Week Of April 24, 2006 - Overlooked Week - Mon / Wed / Fri

April 28, 2006

Here at The Overlooked Film Festival, Roger Ebert has already made the joke that the idea of what's been overlooked has been expanded to "any film ever made." But the festival has inspired a lot of conversation around here about the newly overlooked part of the industry... the indie film business.

Michael Barker has not yet arrived to defend the entire industry segment (he is due today, in support of Junebug, along with Phil Morrison and Scott Wilson), but besides the specific complaints and pains of two filmmakers whose movies (Man Pull Cart and Duane Hopwood) that were at Sundance this year, there is the bigger picture. In fact, one of the festival's guests, John Malkovich, is a kind of walking glossary of where indies are right now, though I haven't had a moment to talk to him about that or anything else.

Malkovich is here with Ripley's Game, which was manhandled by Fine Line a few years ago. He, both as an actor and as a producer via his Mr. Mudd company, has The Libertine in theaters via The Weinstein Company and Art School Confidential due out via Sony Classics (after it inherited the film from UA). Besides being the Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich of the Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman breakout (released by the now absorbed USA Films), he also co-starred in the great, underappreciated The Object of Beauty, which is one of the few sophisticated romantic comedies of the last decade, would probably not be made today with stars of the level of Malkovich and Andie McDowall, and was released by a company (like Fine Line) that no longer exists. And he has an English language film, Color Me Kubrick, that has premiered across the globe in the last year and yet, has had no major festival berth nor a U.S. distribution deal as of yet.

Of these six titles, only Being John Malkovich is likely to be remembered, as time passes, as a box office success, though all the films have been argued for by critics as the kind of films that are not often enough turning up in theaters.

It is only through the tenacity of Mr. Malkovich and others in his band of merry men and women that most of these films got made at all. But making the films is not quite as difficult in this era as getting them seen.

Fine Line has been shuttered by New Line and reconstituted as Picturehouse, which is run by Bob Berney - in no small part because with the great success of his Newmarket with The Passion of The Christ, getting exhibitors to pay in full a distributor that has no studio behind him turned out to be a big problem. United Artists had some room to work, but only really because MGM was hoping that a prestige picture or two would help sell the company. The Weinstein Company is releasing through MGM these days so they can take advantage of a Showtime cable output deal and only really had the money for the ad push for The Libertine because Disney paid the bill, wanting to keep Pirates 2&3 star Johnny Depp happy. USA Films, Gramercy, and Polygram are all now a part of Focus, a division of Universal, a division of NBC/Universal, a division of G.E.

Oy.

We've discussed this before, but with the studio Dependents aiming higher, the studios have essentially absorbed the indie movement and there is not a lot a territory out there for the true indie companies seeking to make and sell films that should be happy just to make a million dollars or two.

The equation is unfortunately simple. Enough to make a person rich is not enough to make a media corporation rich. So perhaps the word is not, "overlooked," so much as homeless.

Of course, the real issue at hand is not just understanding what is, but in trying to figure out what the possible fixes are.

Don't get too excited.

The new small distributors are trying a new model. 12-16 movies a year. Nothing too big. $15 million is the top. Nothing too small. A $1 million or $2 million pick-up is possible... but only if the film looks like $8 million or more. Cover most of the money with foreign pre-sales. And hope for a few miracle winners a year.

Why not embrace the smaller, quality films? Because the return tends to match the size of the film. Lots of people would be thrilled to make $750,000 profit on a film that cost $1 million. But not a lot of companies would. Don't even start thinking about that kind of equation and the stock market.

And it gets uglier!

When Mark Cuban recently was challenged to embrace the day-n-date concept without getting a piece of the action himself. And the response was to ban the film in question from his Landmark theater chain. So here you have an entrepreneur with deep pockets investing in both the production and distribution of "art" films... as long as it's serving his purpose.

So is there a good answer? Is there hope?

Well, the hope is real, but it's good news/bad news. The future will open up the avenues of distribution. However, the difficulty of being heard above the constant hum of noise created by the big boys, both major and Dependent, is only going to get worse. The same way that AtomFilms and iFilms were able to get people who spent $60,000 - $120,000 on short films to accept deal for $2000 for all rights is the same thing that will happen, on some level with features. Perhaps the balance will be less onerous for the filmmaker. But the reality is that possible gross revenues from, say, 50,000 people wanting to see your film via digital download to the TV or home-burnt DVD is probably less than $400,000. Split that with the delivery carrier and it's no more than $320,000. Factor in distribution expenses, including promotion, and it's down to, say, $250,000.

How many feature films that cost $250,000 are going to find an audience of 50,000 people who will pay for the privilege? How many $8 million projects that hope to be theatrically released will end up having their budgets cut to $2 million in hopes that they will either get lucky - and on the odds based on the number of films made alone, luck is more than a minor issue - and how many $1 million-plus losses will be sustained before that money dries up?

The painful bottom line is that there is not a lot of control on the demand side, only on the supply side. You can control how much you spend on making and promoting a film. But you can't force people to pay money to see your movie, no matter what the format of delivery, without either spending more, having a great hook, or getting awfully lucky... or all of the above.

For those of us who love movies, things will be better than ever. We will be able to see any and every movie on the planet that we desire after some theatrical window. And at a relatively cheap price.

But people tend to think of themselves. And I always come back to this example. If Canadian prescription drugs, which are cheaper than in America for various reasons, became freely available in America, what would happen next? Well, some Americans would save money. And then, within a year, drug companies would raise the prices in Canada - and if prevented from doing so, would stop selling some drugs in Canada - because the American market is so much bigger than the Canadian market that the drug manufacturers would not allow themselves to be undercut by their own products and to see their bottom line thin out dramatically.

It's not right. It's not good for the people. And it's how business is.

For those of you who enjoy the notion that porn leads technology, don't be surprised if the film business goes in that direction. A remarkable amount of content. And terrible quality, since if there isn't a lot more money in quality, why do it?

The truth is, only the industry can change the equation... and only by choice. It is, ultimately, in the interest of the major studios, to see a healthier indie business, even outside of their own divisions. It is also in their interest to see a healthy exhibition business (and should be supporting some return to second run theaters with a low, but consistent, price point). Because in the end, capitalism and expense art are not a comfortable fit. A fact that cannot be overlooked.

E Me: And the beat goes on....

Week Of April 3, 2006 - Life In the Bubble - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 10, 2006 - List Week - Mon / Wed / Fri
Week Of April 17, 2006 - Review Week - Mon / Wed / Fri