January 23, 2003

Everything right now seems to be about the machine…

Rick Lyman’s Sundance piece bites the apple a little too deeply for my tastes and the spin that the festival is selling this year takes hold a little too strongly, but there is also a lot of good stuff to be culled from his coverage. 

For instance, pull the key information out of this bit: "People are always trying to say, `Oh, Sundance is going Hollywood,' " said Robert Redford, who founded the event. "It's either that or that Sundance is dead." Seated in the back booth of another Main Street restaurant, Mr. Redford took a long pull on a bottle of mineral water…”

Let’s get past the logic of Going Hollywood or Dead options, for now.  Robert Redford is doing interviews about the film festival!  That is the biggest news of Sundance 2003.  It is yet more proof that he is very, very smart.  Because starting last year and continuing this year, he has obviously seen the writing on the wall.  Sundance is becoming, for better or for worse, exactly what Cannes has become… irrelevant on any level other than hype.

It was actually a weird thrill to see festival director Geoff Gilmore make the analogy himself.  “I don't want this festival to become Cannes, where you can't walk down the street. I don't want women in bikinis on the beach.”

This was the excuse, made by Sundance, to do all it could to pressure the alternate “dances” off of Main Street, enforcing unkind city laws to keep young, unselected filmmakers from hocking their wares to the gathered horde.  But what the last two years of Sundance has proven is that pushing aside the sideshow freaks exposes the sideshow that Sundance has become.

The simple reality is that if Geoff Gilmore and Robert Redford want Sundance to become relevant again – really relevant, like it was when there were real discoveries coming out of the festival – they need to make bigger changes. 

But this is the trouble that haunts people on all sides of the industry.  For me, it all goes back to the infamous “Katzenberg Memo” of 1990 in which Katzenberg worried about Disney’s strategy heading into the sophomore “year” of the Eisner era.  He understood what they had built and he understood that success would bring a whole different set of rules to the studio and how the studio was perceived in the industry.  Sequels weren’t dangerous because they were sequels, but because sequels cost more and returned less and Disney was, initially, built on low-risk, great potential. 

I have long said that Harry Knowles and Ain’t It Cool News suffer from Sophomore Syndrome.  Harry is, obviously, more knowledgeable and aware and connected than ever before.  But if he takes the next step, improving his writing, actively acknowledging his place in the business and generally admitting that he is as much a part of the industry as Rick Lyman or Liz Smith or Patrick Goldstein, he’s going to turn off those who are drawn to him because of his outsider status. 

 

Miramax, oddly, is in that same place.  The studio has become divided into Bob Weinstein’s business, which is successfully reliving the early years of New Line, and Harvey’s business, which is winning awards for a handful of movies that make up for six months of distribution slumber every year.  But how long can the trick last?  No one has more to lose from the Oscars’ move to February than Weinstein.  The Golden Globes, with as much due respect as I can muster, are one of his key tools in building profile for his movies.  If their value is diminished, he will have to find another cudgel. 

Of course, this Miramax stuff tacitly acknowledges that it doesn’t matter what the studio has waiting for us next December.  Cold Mountain appears to be THE Movie right now, but that could change.  Harvey will have his typical 6-8 films set for fall going into the summer.  The unlikely suspects will go to Toronto and hope to find some traction.  The ones he thinks he’ll win with will sit until December.  They will be the last films to screen.  He’s already working on the competition for next year now, trying to figure out a way to diminish Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers now so that Return of The King will not win the across-the-board lifetime achievement award that everyone is assuming it will win next year.

And when Cold Mountain has $20 million in box office going into Golden Globes the  January 9th weekend and upsets Return of the King in Best Drama to stave off being written off in the Oscar race, we will all be shocked, shocked. 

But will this continue to work at the House of The Mouse?  Because as much leniency as awards front-running will bring, the bottom line remains the bottom line.  Kill Bill looks like a hit.  But the budget is more than four times larger than any other film Quentin Tarantino has made.  Given that, Kill Bill has to be as big as Pulp Fiction to make money, whereas Pulp Fiction made a lot of profit because of its tiny budget.  Cold Mountain is looking at a breakeven, figuring in the ancillaries that follow, at about $170 million worldwide. 

