes to feel empowered and confident in who she is. She overcomes the slurs and the harassment, and she embraces her identity as an Arab-American and as a young woman. To complain about the title is to miss the forest because you're too busy looking at the trees. I think people who have actually seen the film understand that.

Towelhead is also the name of the novel by Arab-American Alicia Ehran that the film is based on. Both she and Ball comment in this Reuters piece:

Erian, who is Arab-American, said that although the title is an ethnic slur, she "selected it to highlight one of the novel's major themes: racism."

She called CAIR's work "admirable," but said that "the solution ... is not to force the artist to alter her work, but instead to use the occasion of that work as an entry point for meaningful debate and discussion."

Ball said he felt it was important to retain the title of Erian's novel because "she so effectively dramatizes the pain inflicted by such language, something many people of non-minority descent never have to face."

Read the rest of Snider's piece and the lively comments thread that follows at the link above.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/26/2008 11:03:00 PM Comments (0)

Declining box-office... shuttered indie arms... busted distribution windows... the credit crunch... bankrupt distributors... creative malaise -- they are all cited by Dade Hayes and Pamela McClintock in Variety as the reasons for indie film's "dismal year."

A key graph summarizes the debate that many in this business are engaged in right now:

The bottom line is that it's a changing world -- and it might be something cyclical, or things may have changed permanently. The matrix of different ancillaries -- which has expanded radically from the early video days to include VOD, Web downloads, airlines, music and merchandise -- puts a new spin on the still-crucial theatrical window.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/26/2008 10:54:00 PM Comments (1)

I mean, really, don't. It's one of the greatest movies ever made, and a personal top ten favorite... but here on this blog is not the way to see it.

Let me explain. I first saw Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter while visiting a friend's house for the weekend. She had it on VHS and we watched it on a pretty small TV. I thought it was really good. Later, feeling I had missed out on seeing it on the big screen I caught it during a special run at New York's Public Theater -- back when the Public Theater had both a film theater and a film program. On its decent-sized screen, the film went from being a good film to being a masterpiece. A tiny moment at the end, when the boy is given an apple by Lillian Gish, gets swallowed up on the small screen, but projected this simple gesture is transcendent.

When Simon Callow's monograph on the film was published by the BFI, I wrote about it in Filmmaker. An excerpt:

François Truffaut queasily likened The Night of the Hunter, actor Charles Laughton’s 1955 directorial debut, to a "horrifying news item retold by small children." Quoted in Simon Callow’s new British Film Institute monograph on the film, Truffaut goes on to offer a bit of middlebrow advice proving that the confluence of film criticism and box-office commentary is not solely a turn-of-the-century phenomenon: "Screenplays such as this are not the way to launch your career as a Hollywood director. The film runs counter to the rules of commercialism … it will probably be Laughton’s single experience as a director."

Indeed, Laughton’s use of an Expressionist, theatrical mise en scene and flashes of burlesque humor to adapt David Grubbs’s best-selling blend of Southern Gothic and Grimms’s fairy tales resulted in newspaper attacks on the film’s "arty" direction. The reviews weren’t all bad but enough were; depressed and unfinanceable as a director, Laughton soon abandoned his planned adaptation of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. Lack of critical support on its release coupled with Laughton’s retreat from film directing resulted in The Night of the Hunter’s peripatetic status within the Great Films canon. It’s the kind of glorious one-off that falls to the footnotes of film histories, even if it’s also the sort of masterpiece that other directors spend a career working up to

.

So here's the film, courtesy of Hulu. But don't watch it here. Track down a print somewhere. Or get the DVD and watch it on the biggest set you can find. Just don't click below.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/26/2008 07:26:00 PM Comments (2)

Okay, cool mentions across the blogosphere are one thing, but a fashion spread in the Sunday Times is something else. Check out this feature to see Josh Safdie, director of The Pleasure of Being Robbed (my favorite independent film of the year), his brother Benny, actress Eleonore Hendricks and the rest of the Red Bucket Films crew wearing some of the latest Fall fashions. There's also this group of curated Red Bucket Shorts.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/24/2008 07:41:00 PM Comments (1)

There's a good edition of "The Medium," Virginia Heffernan's column in the Sunday Times Magazine this week. She tries to define what makes a web series work. In the most recent Filmmaker magazine newsletter I wrote about Max Richter's new album, 24 Frames in Full Colour, which consists of 24 short pieces that Richter says are designed to be thought of as ringtones, not songs. In the letter I wrote about the perceptual change that prompted in the listener leading to a different kind of appreciation of the album. Applying this thinking to web filmmaking, I wrote that maybe we need to "forget that we are making films and to think of them as something else." I asked, "If we sent a video message to a friend, what would it look like? What video might play in one of those digital picture frames in the sets of any one of our screenplays? If the protagonist of your screenplay had a Facebook page, what video might play on it?"

Heffernan makes a similar point, arguing that the lonelygirl15 was so much better when we didn't think of it as scripted entertainment:

Just as some people don’t like to receive their humor under the banner of “funny” — their smiles fade at comedy clubs called Chuckles Café or Laugh Lane — I don’t like to watch Web serials as serials. What I loved about “lonelygirl15,” when its status as amateur filmmaking was still unclear, was not so much that I couldn’t tell if it was real or fake but that I could never tell if there would be another one. Poor, beautiful Bree, the housebound heroine, appeared to be uploading videos whenever her home-schooling overlords would permit it. At the end of an episode, you had no idea if she’d survive to make another. This thrill is present in all Web interactions in which a Facebook friend or far-flung colleague or gchat buddy is so there, writing the long 4 a.m. communications about Russia or his cat, until he isn’t. When you kick off an exchange with someone online, you don’t know how many episodes have been ordered, what shape or course the relationship might take or how much of a commitment it requires.

In her piece, she offers a few recommendations of what's good out there -- namely Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog, but ultimately looks forward to a time in which the divide between amateur and professional, entertainment and simple experience, is erased:

So where’s the true art? I’m not sure. I know I continue to prefer the strange, beautiful, comical and mysterious stuff of YouTube — the unclassifiable stuff — to the laudable efforts at nouveau serials by bona fide directors. But I still believe that, one day, another serial — not called a serial, maybe, and certainly not webisodes — will exploit the eccentricity of the virals and manage to make new and serious jokes about the truth-illusion-truth-illusion of cinéma vérité, which is what “lonelygirl15” once did. With that, the thrill of filmed “reality” will be returned to viewers, as it was in the early days of film, radio and television.

And, oh yeah, it does cost $4.99 to watch Dr. Horrible on iTunes, but Hulu also offers it for free if you'll sit through a couple of McDonald's commercials. Via the streaming site you can watch it here:



And, p.s., if you don't subscribe to our weekly newsletter, which contains editorial content not found on the blog or in the magazine, you can do so for free on the main page.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/24/2008 07:16:00 PM Comments (2)

On the one year anniversary of Mike Jones's "The Circuit" column at Variety, former AFI Fest Director Christian Gaines, who is now employed by Withoutabox, contributes a two-part discussion on festivals and our current failing indie film theatrical distribution model. Part one is titled "Do Festivals Matter?" and part two is "Things Gotta Change."

