May 23, 2005

Would you sell an indie movie to this quoted distributor?

"You almost look at this year's Competition films and don't have to worry about buying anything. They may be good, but none of them are remotely accessible to an American audience."

The quotation comes from Anne Thompson's Hollywood Reporter story that explains that Cannes just isn't all that important to Americans anymore. Having figured this out years ago, I was happy (and surprised) to see the story in the trades. But I was so shocked by this quote that it took me a day or two to figure out just how stunningly wrongheaded it is... whether or not the comment is an accurate assessment of the situation.

The quoted Dependent head is Warner Indie chief Mark Gill. And I can only pray that Gill's quote was somehow pulled out of context, because if it wasn't, it may be time for him to find a new career.

I'm not saying that every Dependent has to be focused on difficult foreign language product to be legitimate. But dear God, the boss has to at least pretend he gives a shit! If Gill wants to develop his rep as an indie hero, perhaps he could step up to the plate and expend the resources for one Variety Oscar season cover for one tough but brilliant foreign language film.

Moreover, as far as I can see, Warner Indie still hasn't broken the $6.5 million mark domestically on any of its films.

True, only five foreign language films have surpassed that domestic gross figure since WIP started distributing films eleven months ago. And only one of them premiered at Cannes last year. It's also true that three of the films are "kung fu" epics and that only one of the films was bought in a wide open festival market. That would be The Motorcycle Diaries, whose $4 million price tag for domestic theatrical only was too high for Warner Indie at Sundance, where they made their first buy. Not only did Motorcycle gross more than eight times what WIP's buy, We Don't Live Here Anymore, did domestically, but it more than doubled the gross of WIP's first big foreign language investment, A Very Long Engagement.

I can understand why Mr. Gill is bitter. But if he really is still in business - for real, not just treading water until the heat subsides so no one is embarrassed when he goes - why in God's name would he be publicly biting the hands that he may want working for him?

Mad Hot Ballroom is still in a very small, early release pattern, but it lead every film but Star Wars in its per screen this last weekend and grossed more than any of the other small releases, including Warner's release of Paul Schrader's take on the Exorcist prequel which was on more than seven times as many screens as Ballroom. My point is, John Sloss made the choice with Mad Hot to turn down bigger cash offers so the film would have what he determined was a better chance to be built up via Paramount Classics and sister division Nickelodeon. The Dependent market is getting that kind of competitive. Cash is good. Success is better.

If there is to be any change, it will only start through aggressive leadership. That leadership may include reduced expectations for some titles. Just because this is the business of show does not mean that there is not room for some breakeven business that really matters.

Interestingly, WIP's parent company, Time-Warner, and their HBO and New Line divisions just invested in bringing former Newmarket man Bob Berney into the fold to start Picturehouse. What box office friendly directors will Picturehouse start with? Don Argott ,Gus Van Sant, Ari Posin, Raymond De Felitta, Michael Winterbottom, Giddi Dar, Mary Harron, Steven Shainberg, and Kenneth Branagh. Of the nine films launching Picturehouse, only The Thing About My Folks suggests the clear solicitation of the audience. And there is some hope that Nicole Kidman as Diane Arbus could grab special attention.

Is Picturehouse's Last Days, Gus Van Sant's Cannes competition film, "remotely accessible?" Van Sant's 2003 Pale d'Or winner, Elephant, grossed $1.3 million domestic.

Would Steven Shainberg's Fur be more Warner Indie's kind of picture because Nicole Kidman is in it? (The Portrait of a Lady grossed $3.7 million domestic. Birthday Girl, The Human Stain and Birth all ended up grossing between $5 million and $6 million domestic, while Dogville managed just $1.5 million.)

