Is indie dead or is the term somewhat meaningless. Warner Brothers I think thought so when they decided to close Warner Independent and Picturehouse, citing that some films from WIP could have been distributed by Warner Brothers and vice versa, in fact a few were picked up by major Warner Brothers, some more successful than others.
There are a few upstarts that have come to town recently, I think being well capitalized and smart in that you don’t over extend yourself is a good strategy. I think the best example is Summit Entertainment, which I think is being overly cautious with The Brothers Bloom (although I see there point - after all, it’s better to have a slow build up for a film thats quirky than a bam - big release that lasts a week). After P-1, their first release seemed like a loss leader they’ve been released films that didn’t feel independent in the least, they felt like they came from the big studios: Twilight, Knowing and Push.
They seem to have a formula that works - they set realistic expectations and for the most part (aside from Push) make pretty good films. Indie film, or small budget films can be successful, I think with realistic expectations. An example at Summit is Next Day Air, it cost 3 Million to make, and grossed 9 Million, modest but considering that its marketing budget was probably reasonable it seems profitable.
A tiny example of this, right off of IMDB is Kelly Reichardt’s first feature Old Joy - it cost $64,000 to transfer the film from 16 to 35 and cover prints, $6,500 on trailers and the studio spent $7,000 advertising the film. The film itself cost $30,000 - therefore it was modestly profitable at $107,500, all together. It grossed $255,352 in theaters.
These spreads are tiny compared to the fuck you money a big blockbuster flick that a Warner Brothers blockbuster does - but then again some of those films loose money. Old Joy, to me seemed like a success, modest, sure but better than loosing money, and it played in theaters.
Reichardt’s next film, Wendy and Lucy made just shy of 1 million dollars and played in mostly every major art house in the country from a new upstart distributer that really has great taste in film - Oscilloscope Pictures. I respect their view that you have to do some theatrical - that you should just do video on demand stuff.
I also think with digital projection (sure it doesn’t match the beauty of 16MM or 35MM) content can be delivered to theaters the same way that theaters show the Metropolitan Opera - designated an indie film night. You show up at 7:30 on Wednesday for example and we’re going digitally project a new indie film that’s currently only in New York City (not a big deal for me in Northern NJ, although I might use it as a way of getting out of paying a toll, waiting in traffic and dealing with parking).
The death of indie film is a little scary - there was always two tiers of indie and now with cheap HD technology there is an even wider gap, like America, the middle class is disappearing. This isn’t such a bad thing, but studios, aside from Fox Searchlight and maybe Lionsgate are getting out trying to sell a film on it’s “indie” appeal.
The IFP/Film Independent Spirt Awards award films based on their “independent spirit” - I have tired to figure this out many times, even their years seem off. This year I saw Sugar and The Hurt Locker before you all did, yet The Visitor, which premiered last year (2007) at Toronto (where Hurt Locker did in 2008) was also considered. Slumdog Millionaire, a film so indie Warners didn’t know how to release it wasn’t considered, but Election won big a few years ago despite coming from Paramount and MTV Films. And I’m a member of this great organization? I don’t really get it.
This rant comes on the heals of two news stories recently reported in indiewire: the creation of one company and the shutdown of another. Let’s deal with the shutdown first.
Senator Entertainment is shutting down its film distribution business after one awful film that made no sense graced some 482 screens across the country and made 300,000.00. The Informers had a budget of 18,000,000 per IMDB. Call that a monumental fuck up - hopefully they made some money on the foreign rights (probably not so much). It was an awful film with some big name talent. Directed by the talented Gregor Jordan and staring Billy Bob Thorton, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, Winona Ryder, Jon Foster and Amber Heard - while watching it’s nonsense I thought to myself “hey this is one of those movies that I’d see in the basement of the Village East 7 on a rainy Saturday afternoon, be alone, and the film would never be heard of again”. I was right, except I saw it on a Sunday night at the Headquarters Plaza in Morristown, and was in the theater with exsactly two other people.
Senator’s departure leaves behind a few unreleased titles including the God-awful All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (can’t say I’m unhappy about that not seeing the light of day after it was dropped by the Weinstein Company after a disastrous test screening I saw two years ago), Brooklyn’s Finest (Antoine Fuqua’s latest, which I do want to see), and Gregor Jordan’s next film, Unthinkable.