In part one, Gaines writes that festivals have become, for many films, the premiere exhibition opportunity:

In the pantheon of viable choices for getting your film seen, film festivals continue to thrive (seems there’s a new one born every minute, right?), and that’s because, putting aside economic factors for the moment, film festivals still provide the perfect environment for the cultural, communal celebration of cinema, where films can be presented in context, with optimal picture and sound, and where audiences can yield, uninterrupted, to the original experience created by the artist.

As commercial exhibition prospects for independent filmmakers diminish, the more traditional path – from festival circuit to theatrical run to DVD release to a comfy spot on the Blockbuster shelf, adorned in festival laurels – has sharply changed direction. Only the festival circuit still seems like a constant part of the equation, with thousands of filmmakers steadily submitting their films to thousands of film festivals around the world each year.

In part two, he muses on a solution and proposes that sales agents consider something he calls a "Festival Acquisition" model (and please read his pieces in their entirety to get his full argument):

In the new “Festival Acquisition” model a sales agent or producer might send a film on a six to ten month tour of sixty to eighty North American film festivals. Absent of commercial venues, if film festivals have become the ad hoc distribution infrastructure for these films - and the film in question might see 250 screenings - then a formal business proposition will emerge, one in which rights holders and film festivals each acknowledge the other’s challenges.

On the one hand, what Gaines is proposing is nothing new. Smaller distributors have always been skilled at stitching together nationwide tours that combine festival screenings with play in various non-theatrical venues. But what is a little different is that Gaines seems to be advocating that sales agents view themselves as these kind of non-theatrical distributors and use their negotiating ability to work out a more financially remunerative model for filmmakers that acknowledges that festival play is all many films will get.

There's already a little bit of a comments thread, with David Poland contributing this:

Ask Cowboy Booking about "the festival distribution circuit." Oops. Can't. Out of business. Bottom line, filmmakers on the fest circuit can only expect some free trips... which is not nothing. The more effort there is to squeeze money out of fests for screenings, the fewer fests there will be. Is that a bad thing?... The question facing all of these films -- and Cinetic is trying to address it online -- is how to grow the number of dollars in play, from fests to DVD to other ancillaries. If a film can earn $100,000 without a major distributor, great, but it isn't nearly enough to matter or to support American Indies.

Poland notes what is common in many of the new models and self-distribution schemes being discussed at the moment: the revenue potential is inherently low. The structure of the models themselves do not allow for upside potential. The question becomes, then, whether or not to accept to as a given diminished revenue and adjust production budgets accordingly, or to think about radically different new models that might bring new dollars into the system. Or, in fact, to think about work that is itself radically different in formulation -- a new kind of independent media that that might fit more comfortably into these new forms of distribution.

Obviously, to be continued...

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/24/2008 01:48:00 PM Comments (0)

I've written before about the "uncanny valley," the term used in discussion of technological attempts to simulate the human visage. It refers to the phenomenon where things intended to look human suddenly seem unrealistic as they closely approach a realistic representation of the human.

There was talk this month at SIGGRAPH about Emily, a completely animated character that promises, in the words of creator David Barton, "new levels of believability in computer animation."

From the linked piece in the Daily Mail:

To create the footage the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies made a a computer generated replica of Emily.

The actress sat inside a sphere of LED lights while she was photographed making 35 different poses.

The light patterns allowed the shine of her skin to be captured independently from her main skin tone, with hundreds of measurements taken for each millimetre.

'The CG models provide unprecedented detail of natural facial expressions - down to skin pores and fine wrinkles,' a spokesman said.

This technique has managed to avoid 'uncanny valley' - in which an animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.

You decide...

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/24/2008 11:31:00 AM Comments (0)

M. Dot Strange, writer/director, 2007: Since being the only one hiding his face amongst the 25 I posted my animated feature film We Are the Strange on youtube subtitled in 17 languages where combined it has been viewed over 1.1 million times adding to my international audience. I did an animated music video for the NYC band "Mindless Self Indulgence" for the song "Animal" and it was included with the bands new album "IF" I'm currently completing the animatic for my new animated feature film Heart String Marionette. It is scheduled to be completed in January 2010 with production beginning in February 09, and is completely self funded thanks to the DVD sales of We Are the Strange. I've also been lucky enough to be flown to 7 different countries for speaking engagements since I was in the magazine, and they keep inviting me.

My advice to the new 25 faces... Do something to stand out from the crowd... don't just climb the Hollywood ladder and do the things that are "good for your career" as your agents and lawyers might tell you. Do what feels right... If you just want to be another rich director jerkface driving around L.A. in a black BMW banging talking blowup dolls then do that... but if you make films for reasons other than fame and fortune follow your heart... not the people waving the paychecks... Money talks... but it doesn't mean you have to listen. This is a new time... a new age wherein filmmakers have the opportunity to make their films their way... Will you make something completely new and unique or will you just be another brick in the wall to be forgotten and stepped by bolder filmmakers in the future? Thats the question you need to answer.


Kentucker Audley, writer/director, 2007: Kentucker Audley's first feature 'Team Picture' will be released by Benten Films August 26th 2008. He is currently editing his 2nd feature, untitled at the moment. It'll raise the question: how much of this was improvised? Attend a film festival for the answer.


Brett Ingram, writer/director, 2003: I was fortunate enough to be included in the Summer 2003 edition of "Faces" when I was working on my first feature length documentary, MONSTER ROAD, about Seattle animator Bruce Bickford.

Since then...

I completed MONSTER ROAD and...

MONSTER ROAD won Best Documentary at the 2004 Slamdance Film Festival, 2004 Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2004 Independent Film Festival of Boston, and won 13 other awards before airing on Sundance Channel for two years.

Last year, I was awarded a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in support of my second feature documentary that I'm just finishing up now. The film is entitled ROCATERRANIA and it's the story of 76-year-old scientific illustrator Renaldo Kuhler, who invented an imaginary country (you guessed it, "Rocaterrania") when he was a teenager and has secretly illustrated the nation's history in notebooks for the past six decades. As it turns out, the history of Rocaterrania is the coded story of Renaldo's own life as a troubled outsider.

I'm just beginning to submit ROCATERRANIA to festivals now, so the premiere date and location is still up in the air. Here's a link to my website with the trailer for ROCATERRANIA:

Brett Ingram
Rocaterrania clips.

This year, I also released Bruce Bickford's animated film, PROMETHEUS' GARDEN on DVD after the film lay dormant for 20 years on a shelf in Bickford's basement:

Prometheus' Garden.

