October 25, 2004

MY OWN PRIVATE INDIE HO, Pt. 2

As I noted at the end of Friday's Part 1, time for me to put up or shut up. So here are some rules and notions with which I would lead a dependent were I to be handed the keys. Of course, two thousand words does not a business plan make. And there are literally thousands of right and wrong decisions, relationships built and political footballs aired out in the real world.

But that never shut me up before...

ONE MUST PRODUCE

There is a growing business model for small indies that are picking up the leftovers on the festival circuit that, for whatever reason, the dependents and/or Lions Gate just aren't buying. I actually think that is part of a workable model, but more on that later.

In order for a modern dependent to compete, it needs to produce a handful of movies every year. (Sony Classics is kind of grandfathered in. And you have to wonder whether Michael & Tom would want movies like Underworld on their portfolio at this point, no matter how profitable.) In no small part, this is necessary because the quality indie product available on the market has become sparser while the competition has intensified. But even with the increased competition, the purchase prices are nowhere close to the gold rush days of Happy, Texas. So, players like Phil Anschutz are choosing to sink tens of millions into bigger movies with, they hope, bigger upside, rather than dropping $10 million into an indie that is unlikely to recover its cost before hitting DVD and even then, unlikely to make a rich person or company too much richer.

The cash cow pick ups are now films that cost almost nothing to produce (see: Napoleon Dynamite) or were made primarily for international consumption and are therefore more flexible on the domestic dealing (see: 28 Days Later).

Searchlight has done well to partner with Qwerty on two of their in-house productions this year, though one wonders whether the risk to reward ratio makes partial ownership in films under $20 million a good idea. Is $6 million and P&A really a better deal than, say, the whole $12 million and P&A?

Regardless, the business of a studio, indie, dependent or major is to buy product and exploit product, whatever the source. If you can get something for virtually nothing, good on ya. But to develop higher end product, the stability of being involved early on not only gives you more control, but it attracts better talent.

KNOW YOUR VOICE

While the major studios have exhibited less and less individual personality, the dependents have, for the most part, shown more. None of them really have a brand signature, but with publicity and promotion meaning a lot more in the indie world than in the $40 million ad buy big studio world, developing a brand seems utterly logical.

There have been some clear efforts to this end. Focus' Rogue division seeks to follow in the footsteps of Dimension, the genre/commercial art arm of a more arthouse focused brand. Sony's Screen Gems has become a lower-rent New Line while marketing has kept that boat floating and cruising even while Sony has relaunched TriStar to become… it's not 100% clear what yet… except it will reflect Valerie Van Galder's aesthetic voice to a great degree.

On the flip side, the new Warner Indie screams "art house," but may expand its purview in the future. UA under Bingham Ray was a true art house indie - the success of Bowling For Columbine notwithstanding - with genre product like Jeepers Creepers really left over from a Frances Coppola deal, done before Bingham's arrival, gone wrong. (That deal also brought some very art house - read: undsellable - titles to UA.) And Sony Classics has been mostly true art house, with some well sold chop socky making everyone richer than a migrating duck.

Searchlight is the only dependent, leaving Miramax on the freak list, that still puts it all in the same big pot, as likely to be going out with a Broken Lizards movie or some other quirky comedy as with a Celia Roth title that few people even knew existed, with a definite interest in Oscar season as well as summer madness. But interestingly, Searchlight still hasn't released a doc in the Rice era. Hmmm…

So what "new voice" is lacking in the industry?

I think that the UA notion of having Frances Coppola as big daddy - doling out the annual budget among some really talented people, fully aware that some of the movies would work and others would not, and that in the end the balance sheet would be in the favor of the studio and some prestige would be forthcoming - could work….just not with Frances.

If I am running such a studio, I want to have a few in-house documentarians who have never quite had the chance to be launched from a stable platform. Give me Chris Smith and Pulcini & Berman and maybe a "Presented by" slot for Maysles to bring something fascinating to the table.

I want to go out and find foreign language or just plain international films with some real commercial upside… take celebrity into account… I want the next Gael Garcia Bernal to be part of our family. I want to find a way to make a crazy movie with Alex de la Inglesias, even if his latest kind of thudded at Toronto this year. I want Jim Sheridan finding me new directors in Ireland, England and the rest of the isles. I want to be involved with work that guys like the Cuaron Brothers are doing.

Genre is an absolute necessity in this day and age, if you want to make a buck. Has Sony been trying to bring Roy Lee in-house? Maybe. But Roy is not the only guy out there who can make the leap from Asian hits to American conversions. And there are a lot of great ideas out there that would be quite profitable at $35 million domestic box office… and some might have enormous upside.

Domestic dramas are a real challenge. Just making good movies is no longer enough. You have to be able to market these films. And in order to market them, you have to have a hook. The difference between You Can Count On Me doing $20 million and $10 million is enormous in terms of building and maintaining a dependent. Paramount Classics made good money on that title, but there has to be a way to take the next step. One is to deliver a movie to match your expectations… in other words, if you have Jim Carrey in an art film and you want Oscar nominations, opening it in March is just silly.

I guess the overall thing of what I'm saying is that the new voice I am suggesting, which others have done and still do in part, is one of committing a dependent to a core group of filmmakers who can deliver one film, say, every two years. If, as a dependent, you release 10 films a year, that's 20 filmmakers that you are in business with, by design, for four years. It is always possible that you could get the worst work of each of these filmmakers twice in four years. But the goal of being in business with said filmmakers, supporting them in their quest for what's next, coming at the next project not as a "show me what you have," but as a "we have to find a way together…. our studio is relying on you to make something wonderful," seems to me a way of working that few have the chance to embrace anymore.