How long can Harvey remain The Wizard of Ozcar while Brother Bob is keeping things afloat by selling top hats and tails to the Munchkins and having the only dry cleaner in MuchkinLand?  There is probably a better financial plan for Miramax out there that The Brothers could easily execute… they do have taste and they do know how to sell stuff on any platform they really understand.  Can  Harvey live with being in the Oscar race every other year?  Or will he status quo his company to death?

Spending so much time on Oscar this year while Oscar nominations were still months away has exposed a lot of similar hypocrisy to me.  Today, the American Cinema Editors announced their nominees for the 2003 ACE Eddie Awards.  And, as if by magic, their nominees almost exactly matched the nominees from every other awards group.  But this is not writing/directing, where the success of the film is understandably connected to the success of the screenplay/direction.  This is editing.  Punch-Drunk Love is the only real outsider in the group and it is certainly deserving of awards for editing, cinematography, production design, etc.  Good. 

 

Does anyone really believe that My Big Fat Greek Wedding represents a best-of-the-year piece of editing?  Really, with due respect to Mia Goldman, who’s done excellent work with director Andrew Fleming, I can’t imagine that even she would say that this is one of the 10 best pieces of editing this year. Or are even editors trying to be a part of the game? 

 

Is it really possible that not a single indie that grossed under $200 million was well enough cut to make this list?  24-Hour Party People?  Roger Dodger?  Y tu Mama Tambien?  Talk To Her? The stunning fake cinema verite of Bloody Sunday?  Maybe City of God was taken as a 2003 movie, but didn’t the visual storytelling of One Hour Photo deserve a slot before the traditionally edited About Schmidt?  I would suggest that all of the talk of an Oscar for Diane Lane would never be happening, as good a performance as it is, without the work of the great Anne V. Coates, who helped Julia Roberts win her Oscar for Erin Brockovich, despite being underappreciated by the ACE Awards & The Academy.  (I can’t argue against the ACE winner that year, Almost Famous, although like this year’s nominee, Gangs of New York, it is ironic that editors celebrate films that studios forced editors and directors to re-cut.  Nonetheless, the idea that Shanghai Noon or Chocolat was a better piece of editing than the sublime work of Coates on Brockovich is a joke.)

 

It is exhausting.

 

Back to Sundance…  what is the point now?  It may be the biggest independent film sales festival in the world, but it looks like the prices being paid this year are sliding back to the $1 million to $3 million range again.  It is ironic that the peak of the Sundance and indie market came at the 1999 festival, where Happy, Texas was purchased for $12 million and Blair Witch was bought for a song.  (The legal battle for the filmmakers to get their back-end money was settled just a few months ago.)  Happy, Texas grossed under $2 million after Miramax spent a lot of time and money releasing and re-releasing the very enjoyable film.  Blair Witch grossed $240 million worldwide.

 

Since 1999, the biggest purchase at Sundance has been a reported $5 million for Tadpole, last year.  The biggest purchase this year, so far, is $2.5 million for The United States of Leland, which features movie stars Kevin Spacey and Don Cheadle. 

 

Of course, the mixed blessings of the independent marketplace are not the responsibility of the Sundance Film Festival.  What made Sundance into an industry institution was a combination of good intentions, a high profile leader, excellent decisions and a moment in history for independent film.  The first three elements remain, albeit a bit strained by a willing participation in the use of the festival as a launchpad for first quarter releases.  But the fourth element, the market, has changed and is not going back.  Miramax is not the same company as it was.  Of all the other art distributors capable of an 800-screen release, only Sony Classics remains in the same hands and of the same philosophy that it was five years ago.  Paramount Classics, IFC Films, Newmarket, Screen Gems, United Artists and Focus Features are all either new or reconceived in recent years.  Fox Searchlight under Peter Rice has a distinctly different set of goals and rules.  Artisan and Lions Gate have distinct but ephemeral places at the table. 