On a personal note, I got married in 2004 to Dorothy Hans and we honeymooned in Annecy, France, where MONSTER ROAD was playing at the Annecy International Festival of Animation. Last year, we had our first child, a daughter, Nuala Siobhan.

That's about it.

Hope all's well in your world. I'll keep you posted on ROCATERRANIA.

Thanks for championing true independent filmmaking. Viva Filmmaker Magazine!


Brian Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, writer/directors, 2007: We have two projects that we are currently working on.

"Francine" is a narrative feature about an aging inmate on parole who moves to a dreary lakeside town and takes a series of jobs working with animals where she is forced to reconsider the meaning of captivity. The project is currently in development and was recently selected for Cinemart at Rotterdam.

"The Patron Saints", currently in production, is a disquieting documentary that centers around a beautician who works from the basement of a nursing home. The beautician, herself approaching old-age, narrates this episodic portrait about the present day realities of her customers, many of whom face great physical and emotional challenges, as they make the most of the time they have left. "The Patron Saints" will participate in this year's upcoming Spotlight on Docs section of Independent Film Week.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/23/2008 08:13:00 PM Comments (0)

In a Guardian piece titled "Exit Strategies," Ronald Bergan writes about a seldom-discussed part of moviegoing: walking out.

His lede:

Though life is too short, it seems to drag on interminably while one is watching a bad film. The moment during a film when I begin to question my very existence is the moment I decide to head for the exit. It is when I abandon any cool critical assessment. All I know is that my senses and intelligence are being abused by the ugly and stupid sights and sounds on the big screen.

Bergan doesn't just write about the solitary act of exiting early -- he also writes about the journalistic and business implications of such an act:

If it were in my nature, I would pity the poor critics who have been sent to review a film and are obliged to sit through it to the bitter end. Or are they? Are there ethics involved? Is it fair to review a film that one has seen only a part of? Perhaps a critic should be honest and reveal that they walked out half way, which is a defiant act of criticism in itself. Yet, you can bet that a colleague will tell you afterwards that "the second half was a vast improvement on the first". I reckon that unless it was directed by someone other than the one who directed the first half, there is no way it could have improved much.

Nevertheless, there is a protocol involved in walking out. If one has to leave a film because of a very busy schedule, which happens most often during festivals, or if there are people in the audience involved with the film in some way whom one has even met and doesn't want to insult, one walks backwards slowly up the aisle looking at the screen all the time, shaking one's head regretfully and looking at one's watch.

With Toronto coming up, Bergan's article struck a chord. I'm more likely to sit through a movie I don't like just to make it to the end but, as Bergan says, sometimes that sit is just not worth it. When one is watching a film in a professional capacity, though, one has to be extremely aware of the symbolism -- if not the practical effect -- of walking out. I sat on a film jury once and was surprised to see one of my jury members sauntering towards the exit about 20 minutes into one of the Competition films. "I just couldn't take it anymore," he told me later. "It clearly wasn't going to get any better." The thing is, it did get better. Even though the film was not very good, it was probably among the best we'd seen so far, I told him. (Fortunately, by festival's end a number of worthier films had been screened so his missing most of that one didn't turn out to be an issue.)

When one knows the filmmakers, it's virtually impossible not to sit through the whole movie. If the film is bad and tons of other people leave, in fact, it's mandated that you make a point of being visible and saying something at the end so the filmmakers know that you, in fact, stayed.

Even if a film isn't something I'll write about for Filmmaker and even if I don't know the filmmakers, the act of leaving can be stressful for me. This might be due to my pre-film gig as a curator of live performance and theater. I'd go see a lot of new work, often in very small venues that were quite difficult to inconspicuously slip out of. I remember going once out of a sense of professional duty to a performance by an artist whose work I never liked. I didn't like this new performance either -- more so when I realized it was three hours long and that the exit was directly behind the stage. But I think the anxiety prompted in me by Bergan's piece probably has more to do with having often been on the other side of the auditorium door. I remember standing with my partner Robin O'Hara at the door of one festival screening room catching it as it closed after each walk-out so it wouldn't make a huge noise and telegraph our rapidly depleting audience. (The film we were producers of wasn't designed to be an crowd-pleaser, so we weren't entirely broken up. But the experience proved one thing: people don't walk out after the first super boring part of a movie, they walk out after the second.) Another time, I was really happy to see the head of one of the studio specialty divisions -- someone I had previously worked with -- in the front row of the first screening of a Sundance Competition Film we had produced. I knew the film wasn't right for that person's company, but I thought it was great the exec had shown up. I was less thankful when that same exec then very visibly walked past a line of colleagues to exit the movie after about a half an hour. In the hothouse atmosphere of a festival, one visibly departing checkbook holder or tastemaker quickly multiplies. So, the next time you're feeling fidgety at a festival, think carefully before slinking out that door. One day you'll be on the other side, and the ego you hear breaking will be your own.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/23/2008 05:56:00 PM Comments (2)

With the Slamdance Film Festival turning 15 in 2009, the fest has announced they will be having a series of special events to celebrate. The first will be next month as they screen Steven Soderbergh and Christopher Nolan's Slamdance-debuted films, Schizopolis and Following.

From the release:
FOLLOWING, a captivating neo-noir drama centering on a writer who follows people to ignite his creativity, originally bowed at Slamdance in 1999. Screening in Los Angeles at LACMA's Bing Theater (5905 Wilshire) on Friday, September 5 at 8:00pm, $20 tickets through slamdance.com ONLY; no tickets will be available for purchase at the door. Q&A with Mr. Nolan, moderated by Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, and hosted reception for ticket holders to follow screening.

SCHIZOPOLIS, a comedic satire with confused identity, cerebral wordplay and corporate intrigue, showed at Slamdance in 1997. Playing in New York City at the IFC Center (323 Sixth Avenue) on Wednesday, September 16 at 8:00pm, SCHIZOPOLIS tickets will be $20 and available through ifccenter.com. Q&A with Mr. Soderbergh, moderated by author Anthony Kaufman, and hosted reception for ticket holders at The Post Factory to follow screening.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 8/22/2008 02:20:00 PM Comments (0)

Announced yesterday, filmmakers Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell just released their offbeat doc 10 Yards: Fantasy Football on Ourstage.com and SnagFilms.com. A conventional nationwide DVD release will begin on Sept. 30.

According to a release about the online world premiere, Ourstage will offer a free iTunes download of the film for two weeks (as well as offer free music downloads from the soundtrack that features independent artists Luke Brindley, John Haydon, Analog Jetpack, Greenland, Family Jewlers and Santa Clara) while SnagFilms will stream it for free and allow for viral sharing via its "virtual movie theater" widgets.

Weeks and Caldwell's DIY approach on their previous film 10 MPH was highlighted in our Winter 2008 issue ("Navigating The Digital Divide").

