Week Of April 23, 2007 - Mon / Wed / Fri

April 25, 2007

Try Betta

At least the Tribeca "Film Festival" is becoming more brazenly honest about what it is and what it is not, first in that NY Sun piece and now in Gregg Goldstein's Hollywood Reporter interview with Jane Rosenthal.. 

"Don't let the name fool you -- the Tribeca Film Festival is about much more than just movies." (emphasis added)

"Since its second year, Tribeca has been a private, for-profit organization run under the umbrella of the private, for-profit Tribeca Enterprises, which was founded by Hatkoff, Rosenthal and De Niro in 2003."

"The cost of staging each fest has increased to about $13 million (20% of which is ponied up by the festival's founding sponsor, American Express), and the event has been running a $1 million annual deficit -- which comes right out of Rosenthal's, Hatkoff's and De Niro's pockets."

How very generous of them.  They choose to turn their not-for-profit into a for-profit and eat a million dollars a year.... at least they only have civic duty in mind!

Tribeca Enterprises has teamed up with the Related Companies and Cirque du Soleil for a proposed Pier 40 Performing Arts Center. The center would house a large theater for the circus, an ice rink, nightclub, sports field and a 60,000-square-foot Hudson River-adjacent multiplex to run indie films year-round and Tribeca programming each spring. But the $626 million project is far from a sure thing: A competing academic and sports space, Pier 40 -- The People's Pier, also is up for consideration in community board hearings.  Should PAC be approved, Hatkoff anticipates it would be completed by 2011 or 2012.

Ohhhhhhh.  Robert DeNiro and Co. are continuing DeNiro's long march towards being a real estate mogul and using the festival erected and supported by the city in memory of 9/11 to leverage things at community board hearings.  Nice!

And why did the ticket price rise to $18 for this for-profit event?  It's worth noting that ticket income represents less than 25% of the revenues necessary to run most film festivals.  So is anyone paying more than the community? Will they notice?

"When we have to retrofit theaters with digital projection and fly more filmmakers in with fewer hotel rooms available than ever before, we have to pay for it. We don't get city and state funding the way (the Toronto International Film Festival), (the Sundance Film Festival) and (the Festival de Cannes) do. I don't even get any substantial funding for free events. Without that, I had to raise ticket prices."

So they have to bring in more filmmakers in more hotel rooms! They have to!

"The rationale for a bigger scale is that there are fixed costs inherent in running it no matter how large we are," Hatkoff says, citing the yearlong overhead for staff, offices, ticketing and other expenses. "It's Economics 101. Not having it grow will just exacerbate the cost structure. It's not about making money for the festival."

Now wait a minute. Do they have to spend more or are they spending more because it is a better choice in Economics 101?

Sounds an awful lot like the rationale behind studio blockbusters.  They can't afford to make smaller, more interesting movies because the studio infrastructure can't be supported by good revenues.... there have to be massive revenues.... even if the bottom line leans towards red ink. 

Of course with a film festival, using Hatkoff's Logic, an ongoing expansion will eventually make the festival so successful that not only will it be profitable, but tickets can be cheaper or free!  (Yah.... sure.)  If fixed costs are so high that the festival can't operate at the size it has been, there is something wrong with the fixed costs that expansion will only - hopefully - blur, not correct. 

And why don't they get public funding?  Because they are a FOR PROFIT event!  An intentional money MAKER!  If NY funded the thing, there would be, should be, a voter revolt.  Why would the city fund Robert DiNiro's real estate ambitions?  (And by the way.... Sundance builds out most of their theaters each year at great expense and Toronto's upkeep of theaters they don't own is very costly as well.)

But the real answer about their goal is, it seems, not a working film festival at all, but building the public support to help push through the $626 million pier project.  And to mis-quote Mr. Kane, if they lose $1 million on the festival each year, it will be a few hundred years before it hurts if they can make a killing on the pier project thanks to that investment.

Shame on media that allows this potential cash cow to masquerade as an event intended primarily to benefit the community. 

Back at the greed is good discussion, all the chatterchatter about the festival becoming a successful market will be nothing but talk until they actually have a single success emerge from the festival.... one.  After five years, none so far.

And let's add this other element to the mix about Tribeca.  They do their best to damage other real festivals that have existed for much longer and really have been built on the communities they service.  The most significant infliction of damage is to the San Francisco International Film Festival, America's oldest, celebrating 50 years this year.  Tribeca regularly forces filmmakers to choose between the two festivals, which run on opposite sides of the country (obviously) and one of which serves a far more serious film community (more like the NY Film Fest does in NY).  SFIFF's ability to draw attention, films, talent, and funding has been under direct attack by Tribeca. 

Also, festivals like the Los Angeles Film Festival, which has actually had more success as a market than Tribeca, though still limited, are hurt by Tribeca's abusive aggression.  Tribeca wants everything.  And they spend so much money on talent relations that they are able to seduce filmmakers to their festival over others.  Do they really need to screen 157 films?  Does this serve anyone at all, least of all New Yorkers?  No.  But they are a money making corporation and they compete on that level.

And keep this in mind.... the annual budget for the Public Theater, which not only funds the creation and production of dozens of new shows and revivals every year, runs a pub featuring music from artists as diverse as Neil Sedaka, Raul Midon, Michael Penn, and Sxip Shirey (that's just this week), but also offers free Shakespeare in Central Park every summer.... $16 million.  The Toronto International Film Festival, which employs over 100 people fill time, sells more than twice as many tickets to the Toronto locals than Tribeca does (at now, much lower prices), and runs a second festival, Sprokets, as well as one of the most ambitious all-year cinematheques in any city on earth....   $17 million a year.  The Sundance Institute, which doesn't offer a break out of the festival costs, is a $20 million not-for-profit organization that also operates year round doing many things other than the festival.  Cannes is still the most expensive festival in the world, with a budget of about $20 million, half of which is paid by the nation of France. Ooh la la!

You know, I have no problem with a massive new cultural event in New York.  But I had no idea that the festival, which was proclaimed (and still often is) to be about the rebuilding of the area devastated by 9/11, had gone away from its not-for-profit roots. 

Another film community event went that way in recent years, when the media conglomerate now known as the Nielsen Company purchased ShoWest, which had been part of the not-for-profit community organization NATO (National Association of Theater Owners).  When you saw stories earlier this year about how ShoWest had changed, this is the core of why.  Why would studios spend so many millions to support a for-profit event?  Being part of the NATO event was a way of showing support for the community.  Being part of the Nielsen event was a way of lining the pockets of a fellow multi-national. 

Meanwhile, IFP/NY is flailing and can't make its annual budget, whoring out at the Gotham Awards, desperately trying to find a way to support aspiring NY filmmakers.  LOOK.... it's Spider-Man and Tom Cruise!  (Feels better now that you saw some movie stars, huh?)

And for me, that is the story of Tribeca this year.  They have taken the goodwill from one of the nation's and New York's great tragedies and turned it into an aspiring money making event.  And that is just my perspective.... but it is based on everything that the festival's owners have said quite openly this year.  So you think they understand how bad it sounds?  I don't.  But then again, maybe you don't either.

E Me.

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