As I count it up, there were eight English-language films in competition at Cannes this year. Five of the eight arrived with distribution. The Tommy Lee Jones western came to Cannes as a likely distribution buy for someone... more so after he won for acting and Guillermo Arriaga won for writing. The Atom Egoyan has ThinkFilm already set for Canada and the company will likely end up handling the U.S. as well. And Manderlay, whose predecessor, Dogville, as I previously noted, grossed less than $2 million, despite the presence of Ms. Kidman, will surely end up with a Wellspring or New Yorker films level domestic distributor. But the idea that we won't see the film in American theaters at all is dubious.

So it is looking like a 100% theatrical release showing for English-language films in Cannes competition. Does that mean they will do a lot of business? Of course not. But it's not so much about the accessibility of those films as it is the fact that Mr. Gill doesn't have to worry about the English-language competition films because there are only three available and the only one of those three that seems to fit the WIP profile is The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

And why would Tommy Lee Jones sell his film to Warner Indie? Mark Gill just publicly dissed his film by association.

Six of the thirteen foreign language films in competition (Michael Haneke, Johnnie To, Amos Gitai, The Dardennes, Marco Tullio Giordana, amd Xiaoshuai Wang) came to Cannes with directors familiar to the domestic market and thus, with some domestic distribution already likely. Of the seven remaining titles, I would expect only Hiner Saleem's Kilometre Zero to end up with domestic distribution, based on some good notices and a pre-existing relationship with New Yorker Films on Saleem's last film, Vodka Lemon. Hou Hsiao-Hsien, who Anne Thompson points to in her story as a Cannes regular is, however, not a domestic distribution regular, with a number of films in video release, but only Millennium Mambo getting a 1-screen theatrical via Palm in 2004... two and a half years after it premiered in Cannes.

So, if all that I am predicting comes true, one-third of this year's Cannes completion films will go without U.S distribution.

Seven of the sixteen dramatic competition films at Sundance 2005 are still without distribution... eight if you include Ellie Parker, which claims a distributor that seems more of a direct-to-video company. These are films without a language issue... all but two have at least American television celebrities in them and at best former Oscar nominees.

So is this a Cannes issue or is it really a independent film issue combined with America's general disinterest in foreign (to us) language film?

Has the standard of success with all these Dependents become too high to include support for a broader sensibility?

Maybe we need to discuss it again after Fox Searchlight releases Night Watch.

A couple side notes...

I would argue that Anne Thompson is being very generous to Viggo Mortenson by suggesting that box office success for David Cronenberg's competition entry, A History of Violence, could come only because of Viggo. First, there is no proof that he can open a film. And more to the point, if the film succeeds financially, it will be because New Line marketing uses all the elements, the primary one being the film itself, to gather interest that ranges beyond the cineastes.

Meanwhile, looking back at the Toronto film festival, WIP was one of the many Dependents to pass on Crash... too many "indie" names... not sellable enough. Ha ha. Not only is Crash the biggest art house indie of the year so far, it is the fourth biggest "straight drama" so far, following Coach Carter, The Interpreter and Kingdom of Heaven. (Insert William Goldman quote.)

Meanwhile, Warner Indie will deliver its first documentary this summer, March of the Penguins... a species variation on Sony Classics' very accessible Winged Migration, the highest doc grosser in history not made by Michael Moore.

I hope it is more than remotely accessible.

READER OF THE DAY: N ZED writes: "no because it's just about bloody winter here, dave! i felt 'revenge of the sith' in my gut; my six year old was sitting in my lap (i know six is kinda young for such a film but he's a veteran of the original trilogy and wanted so desperately to find out how luke's dad became bad ass darth - plus he's already a cinema lover, thanks to his mum), he clung to me in the sad bits and i even felt a tear well when the hideously burnt and maimed aniken was cyborged into his black leathers... i've been waiting to find out what the deal is with darth baby sinse i was ten, things have come full circle, here's to the skywalker clan..."

And this from THE FORMER APPLE CRISP: "My overall reaction to the last two films was one of disappointment but I felt like I had to see the third/sixth one (A) because I'd seen all the others in the theatre, and (B) because I really did want to see how Anakin gets turned to the dark side and to bring closure to the whole thing. I'm definitely glad I chose to go.