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 8/22/2008 12:57:00 PM Comments (0)

Nick Dawson's Web Exclusive Director's Interview this week is Azazel Jacobs, whose third feature, Momma's Man, opens tomorrow. Of the movie, which details a few days in which a young, recent father, Mikey, travels home to his parents (played by Ken and Flo Jacobs, the director's real-life parents) and is not able to leave, having become entangled in the crosscurrents of nostalgia for his childhood, Dawson wrote:

...the film is particularly resonant and moving, as well as being funny and tender, and Ken and Flo Jacobs both give surprising, strong performances, despite never having acted before. But it is ultimately Jacobs' inspired writing and deft direction that make this film so remarkable, his keen eye compellingly capturing the deteriorating situation created by Mikey's inertia.

You can head over there and read Nick's conversation with Aza, but I just want to personally recommend that you go out and see this lovely movie this weekend. Momma's Man is funny, affectionate and also highly unique: it limns an emotional state of mind I've never seen captured on film before. Summoning up an odd but quite believable fear-of-adulthood, the film captures a kind of "in between" state that we can all relate to and perhaps even fantasize about. The performances are all wonderful, and Jacobs' casting of his own parents, who include famed experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, gives the film an extra layer of poetry, specificity and subtext. Set not in some suburban sprawl but in a huge yet still impossibly cluttered downtown loft, Momma's Man becomes not just a particularly idiosyncratic depiction of the 21st century man-boy but also a beautiful commentary on the passing of artistic impulse from generation to generation.

The film opens in New York at the Angelika Film Center tomorrow. Here's the trailer.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/21/2008 07:34:00 PM Comments (0)

In Summer, 2005, the filmmaker Barbara Schock wrote a spirited piece for Filmmaker about studying film with critic and artist Manny Farber, who died on Tuesday. Mirroring Farber's rapid-fire thinking, Schock makes you feel like you're in his classroom as she writes about the man, his syllabus, and his teaching style.

We've posted it in our Web Exclusives.

Here's the intro:

The phenomenal painter, teacher and film critic Manny Farber called his film class “A Hard Look at the Movies.” It was the first upper-division college class I took. I’d transferred from a small college in the Midwest to the University of California at San Diego, and I’d never seen a foreign film, unless you count the Sergio Leone westerns. We watched the following films in a 10-week period, and it turned the way I looked at movies upside down: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Max Ophuls’s The Earrings of Madame de…, Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: the Wrath of God, Joseph Lewis’s Gun Crazy, Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy, Werner Schroeter’s The Death of Maria Malibran, Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou and Les Carabiniers, John Boorman’s Point Blank, Eric Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse, Joseph Losey’s Accident, Robert Aldrich’s The Grissom Gang, Luis Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid, Frank Borzage’s Man’s Castle, Nagisa Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Burglar, Jean Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Les Enfants terribles and several Buster Keaton films.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/19/2008 02:31:00 PM Comments (1)

A year ago Gary Hustwit came out with Helvetica, showing how the typeface became the ubiquitous graphic signifier for... just about everything in the post-'60s era. Well, everything except one thing. As this web video demonstrates, when it comes to movie marketing, a font called Trajan rules. Watch this great clip for a glimpse at how unimaginative our movie marketing has become. (Hat tip: Ted Hope.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/19/2008 02:08:00 PM Comments (0)

Far away from the world of indie film one of the most dramatic show business stories is unfolding. As Nikki Finke and Variety are both reporting, a high-stakes showdown is occurring in court as Fox is suing Warner Brothers over the release of 300 director Zach Snyder's upcoming The Watchmen.

From Dave McNary and Tatiana Siegel's piece:

A judge has denied a Warner Bros. motion to dismiss 20th Century Fox’s lawsuit over Warners’ right to make a film based on the graphic novel Watchmen.

Ruling is potentially a huge victory for Fox, which could wind up as a profit participant in the film, and could cost Warners millions considering the film’s box office prospects. However, Fox’s legal team says it isn’t looking for monetary compensation and instead wants to prevent the big-budget film from being released altogether.

Ironically, directly adjacent to Variety's story is this blurb promo'ing the Watchmen discussion on the Variety discussion boards:

Watchmen doesn't come out until March, but interest in this comic adaptation is already showing signs of being the kind of crossover phenomenon that hasn't been seen in a comics property in a long time.

For those who want to dive into the nitty gritty of this case, Nikki Finke has posted a link to a PDF download. For those who want a quick summary, I recommend reading the first of her posts linked here, which includes a detailed timeline, and then a long comment in her discussion section by a poster going by the name of "Clearing Some Stuff Up." His post is both a great primer on how optioned material passes hands in Hollywood as well as a reasonable analysis of what's going on in this specific case. He concludes with these thoughts:

I do find it odd, though, when studios go full speed at each other. Although they are competitors, there is a need to play nice if you want others to play nice with you. Each studio will need to confirm quotes from the others; they will need to protect and release titles; and they all do business with each other on co-productions to spread risks. An aggressive position such as this is fairly odd.

Here's the trailer:



And here's David Poland's take on the situation over at The Hot Blog. His piece draws on research he did for an old, unpublished piece on something similar that went down with the production of The Flintstones. Poland concludes by saying that this story won't be around for long, predicting that a Cheney-like solution will be found quickly:

The very least that Fox can expect to get out of this is their development costs, probably doubled and interest added. But Fox is playing for keeps. They will not bury a $300 million investment by a fellow studio. The blood spilt would be too red and slippery. But don’t expect them to go away for anything less than $25 million. And they will take an amount like that now… because they don’t want to gamble either. 100% of WB’s profit could be $0.

And when it comes to alternative remedies, gross points make more sense than anything else. It would be too harsh a remedy to force Paramount out and to give Fox, say, international distribution. To eat a larger percentage of the gross would be to really encroach on the investment well before any chance of recouping.

It will be interesting. And my guess? Completely silent when it happens. Sealed by agreement, settled out of court. Rumored. Lied about. And done. Soon.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/19/2008 01:35:00 PM Comments (0)

Rooftop Films' shorts from their summer festival series are now on IFC.com. A mixture of eclectic narratives, animation and documentaries, each week three new shorts will be posted to the site. On there so far is Arthur Des Pins's animated Revolution of the Crabs and Sam Fleischner's drama Cave Flower.

# posted by Laura Perez-Harris @ 8/19/2008 12:40:00 PM Comments (0)

The IFP announced today that Penelope Cruz will be presented with a Gotham Award Tribute at the 18th annual Gotham Awards on Dec. 2 at NYC's Cipriani Wall Street. Cruz can recently be seen in Elegy opposite Ben Kingsley and Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (pictured right).

Additional Tribute receipients will be named next week and nominees for this year's Gothams will be announced on Oct. 20.

To learn more about the event go to http://gotham.ifp.org.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 8/19/2008 11:05:00 AM Comments (2)

Celebrated and influential film critic Manny Farber died yesterday at the age of 91. At Movie City Indie Ray Pride has a lovely, well-linked remembrance, which opens like this:

Manny Farber, painter, brilliant writer, indelible critic and all-round original whom some aped and few grazed, died in his sleep last night at the age of 91. He had retired from writing and teacher and devoted himself to painting and drawing. To cite Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, which early Preston Sturges savant Farber would likely not frown upon, "What a life!"