 

So, what should Sundance be?  That’s not really my call.  It could change in a number of ways.  Ironically, people are writing about the stars in town but just a couple of years ago the festival was being used to launch major studio releases, a choice that has since been backed away from.  I’m not saying that the festival is an old, boozy whore or anything like it.  Like any institution, it is no longer light on its feet.  Change comes slowly. 

 

From an outsiders point of view, I will make one suggestion… a suggestion that I actually don’t like as a journalist.  Eliminate the 17 or so films that have played at other major festivals.  Don’t allow me to hear that someone’s favorite film at the festival is Bend It like Beckham.  That’s what really clouds the water.

 

Want to push even harder?  Eliminate all the films that already have distribution… period.  Hell, I love the opportunity to see indie films from the distributors early.  But the only loss for Sundance having Searchlight’s entire spring (with the mysterious exception of The Good Thief) on the festival schedule is the loss of some excellent films and a dependent working relationship with a studio.  The gain is that the festival becomes about something other than giving mini-majors more bang for the buck.

 

Or… do a Studio Spotlight.  Don’t bullshit around.  Give Miramax one slot, Searchlight one slot, etc, etc, etc.  Eccles at 8 for 8 nights in a row.  Terrific.  The studios will fight it, but it will actually help them too.  Narrowing focus is a good marketing concept.  And test marketing, which is so often what the studios are subtly doing by showing films at festivals, can go back to being an art of its own.

 

I know it’s hard, but taking the politics out and getting back to the basic idea… indie films that need a place to launch… new directors… new ideas… new directions… or we can keep going to the mountain, knowing a month before we go exactly what the “It” movies are going to be and pretending to care when they get picked up.

Greatness is for the brave. 

READER OF THE DAY:  THE INSOLENT INSIDER writes:  “The only reason that Catherine Zeta Jones was robbed was that she and her people saw fit to race in Best Actress - Musical/Comedy at the Globes.  Had she been submitted as a Best Supporting Actress - and make no mistake about it, the talent tells the HFP where they wanna compete - she would have won Sunday night.  Fortunately, it was always part of her team's strategy to have her race appropriately in Best Supporting Actress with the Academy, and you can't find anyone that thinks she's losing that Oscar despite not having won the Globe.  She coulda had the warm-up paperweight, though, and a chance to deliver a rehearsal speech to a few thousand Academy voters...

Likewise, the truth regarding Gere's run is that he and his team submitted him as Best Actor - Musical/Comedy to the HFP, and that obviously turned out alright.  Sadly, though, he has not been moved over to Best Supporting Actor with the Academy, and so will be lucky to get a nomination for Best Actor - and never the Oscar.  Had he raced in Best Supporting Actor with the Academy, however, he might actually have a shot at winning the damn thing - and we can guess with some confidence that he would have won the Globe for Supporting Actor as well.

Who only wants to settle for a nomination for Best Actor when they could have an Oscar for Best Supporting?  Any answers, Mr. Limato?  Ms. Kingsley?

Likewise, the movie star who unjustifiably races in Best Actress with the HFP runs the risk of losing to the actress playing the central character of the piece, even if the movie star has top billing.  And don't even get me started on that billing...

SAG Awards are anyone's guess.  But also look for the idea to be floated in the coming weeks that, a la '98 - when Harvey sensed an opening in the Best Actor race between McKellen and Nolte and "ran Benigni right up the middle" (his words) - there may be an opening between Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore and Harvey quarterbacking Zellweger right up the middle again.  If he smells weakness or sameness between those two serious-o performances, he'll not likely pass up the opportunity to smite the one person who didn't thank him at the Globes - Scott Rudin.”

 E ME:  I would say that based on his behavior, Weinstein smells opportunity in Best Supporting Actress (Bebe Neuworth) and even Best Picture, floating Frida via Roger “The Shill” Friedman” today. 

Who else do you see out there that needs a new coat of conceptual paint?  And what would you do to make Sundance more exciting from your point of view?