I felt that in general the film was good, managing to stay very focused on the plot and the looming sense of epilogue inherent to the story, while still having multiple storylines involving the different characters. It also explored some interesting political and ideological ideas, even if keeping them at a level a kid can understand.

It is interesting to note how each film is a product of its own time in terms of fashion & design. For example, in this pre-New Hope epic, mid-riff baring, belly-button wearing female fashions are apparently de riguer, while one doesn't see that kind of thing in the earlier trilogy - Princess Leia's turret-gunning, bikini-wearing self in ''Jedi'' being a notable exception. Also, the design of the Jedi Council's meeting room sports the warm interior design colors of today as oppposed to the more bold, ''futuristic'' scheme of the Death Star. I liked how the film did seem to come full-circle design-wise, though, ending up in a ship looking very similar to where the story had begun - ''Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.'' And how Darth Vader's costume looked exactly like in the other films, which is really very 1970s.

Cinematography has come a long way since 1977 as well. Contrast Luke's big light sabre fight with Darth Vader to Obi-Wan's in Ep III. The cinematography in the former is rather stark in contrast with the moving - moving - moving style of the new film. I'm not certain which one I prefer personally, but I'm sure modern audiences find the CONSTANT background action much more exciting and fulfilling.

I found it interesting as well to observe that of the countless settings portrayed in the film, I figure MAYBE 15% of the scenes took place on actual sets, with many entire shots - characters and all - having been created in the computer. The CG was very well-done - with realism and a sense of gravity having come a long way even since Episode II - but still getting away from the whole sense that the story really could have happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, if you ask me and my willing suspension of disbelief.

I also found the frentic pace of the ''camera'' movement somewhat distracting. In the older films, when scale models were used to photograph the ships orbiting some planet in battle formation, the camera wasn't also moving, moving, moving as we were surveying the vastness of the spacecraft. (It was moving, just not every which way.) Is this some sort of magician's trick to make it impossible for a viewer to absorb everything on first viewing and make us need to see the film again and again? Hmmm ...

Also distracting were the artificially blurry backgrounds in many of the shots. I don't know if it is because the level of blurriness is slightly off from the actual blurriness generated by using a film camera in a shot with shallow focus, or because I wasn't seeing the film in DLP as Lord Lucas intended, but it was hard on my poor, aging eyes.

A final side effect of the modernization of the moving-making process is that the film is more graphically violent than any of its predecessors. I can picture my former second-grade students squirming and remarking how gross some of the wounds inflicted on some of the characters are - in contrast to the comparatively cartoonish - yet still noticeably disabling - bloodless severing of a stylishly gloved hand.

Another thing I don't know quite what to do with is the suddenly benign nature of the Padme character - the once planet-leading, gladiator-fighting queen/senator is now content just to sit at home and brood. Sure, she shows up in the senate when it's important, and she sticks to her ideals about the republic, but mostly she stays at home & lets C3PO bring her bon-bons. All of the earlier films are devoid of domestic life except in the form of parental figures with very little screen time. While the domesticity in this instance is critical to the plot - and also to allowing young viewers to comprehend the status of the union between Padme & Anakin, I prefer the lack of domestic life in an action movie. (Indiana Jones may plant a kiss on the girl, but you don't see him take her home & listen to her bitch about when he's going to be honest with her about what he's up to down at the dig site.) ... But maybe that's just me.

If I may say, however, Ms. Portman had a killer maternity wardrobe! Kudos to Costume Designer Trisha Biggar! : )

When all is said and done, though, Revenge of the Sith is an exciting action movie and a fitting end to a series in which beloved characters battle evil to bring democracy to the galaxy - even if it is one of long ago and far away."

E-ME. Is there a future for foreign language film in this country? Did Sith speak to you?