Glenn Kenny also has a long piece on Farber. An excerpt:

If you've never read Farber, just stop here and get to it. His collected criticism, in a volume called Negative Space, is one of the touchstone texts of film writing—tough-minded, sharp-eyed, idiosyncratic, often wildly funny, and with a bedrock integrity and aesthetic acuity that even best best of contemporary film critics are hard-pressed to approach, let alone match. He is most often cited for coining the phrases "termite art" and "white-elephant art," two opposed categories. What I found, and find, most valuable in his criticism is his ability to apprehend the entirety of a film—he got it from every angle.

GreenCine has a comprehensive round-up here, and Karina Longworth has discovered some more Farber internet resources at Spout.

Three years ago Filmmaker published Barbara Schock's piece on studying with Farber. We'll have that piece up on the website later in the week.

Labels: obituaries

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/18/2008 11:42:00 PM Comments (0)

I've posted before about Chris Anderson's dictum that everything in the digital world wants to be free. One type of merchandise that may prove Anderson's theory is independent film hits from the 1980s and '90s. Whit Stillman and Cinetic Media organized a blogosphere blitz this week with the free streaming release of his 1990 debut feature Metropolitan on Hulu.com. As Cinetic's Matt Dentler blogs, Stillman did fresh interviews with Karina Longworth at Spout, Eugene Hernandez at Indiewire, and Stephen Saito at Indiewire.

Noticing all the commotion, I emailed Dentler and asked him what prompted it. He wrote back, "Cinetic Rights Management is the digital sales agent on the film. Whit got the film back, and was happy to have us explore digital possibilities for it. So, as we were looking at outlets this summer, we felt that Hulu would be a great home for Metropolitan to find an audience. Hulu's deals are typically ad rev shares. This is the second film of ours we've brokered with them. The first, which was two weeks ago, was Hoop Dreams."

What will be interesting to see is how the Hulu availability will affect, if at all, sales of the Criterion edition of the film, which came out two years ago. I spoke with a distributor recently who releases his films both theatrically and on his company's own home video label. He told me he was embracing platforms like Hulu and, in his case, Snag Films. He feels all exposure is good exposure, and free, ad-supported internet streaming will only increase demand for the physical disks themselves. But whatever the final financial verdict is, it's clear that for indie filmmakers free streaming video is a new window that they can exploit to renew interest in their work. In the early '90s license terms for indie movies typically hovered around 12 or, often, 15 years. The distribution rights to a lot of great independent films are now reverting back to their makers, and I'll look forward to seeing who the next filmmaker to pursue this option will be.

And what about Filmmaker's interview with Stillman? Anthony Kaufman did one for us back in 2006 on the occasion of the Criterion release.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/18/2008 10:50:00 PM Comments (1)

David Byrne and Brian Eno did it right when releasing their new Everything that Happens Will Happen Today, I think. Even though 20+ years have elapsed since their last collaboration, this one was announced and then made available to fans just three weeks later -- no time for record industry leaks to pop up on the internet but enough time to score feature coverage like the piece in the Sunday New York Times. A free song was provided at the end of July in return for your email address. Today, the record's release date, an email went out reminding you to check out the site where you could find the record in three formats. There's an $8.99 all digital version, 320kbps MP3s with no DRM and a 17-page PDF lyric book. (I bought this one.) For $3.00 more you can get the digital version plus a CD version that will be mailed to you at the end of November. And if you want to drop a cool $70 you can get the digital version plus a deluxe version with four more songs and a short film about the album by Hillman Curtis. Of course, copies are probably flying across the torrent sites by now, but the range of options appealing to fans and collectors, no DRM, good file quality, and the personal touch given to the whole endeavor (you download from Byrne and Eno's site, and the email from Byrne ended with a friendly, "I hope you like the songs") made this release seem like something you want to be apart of it if you've ever liked either of these artists.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/18/2008 09:46:00 AM Comments (0)

Over on his blog These Are Those Things, Ted Hope tracks a correspondence between fishing and film that has taken 17 years to play out. In a post entitled "Rock & Roll & Film & Fishing & Tripping," Hope traces the ripple of a stone thrown in the lake by John Lurie in his cable show Fishing with John and watches it turn into an afternoon in which Caveh Zahedi and Will Oldham trip on mushrooms and then, later, yet another fishing trip, this time shared by Dean Ween and the Butthole Surfers.

Head to Ted's blog for the links and embeds.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/17/2008 08:52:00 PM Comments (0)

Alex Karpovsky, writer/director, 2006: Since being included in the list back in 2006, I teamed up with Indiepix to release my first feature, The Hole Story, on DVD. The film is now available at retail stores across the country, Netflix, and other outlets. I have also completed another feature, Woodpecker, which premiered at SXSW last March and is now bouncing along on the festival circuit. Currently, I am in post-production on my first feature-length documentary TJ and Dave, which focuses on America's most revered long-form comedy improvisers, Tj Jagadowski and Dave Pasquesi. I've also done a bit of acting recently, playing the male lead in Andrew Bujalski's new film along with the voices of several Russian gangsters in the newly released Grand Theft Auto IV. This winter I hope to shoot my next feature film. More personally, I am still prone to melancholy, take longer walks, eat less red meat, and have made significant enhancements to my morning positive visualization exercises. Though no overarching existential paradigm shift has take place in the last two years, the codification of numerous points of growth has Iead to a shinier, happier, more productive, more better me.

David Munro, writer/director, 1998: I wrote a first draft of what became my first feature, Full Grown Men, in 1998 the year I made the list and it took me until this year to get it made and in theaters. Not all of that time was devoted to FGM - I wrote other scripts on assignment and started directing commercials for a company called Kontent Films in San Francisco. I also shot a short film called Compulsory Breathing that played on PBS's Independent Lens in 2002.

But for the most part making the first feature was the story.

My creative partner (and wife) Xandra Castleton and I began raising money for FGM in 2003, shot the film in Florida in Summer 2005, premiered at Tribeca in 2006, played the fest circuit that year (AFI, Cinevegas) and won the indieWIRE: Undiscovered Gems Sundance Channel Audience Award in 2007 -- which got us a $50k P&A fund to release theatrically through Emerging Pictures and a $50k broadcast deal with the Sundance Channel. We recently opened at Cinema Village in NY and will play in a dozen or so theaters nationwide this Summer (hopefully more when it's all said and done). The film stars Matt McGrath, Judah Friedlander, Alan Cumming, Amy Sedaris, and Deborah Harry, and tells the tale of a pathologically nostalgic man who tracks down his former best friend in an attempt to relive his childhood.