Why did Mike Leigh have trouble getting money for Vera Drake? Why was Amenabar's film available for auction this summer? Why in God's name did Roger Michel end up at Paramount Classics with Enduring Love (or The Mother, for that instance) instead of big Paramount grabbing him and making whatever he wanted to make and marketing it as a big movie after they had a good experience on Changing Lanes… or, in the case of a smaller movie like The Mother, keeping it in house and handing it off to Paramount Classics where the marketing machine for smaller movies would be more appropriate?

Oops… got off topic. Same idea, larger studio.

MARKETING IS LIFE

Speaking of marketing moves, there is nothing more important to today's dependents than the marketing/publicity/promotion machine… not even the quality of films. If you want to look at how Miramax became Miramax or Searchlight grew into the machine it is right now, you have to look at how movies were sold first and the movies themselves second.

How many indies would have been able to balance the aggression and the patience that Searchlight has shown on Napoleon Dynamite? Would anyone else have been as successful selling Underworld to so many suckers as Screen Gems? Who would have found the successful hook for Hero or even the current car wreck turned minor hit, Shall We Dance besides Miramax?

It's funny. The Miramax diaspora has been going on for a couple of years now and is continuing in earnest right now. But most of the studios that have taken advantage of Harvey's one-of-a-kind boot camp haven't let the former Maxers go out full throttle. Now it may be that when and if Amanda Lundberg or Cynthia Swartz escape, whoever hires them for horizontal career moves will give them the freedom to max-imize. The truth is that outside of genre stuff, no one has ever made more of less than Miramax… exactly what dependents need, even if it chafes a little at the big studio.

Sony Classics often seems happy to let it rip, go for reviews and let the movie do the work. But that's also why they have so few films pass $20 million. They have done an excellent job of building franchises and slow playing some movies that went amazingly well. But they do what they do well and don't have the marketing range for any single thing they get faced with. Some movies, even niche films, just don't belong at this studio.

Focus Features plays the marketing game from all kinds of angles, but they also take their beatings on a regular basis. It is a really nice place to have your movie if you are talent. And they have Michelle Robertson in-house for each awards season. But Shaun of The Dead is a classic example of a near-hit that other machines could have opened bigger and played out to twice the gross.

"How is the movie?," has become a sucker's bet, albeit a requisite one. "How was the marketing?," will, nine of ten times, tell you the real story. And, of course, in the indie world with limits to ad buys, the publicity and promotions sides are multiples more critical than they are at the big studios in the overall mix.

You have to know what you are making and/or buying before you are out there desperately trying to sell it. And you need to commit to what your people think and feel and know. Sometimes it's hard and sometimes testing is seductive, but you have to dive in when you are playing in the indie game or you are sure to lose.

HARDCORE DVD BUSINESS

One of the models that is inherent to Lions Gate and somewhat exploited by Miramax, but not nearly enough by either in my opinion, is the DVD market for existing product - primarily international - and the potential upside that comes with being a major outlet for product that might never be seen in the U.S. otherwise.

Like everything else in this business, the machine wants product whose low-upside is higher and higher every year. It's not enough to make a million, have to make ten. But there is a big world out there and niche players, especially with the credibility of a strong-voiced dependent, could make a whole lot of money by opening the door to the world. One 10,000 unit selling film is not going to make anyone too happy. But 10 or 50 or 100 or 250 a year with the same kind of "throw enough quality out there and you may well end up with an expected gem or cash cow" potential as the dependents that the studios are creating.

And, God knows, there is enough product out there to make this happen. Just the back catalog of product from the last two decades could fill such a program for five or six years.

We are living, more and more, in a niche media universe. And the people who start treating the niche businesses with respect are the people who will have greater opportunity in future. Quality is respected. The Best Five Films Of 2003 That You've Never Had A Chance To See From Brazil, France, Germany, South Korea, Australia, etc, etc, etc… stir that creative pot… if you build it, something will come… likely something really good. And if you are the builder, you have more power in harnessing those great possibilities.

THAT'S IT

There is more for me to write, but why would you keep reading the cow when you can Google the milk?

The next great indie model will require vision and fearlessness. It is not just another business arm for studios looking to find lower risk product. It is a trust with the public unlike most of the film business. But have faith, pilgrim… new sheriffs are born every day and the old ones often mellow beautifully with age.

Onward.

READER OF THE DAY: STELLA'S BOY writes: "Wow. Kudos to the marketing department over at Sony/Columbia. They sold the shit out of The Grudge. Its opening day was what, about a million $ less than
The Ring's entire opening weekend?

I teach high school, freshmen and sophomores, and for the last three weeks they would not shut up about this movie. Every day I'd have four or five different students asking me if I was going to see it. They were rabid about it. At the sold-out show I saw over the weekend, the screaming hardly ever stopped. I haven't experienced that at a horror movie in a long, long time.

The movie isn't great, and critics can scoff all they want (as they usually do at these movies; hey Rog, this is a one-star movie but Ladder 49 is three-and-a-half?!), but it gets the job done. People were on the edge of their seats, hiding behind coats, maniacally gripping the person next to them, jumping repeatedly and screaming their lungs out. Isn't that exactly what this type of movie is supposed to make you do? And how often does it happen? Hardly ever these days.

I saw the reportedly awesome and intense Saw last week. What a derivative and cliched piece of crap. It's not scary for a second. So flawed as it is, I had a good time at The Grudge. It was released at the perfect time. Congrats to Raimi and Sony and Co. for a job well done."

E-ME: As is now the norm, I blogged on the box office yesterday. So we know you can hold a grudge, but can The Grudge hold at the box office? And what would your rules for dependents be?