March 5, 2003

A year ago, there was no Focus Features…

There was USA Films and Polygram and Gramercy.  And there was Good Machine. 

USA Films was flying high with a surprise Oscar nominee in Robert Altman’s Gosford Park.  Good Machine was flying pretty high too with their own Oscar nominee, the Miramax-distributed In The Bedroom. 

There was also Universal Focus, the official distributor of films from Billy Elliot to Mulholland Drive.  They got a lot of critics’ group attention, but not a lot of Oscar nods. 

Just after last year’s Academy Awards, the 18-month-old Universal Focus was shut down.  A month later, Good Machine, probably the most consistent indie producing entity still going, was folded into the Barry Diller-run, Vivendi-co-owned pastiche of indie companies and the birth child was Focus Features. 

Before Cannes was over, Focus Features had made its first acquisition, Roman Polanski’s Palm D’Or winner, The Pianist. 

In the first six months of operation, Focus Features would also release four movies from four filmmakers who would make films scheduled for release in the company’s second year in business - Neil LaBute, Francois Ozon, Todd Haynes and Mira Nair. 

The remnants of Good Machine continued to roll out, with the Jim Schamus, Ted Hope, David Linde, Ang Lee Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon team producing The Hulk at 10 times the budget of CT,HD.  Good Machine’s production machine’s final credited project, American Splendor, became the hottest title at Sundance 2002… so much so that Focus Features was outbid by Bob Berney’s Newmarket distribution entity to take the HBO co-financed film into theatrical exhibition.  (Good Machine International’s distribution business lives on, by the way.)

But there’s more!  They have another solid line-up of small projects, adding indie celebs Sofia Coppola, Michael Corrente and Tod Williams to the crew.  But they also have two $30 million-range projects going as well with the Jim Carrey/Kate Winslet/Kirsten Dunst/Charlie Kaufman film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Amores Perros director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s follow-up, 21 Grams, with Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn and Naomi Watts.

Who said that the indie movement was dead?

David Linde doesn’t have a lot of answers about why things are going so well.  He and his partners are just doing their jobs.  If he says, “We’re sticking to our business plan” once in a conversation, he says it five times.  And they have.  Extrapolating from their production and pick-up line-up, I’d say that they have around $150 million to work with each year on the production/acquisition side, before P&A…. a little more than the budget for The Hulk alone.

There are nine films and the expansion of The Pianist on the 2003 schedule, a number that is likely to expand by a title or two at Cannes.  One film originally targeted for an awards season release this year - Vanity Fair, directed by Mira Nair and starring Reese Witherspoon – delayed a production start in order to get the script just right for Nair, who joined the party late. Every film has its time. 

Focus is a representative of a new wave of independent companies financed by majors that not only pick up films, but develop their own as well.  The clearest kissing cousin to Focus is Fox’s Searchlight division, which has been willing to greenlight pictures with budgets up to $50 million, and which has a load of films from high-end filmmakers of their own. 

The most senior studio-based art division, Sony Classics, and the second youngest, Paramount Classics, both are almost exclusively picking up films, whether in production or soon after completion.  Bingham Ray’s UA division at MGM inherited some original product through a deal with Francis Coppola that was already in the pipeline before Ray arrived, but seems likely to lean towards acquisition in the future, though they are already in on Bill Condon’s next film, Kinsey (due 2004).  Warner Bros’. art division still has no face, so it still has no discernable gameplan.

And then there is Miramax, which has, obviously, become a producer of much of its own product… but not so often on an independent level.  If Miramax has a high-profile film that feels “independent,” it is likely a pick-up, as was In The Bedroom, picked up at Sundance for $2 million.  The studio has 43 – GULP! – films on its ever-changing 2003 schedule.  Prozac Nation, Blue Car, People I Know, Buffalo Soldiers, Shaolin Soccer, Flying Dragon, Leaping Tiger and Hero are amongst the independent-sized films gathering dust.  The big expectations come from the $60 million Kill Bill (with a budget five times bigger than any Tarantino film to date), the $90 million Cold Mountain and potentially – to be fair – the indie budgeted J.M. Barrie’s Neverland. 

But the trend that fascinates me goes back to Focus and Searchlight and UA, to some degree.  It’s what really pisses me off when I read people simplifying the issue of how Miramax does so well at awards time down to “they make interesting pictures.”  Yes, compared to major studios, Miramax makes more interesting choices.  But now you have three art divisions operating that will release around 30 “interesting” films between themselves alone. 

If you had to sit though one studio’s entire output right now, which studio would you choose?  Musicals?  I enjoyed Ozon’s 8 Women more than I did Chicago (even if I am in the minority).  Frida?  Julie Taymor got her directing break at Searchlight.  The cutting edge?  Good Machine was behind Y tu Mama Tambien, Focus was behind Far From Heaven and 21 Grams is on the way.  Mainstream product?  Focus is doing a Jim Carrey movie for nothing because it’s quality and Searchlight’s In America, in my opinion, should be a major Oscar contender next year.

The trend is both thrilling and a little scary.  Because the downside is that although “real” distribution of art films actually seems to be more available than ever before, the funding for some of the films that these companies would like to pick up at festivals and on the international market has dried up.  The irony is that this desert is growing while the international market for American-made films continues to grow. 

Even at Sundance this year, of the acquired films only The Station Agent could really be counted as an “outsider” indie finding its way.  InDigEnt’s Pieces of April is, to me, on a different place than “real” indies.  That doesn’t diminish the business acumen of the InDigEnt partners.  But they are working from an established fund.  The documentaries at the festival, always great, were dominated by HBO, PBS and other cable-net connected titles.  Again, there was an “outsider” stand out, Capturing The Friedmans.  Thank God the filmmaker made a fortune creating MoviePhone!  But would In The Bedroom or The Deep End exist to be picked up this year or will they be able to find pre-distribution deal financing next year or in 2005?

But I digress…

My intention when I started writing this was to tell you about David Linde, with whom I chatted yesterday.  Nice guy.  Smart guy. Experienced guy.  But talking to Linde was not a line into a hype machine for The Pianist.  It was about the work.  It was about the thrill of finding his company’s first acquisition making it to the “finals” of the Academy Awards.  It was about the future of a company of guys who really know how to make challenging, reasonably budgeted movies happen.  (And about their partners, one of whom has long been the most dominant women in indie, Christine Vachon.)  It was about his admiration for some of his closest competition and his very real respect for the filmmakers with whom he and Schamus and Hope choose to be in business.

It was a tonic.  Because it wasn’t about the ego that made yesterday’s column so rancid.  Talking to Linde, it was clear.  He knows that he doesn’t  - he can’t - control the outcome of art.  But he and his partners seem seriously committed to creating the most effective platform out there from which filmmakers can work. 

I’m sure that there is someone out there with a bad David Linde story.  One weird thing about what I do is that there is someone with an opposing viewpoint on every thing and every one.  But I judge people based on what they do and not, primarily, on what they say.  And Focus’ line-up is pretty breathtaking, just a year old or looking into the future, towards the second birthday party. 

The future of quality film seems to lie in the hands of these companies… without enough money around to pressure then to make product, but enough money to make some really good movies.  Things might be looking a little brighter…

READER OF THE DAY:  CRASH BANG BOOM writes:  “As a huge Betty Thomas fan I take offense at (yesterday’s) reader saying she isn't a quality director.  This guy even see Private Parts or the Brady Bunch movie? Obviously not.

E ME: No one could top that… but you could try!