I remember Holly Willis saying something about my ability to create unreal alternate worlds for my stories -- some of the reviews for FGM speak to this (our website has links to reviews and other info: www.fullgrownmenthemovie.com). We shot with Frank Demarco (Hedwig) and production designer Susan Block (Welcome To The Dollhouse) and worked hard to create a timeless Florida "snowglobe" world that our main character is trapped inside. I don't know if Holly has seen the film yet but would hope it affirms her appreciation of my shorts Bullethead and First Love Second Planet.

At the moment I'm writing a graphic novel (that I hope to adapt into a film) with NY illustrator Josh Cochran called The Inferiors. It's a dark satire about a fascist high school trying to eliminate the misfits and outcasts in order to win an excellence grant. It's very much about status and the quest for it creating monsters.

The years that 25 Faces has spanned have certainly marked a time of transition (hopefully not a post-script) in indie filmmaking, as you're well aware. It's never been easy to do what we do but I'd venture to say it has never been more challenging than now. (Though I guess in some ways, with advances in digital filmmaking technology it has never been easier to actually MAKE a movie.) No one knows where it's headed but I know film artists will keep running through walls to do what they do.

Josslyn Luckett, writer/director, 2002: It was such a thrill to be included all those moons back... me and Hollywood kind of dried up... oh well... but I'm doing cool theater. Just finished a nine month workshop at the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper here in Los Angeles...working on a solo performance piece about a woman obsessed with the Imitation of Life films...it's called Loving/Imitation. I'm also writing about jazz -- see my blog: Come Sunday: Jazz, Trouble, Hallelujah -- and curating a series of interfaith sacred jazz concerts, inspired by Duke Ellington's sacred music at a place in Culver City called "The Jazz Bakery."

David Birdsell, writer/director, 1998: I was on the "25 New Faces" list from 1998. Since that time I've been in a mysterious coma from which I just recently awoke.

No, not really. Actually I've mostly been working as an editor, including on Martin Hynes's feature The Go-Getter which had a limited release this summer. I've also directed some commercials and made a couple of short films that can be seen at David Birdsell.net. The most recent short I made was called Hairlady and it's somewhat more experimental than my other stuff. All the while I've been contemplating making a feature which has slowly been taking shape inside my head and will someday soon make it's way out.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/15/2008 05:57:00 PM Comments (1)

Here's the sixth of our catch-ups with previous "25 New Faces" filmmakers. If you've been on the list and haven't sent us an update, you can still email one to editor.filmmakermagazine AT gmail.com.


David Russo, writer/director, 2003: I'm in post (special effects & animation) on my live action feature, The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle. I'd like to have it done for Sundance 2009 consideration, but I'm really taking advantage of both the Rockefeller and Creative Capital grants to make it thoroughly my own kind of vision. For me that just involves time, time & more time. The investors are chomping at the bit for me to finish, but are grudgingly allowing me to indulge my arty-farty side because it's giving the film such a unique kind of energy. This may be my only feature so why rush?

What else? Are Samsung Instinct and Glyde commercials news? I had a blast making those. Honestly, I think I'd like to make commercials more than films. Commercials as we knew them are so on the wane these days that it's sort of an open field again. In 2009 I'm hoping to devote myself fully to the commercial sphere while I train to become a dental hygienist. And no that ain't a joke.

In a nut shell, I'm happy as fuck and envy nobody (which is weird for me).

Amy Talkington, writer/director, 1998: After being named one of the "25 indie faces to watch," it took more than five years to get my first feature made. While I slogged away trying to get a feature together, I stayed busy making my living as a writer (a few studio scripts, a few pilots and a TV movie). I also continued to make short films, including the 360-degree interactive short, The New Arrival, and Our Very First Sex Tape which, with 4 million hits, has become something of an internet cult hit.

Finally in 2005, my feature The Night of the White Pants came together, starring Tom Wilkinson, Nick Stahl and Selma Blair. The movie premiered at the Tribeca FIlm Festival in 2006, did the festival circuit and is coming out on DVD on October 14th. I am currently putting cast together for my next movie, Deeply Shallow and Really Fake, which is being produced by Neal Moritz. We hope to shoot in early 2008. Meantime, I still stay busy working as a writer and making short form projects for the internet.

Ham Tram, writer/director, 2006: My name is Ham Tran, and I was in the 2006 list of filmmakers to watch, with my film Journey From the Fall premiering at Sundance. Since Sundance, this film has gone on to win 16 awards for Best Narrative Feature in film festivals world-wide. The DVD has been released, and it is available on Netflix and Blockbuster. There has even been a school curriculum that is based on the events that take place in the film. For two high school districts in Southern Calfornia (Garden Grove and Anaheim), the Viet Nam War and its after math has taken on a new meaning.

Currently, I am working on my next two films. The first is called Distant Country, and it the true life story of two illegal Vietnamese immigrants who went on a world-wind tour in their hopes to cross the borders into the United States. I've had the great privelege of meeting John Sayles, and over the course of this past year I've been updating him on my progress on the script development. I just got the official confirmation that John Sayles and Maggie Renzi have agreed to Executive Produce Distant Country.

My second feature film is one that I've been co-writing with another 25 Filmmakers to Watch alumnus, Stephane Gauger (Owl and the Sparrow). The script, tentatively titled The Storm's Wake, is centered upon the recovery of the Vietnamese community in the aftermath of Katrina, told from three character's point of view. Janet Yang (Dark Matter and The Joy Luck Club is Executive Producing this film. It's a project that the three of us have been developing for about a year now. Stephane and I will each direct one of the stories and then co-direct the third.

What's really great about these upcoming projects is that I get to work with John, Maggie, and Janet, my heroes of filmmaking! I was just an undergrad English major when I saw John Sayles The Secret of Roan Inish, and thought to myself, "If I could tell stories like this, I would love to be a filmmaker." I shook his hand at the James Bridges Theater at UCLA, when I was a grad in the UCLA film school, but never thought that one day I'd get to have dinner with him, let alone have him executive produce my film. All thanks to my great friend, Catherine Park, who invited me to a lunch she had with John and Maggie.

That's basically what I've been up to since the release of Journey From the Fall. Thank you guys so much for the support!

Damani Baker, director, 2000:

The latest:

Feature documentary: Still Bill (director)

Cinematographer for Wisdom director Andrew Zuckerman for Late Night and Weekends.

Music video for Morley

Music video for Maiysha, "Wanna Be". Coming soon

Director of "Return" and "Return Interactive"

Producer/Cinematographer for Puma Online Brand Content feat. Bill T Jones and Paulo Nutini ()

So sorry for the impersonal list. In Malawi for the past two weeks (Southern Africa) on another project, connection is slow and dying.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/15/2008 05:53:00 PM Comments (0)

Independent film is, unfortunately at times, a cyclical business. In 2002 we commissioned producer Bergen Swanson to write "Hollywood or Bust: What if Your Producer Goes Bankrupt." It was relevant then and may be relevant at now. It's in our Web Exclusives. Here's a taste:

YOU'VE DONE IT! The screenplay you've been slaving over for months has finally been optioned by an edgy production company noted for offbeat films. Or, the movie that has consumed your life for the past two years has been picked up by a noted distributor. Emptying out your savings, selling your comic book collection, sleeping on friends' couches - it's all been worth it. But then the unthinkable happens. The company that bought your film or script files for bankruptcy, and your project gets thrown into legal limbo, possibly never to see the light of day.

A far-fetched scenario? The sudden demise of companies like The Shooting Gallery and, most recently Propaganda Films, the noted commercial and film production house and home for filmmakers like Spike Jonze, reminds us all of the financial instability of independent film. And although ex-executives and lawyers are reluctant to comment on record, these companies - and the scores of lesser known ones that have been cratered during this entertainment industry recession - controlled dozens of projects, whether they be acquired books, optioned screenplays or produced or acquired films. The acquisitions or production executives, the "friends of the filmmaker," who brought those projects into their companies and have been pink-slipped away, and anxious independents have now been left to bargain with bankers and court appointed trustees in order to regain the rights to their material.

Although it can be difficult to disentangle one's work once a company has entered bankruptcy, by understanding bankruptcy and its legal workings when first negotiating his or her deal, a filmmaker can obtain some degree or protection should a production or distribution company go belly up.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/15/2008 12:18:00 AM Comments (0)

Here's the fifth of our catch-ups with previous "25 New Faces" filmmakers. If you've been on the list and haven't sent us an update, you can still email one to editor.filmmakermagazine AT gmail.com.


Don Handfield, writer/director, 2005: Life for me has changed dramatically for me since 2005, no pun intended. I am married now - to a beautiful woman named Tressa, and we had our first baby - a little girl - Robinson Dawn Handfield - just two weeks ago. She came in on the day of the recent earthquake and has been making her presence known with more little earthquakes every day since then. Wife and daughter have both been great teachers for me. My wife's emotional intelligence is off the chart, and my daughter keeps me present. She's a little Zen Buddha, in the moment at all times (when hungry, eat, when tired, sleep) and it's a pretty special gift to be reminded of that. I used to pride myself on my workaholic ways, being the lone wolf, writing late into the night, working long hours, grinding it out so to speak. That's not working for me anymore, especially not with a family. So I find myself working less from the filing cabinet (my brain) and more from the master control unit (my heart). Less time, and ultimately truer work.

As far as the feature I am directing - Jason Scott - I am set to shoot it first quarter of next year - 2009. A long road to get it made with many ups and downs in between. I connected with a great new set of producers, Mickey Barold and Stone Douglass, aka StickandStone. They put the project over the top and I am excited to finally be getting it going. I have tried to use the wait time wisely, workshopping the film over-and-over again. I've shot shorts or scene studies of my lead character in three different formats with three different actors.

I try to judge my progression in terms of personal and creative growth, rather than in business terms. But I can say that being in Filmmaker Magazine was definitely a boost for me, and led in one way or another to many great opportunities. I am currently finishing writing the romantic comedy Love Always for DreamWorks and wrapping up an adaptation of the nonfiction novel Fire on the Mountain for National Geographic Films.

The latter is an epic drama about one of the worst wildland firefighting disasters in modern history. I've put years of research into the script - on top of the half decade of intensive research and interviews done by the book's author, John MacLean. Wildland firefighting is a world we see on the news a lot lately, but most people don't really know much about it. This story gets inside it, and is really a war movie about firefighting, with a Black Hawk Down or United 93 feel to it. The Producer, Nick Osborne and I are glad it landed at the film division of National Geographic. Adam Liepzig and the people there seem to really care that the story is done right. They have research teams in D.C. that vet each draft for accuracy, which is good, because in this case, the truth is enough - no Hollywood embellishments necessary.

I went a little crazy during the writer's strike - it was against every workaholic bone in my body to sit and do nothing, but my conscience won out and I did. For weeks. Then I found out halfway through the strike that web series were legal, so I took an idea, Driver's Ed, that I had pitched a year before (that no one quite understood) and decided to just go shoot it myself as a web series. In my version, my lead character is a 60-year-old Iranian-American who owns a driving school in the Inland Empire. I say my version because when I presented the idea initially, I was told, Your lead can't be foreign." "Why not?" Because no one will watch it. "Really?" Yes. They've done studies. People want to watch themselves. Your lead has to be a white male. Thirties. Or you won't get an audience. "Really? What about Sanford & Son? Chico and the Man? And all those great shows this 30-something white male grew up watching and loving?" Old shows. Times have changed. Okay. What do I know? So I changed my pitch to have a white lead in his thirties. It didn't sell. It didn't even get interest from a studio. So I shelved it. Then Borat came out. Foreign Lead. Comedy. The same type of fish-out-of-water skewed comedic perspective I envisioned for Driver's Ed. Ugh.

It's important to listen to people. Probably the most important skill you can develop to get ahead in this town. But sometimes you need to listen to your gut. Vision is seeing what other people don't see. So don't expect to share your vision and have people go Ahhh! I get it! It's called vision because they don't see it. And sometimes the only way to communicate it is to demonstrate. So I decided, the strike is on, let me put my money where my mouth is. Literally. My wife produced, her family pitched in to help, we shot down and dirty, on HD, for no money down in San Diego County, film school style. Tiny crew. No permits. We actually got the cops called on us by some 18-year-old kid. Go figure, all the 50-something parents were cool with us shooting in their neighborhood, this kid was some kind of police-geek-in-training and reported our fake police car for not having proper signage. My cop actor almost got arrested for felony impersonating a police officer! Luckily, they ended up getting off and they let us finish our shoot. In retrospect, it was amusing to see a cop writing another cop a ticket. We had some pretty amazing luck all around on that shoot. I was gassing up a picture car that still had a camera mount on it at a gas station and some guy ran up and asked me if we needed stuntmen. I was like "Stuntmen? Dude, we can't afford PAs". He scribbled down his name and number and told me to look him up on IMDB. I was up til 4 am transferring my P2 cards to hard disk (we couldn't afford a camera assistant either) and I looked him up. He was a world class stuntman, one of the guys surfing through explosions in Apocolypse Now. Well, the next morning it rained so hard I had to change my shooting schedule and ended up with an extra DP and an empty picture car. A 1984 Caprice Classic I rented off of craigslist. I called the stunt coordinator (Kerry Rossall) who happened to be having a barbecue with a master mechanic and the Baja Rally champion at his house. They met us in a parking lot with about an hours notice and proceeded to absolutely destroy that station wagon. They made it do things I didn't think that car could do - 360s, powerslides, reverse 180s - Smoky and the Bandit moves. It was awesome. The car came back to me a rattling, smoking hulk, but the footage was unbelievable. I of course, bought the car, I couldn't return it like that. It raised the budget a little bit, but the production value we got from it was tenfold.

When the series was cut, I showed it to the Broken Lizard guys (Super Troopers, Beer Fest, Dukes of Hazzard) who responded strongly enough to take it into Lionsgate where they have a TV deal. The first and only studio we took it to made an offer and we pitch it to networks next week. So my web series hasn't seen the web yet, but it might make TV. I will keep you posted.

Anyway, I didn't mean to write a book. I don't even know if I got this in to you in time. It took me a while because I am living in Baby Town right now, Population: No Sleep. Congratulations and good luck to all the 2008 New Faces. Don't sit back and wait for people to come knocking, seize this opportunity. Publicity is currency in this town. Don't blow it on your ego, spend it on your projects and parlay, parlay, parlay.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/14/2008 04:48:00 PM Comments (0)

An interesting conversation is developing over at Anne Thompson's blog, in which she writes about some of the recent executive departures. Of course, the big news this week was Paula Wagner's leaving UA, and in a piece about that development Thompson references Bill Horberg's stepping down as head of production at Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. SKE has recently downsized after producing several films, including Charlie Kaufman's ambitious and out-there Synechdoche, New York, which cost, reportedly, north of $20 million and, according to Thompson, was bought "for a song" by Sony Classics. She characterizes both Wagner and Horberg as being "ill equipped to understand the true meanings of economies of scale" when greenlighting pics like Kaufman's and Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs.

In the comments thread, producer Ted Hope has contributed a defense of Horberg, who he is producing Greg Mottola's Adventureland with. It's also a thoughtful riff on trying to produce good work in trying times. Here are three key paragraphs, but go to Anne's blog to read the rest:

Producing and determining budget amounts is a tricky pursuit -- one that is far too easy to judge in hindsight. Audiences demand production value and verisimilitude. Actors and directors need time and time is money (at least on film budgets). International sales agents long ago abandoned the by-the-bootstraps production and want high-profile quality pictures. There's tremendous pressure on all sides ,and neither a few hits or failures determine or define how well someone is negotiating the balance of what determines the correct budget. Some films will never get made simply because producers are unwilling to put in the things that give financiers confidence that the project will sell well. Returns are critical, but so is a film culture that is worthy of being seen.

I don't know a producer around who wouldn't be proud to claim Bill's track record for their own (or part thereof, as I do have particular affection for my own). Producers and executives alike seldom get a chance to initiate or even participate in movies that truly raise the bar -- and Bill does repeatedly.

Charlie Kaufman's SYNECDOCHE was one of the most original and ambitious scripts I have ever encountered (I have not seen the film yet) and Charlie may well be the most refreshing and unique filmmaker of our time. When I first read it, after recovering from the emotional wallop and imaginative tour de force that the pages held, I felt "now here's a movie you can build and drive a slate around". As John August recently captured so well on his blog, the profit a film generates go well beyond the financial side of things (collaborators profit! culture profits! companies' reputations profit!). Yet there are very few films that allow a company to profit in ways that aren't just purely financial; SYNECDOCHE has, and had from the start, that potential -- if one could enact that specific agenda -- but we will never get to see that might have been now. Hopefully, people will vote with their dollars for a world that supports such a once every twenty years vision. People gripe about now versus the 70'sin terms of the work that is supported, but when we get a truly unique vision, where are champions then?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/14/2008 12:17:00 PM Comments (0)

The Long Now Foundation was established twelve years ago to "creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years." One of its founding board members is Brian Eno, and he submitted a fascinating post to the site's blog recounting the experience he had watching a theater piece in Oberammergau, in Upper Bavaria.

From the post:

In the early seventeenth century, as plague raced across Europe, the people of this small town made a deal with God: spare us and we’ll perform a Passion play every ten years. All of us. The whole town.

True to their word, they’ve done this every decade since. The first performance was in 1634, and ever since it’s been at the turn of the decade. It’s a startling event, because everyone in the town really is involved. All the actors, the musicians, the technical staff, the director, the costumiers, the carpenters, the singers, the stagehands, the press agents, the bartenders, the ushers - are local people. In normal life they’re the hairdresser, the postman, the dentist, the notary, the teacher, the plumber, the bus driver.

The next Passion Play won't occur until 2010. Eno instead attended a staging of Stefan Zweig's Jeremias, which featured a cast of only 500.

He writes:

I won’t attempt a description of the content: my German is so rudimentary that I understood very little of what was going on. It was 3 hours long, but it didn’t matter: I was intrigued.There were at times several hundred people on the huge open-air stage (the audience sit inside, under cover, but the stage area is open to the sky, the elements and the changing light of evening): there was fire, rain, camels, sheep and horses, a 50 piece orchestra of local players and a 100 person choir of local singers…. all to a totally professional standard. There was nothing ‘local’ about the quality of any of the performances.

And he wonders:

What would it do to a community to have a tradition as long and as defining as that, to know from an early age that you were, probably throughout your life, going to be woven into this incredibly rich tapestry of time, spirituality, art and craft? What would it be like to be a child growing up there, to watch your parents and grandparents learning their lines and practising their parts and building the sets and making the clothes? It must be so rich, such a powerful social binder and foundation.

Oh - I suddenly realised. It would be like tribal life. For isn’t this exactly what growing up in Bali or Mali, with their long traditions of folk art, must be like?

Back in the world of immediacy, Eno has a new record with David Byrne. It comes out next week and the first single can be downloaded for free.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 8/14/2008 11:21:00 AM Comments (1)

As the neo-cons attempt to return to the glory days of the Cold War, we'll probably find fewer of them online blogging about the significance of Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight. If you read my post below, Batman Fights the Neo-Cons, there's been a back-and-forth in the blogosphere about the ideological underpinnings of the massive box-office hit.

For some people, this is all just silly -- Batman is nothing more than a character in a rubber suit. Some of the rest of us, though, get off on such cultural theory wonkery. So, if you are not a regular reader of K-Punk's blog, I'll point you to a new post in which he reprints some of the responses he got to his original piece, which I linked to in my post.

Savonarola wrote:

The relentlessness of the time-torture motif, and the laying bare of all its psychic contradictions, is quite a testament to how impacted in it is in the American mindset (and it wouldn't be too farfetched to see DK as a kind of negative-dialectical dismantling of the reassuring virility of 24 scenarios). The real political "problem" with the films (which is also a political insight) is the amorphous impotence/homogeneity of the populace, which perhaps fits in with your Straussian theme. It is a sign of the times that the people is simply a fickle opinionated multitude (or a *family*) to be pacified by the mythic trappings of the Law, saved by the scapegoat-outlaw, or on the brink of nihilist anomie (save when the individual - as in the 2 ferries, with their ethical criminal and hesitant "upright" citizen - chooses the good, AGAINST THE VOTE). The social theory of these films if very turn of the (other) century: Gustave Le Bon, Gabriel Tarde, etc. (theory of crowds); Pareto, Michels, Mosca (theory of elites and oligarchies). Never a collective in sight (which is not a sli