It’s not easy, The Weinstein Company is having cash flow problems, some think because they’ve stretched themselves too thinly. I think the films are the problem, like at Miramax, they’ve released too many in too small releases, they need a hit. I think they still have it, but I suspect they rely too much on test audiences, I contend, while a test screening is a good thing for determining a film’s playability, you cannot please all of the people all of the time, if you try, you make a film nobody likes. However, I’m sure with foreign sales they manage to break even, they invented the commercial indie film and were great at turning small flicks into hits at Miramax - an example is Chasing Amy, it cost 250,000, it made 12 million dollars.
There are some indies still in the game - Sony Classics still stays true to its core, stretching once in a while to a wide release that some how doesn’t seem to work quite as well. They also, I think, botched the release of Atom Egoyan’s masterpiece Adoration which should have been given a slow build and then bam - a big 400-print release. Egoyan has never had a cross-over hit despite churning out masterpieces time and again. I just re-watched The Sweet Hereafter and it still is a powerful and amazing film. The Weisntein’s I think gave Egoyan his greatest box office success with Exotica, the title is an easy sell, so much so it ended up in the “mature” section of my local video store once along with soft core sex titles that weren’t raunchy enough for the back room. It is anything but that.
Oscilloscope is probably the most exciting new company around, run by a Adam Yaunch of the Beastie Boys is releasing some groundbreaking titles, I think the fact most of their films have recently debuted at the Film Forum proves their artistic success. They don’t have the money to go crazy and make Treeless Mountain the family film hit that say a Sony Classics might have tried to do, but they know their audience. They opened Treeless Mountain simultaneously at the Film Forum and at an AMC Theater in a Korean neighborhood in New Jersey.
The other announcement that spawned this rant is the launch of DF Indie Studios, run and advised by several indie film figures. It seems like a hedge fund approach to creating 8-Million Dollar studio films. Not all will be Little Miss Sunshine or Sunshine Cleaning, but the hope is they can be. In that range you can attract stars, it’s a lot of money, hell it could do Informers’ numbers if it’s not well reviewed or the studio botches the release.
Informers, of coarse is a complex case of having a film that should be driven by positive reviews and word of mouth be, simply unwatchable. It wouldn’t do well in New York and LA because they’re review driven cities, they would never stand a chance to expand to 300 screens if they failed in New York and LA, but who knows maybe they were contractually obligated to do a release of that size.
I will take a wait and see approach of DF Indie Studios. I wish they’d make films for under a million dollars, like In/Dig/Ent set out to do years ago before giving up. Is indie film a profitable business to be in. I’d like to think if it was more studios would do it. Sure we now have major studio films with the swagger of indie
The game has changed so much. Tonight I saw Downloading Nancy, a film that a few years ago might have come out under the Miramax banner - now it’s being released in theaters by tiny Strand Releasing and on demand by IFC Films. Video on demand seems like the future, it’s a good way of getting small films out there to places where they wouldn’t play, but I like the idea of “Indie Film Night” more, use those digital projectors for the reason they were intended - bringing in new, exciting and diverse content to a theater on a night when people would rather stay home on the couch with their snuggy. If it’s poorly attended then you’ve only given up one showtime on an unpopular night in a small auditorium.
This won’t save indie film. Indie film ranges from garage band filmmakers to fully funded $20 million dollar films - some more risky than those garage band films. Defining what is undefinable won’t save it either. Start up firms come and go, none really last - hell even Lionsgate is on the verge of being taken over, and they took over Artisan, the firm that was considered so brilliant a few years ago when they released the massive hit The Blair Witch Project. Summit may have its rough patches, Oscilloscope I think will stick around and not fall into the traps of the small upstarts like Think Film, which ventured into larger releases and budgets.
The way I see these two upstarts is this: Oscilloscope is like Strand Releasing in terms of the scope of their releases, they pick up films based on their artistic merit, in a way they have picked up where New Yorker Films left off after being sold to another company with grand indie ambitions - Madstone.
Madstone proposed running theaters, converting low performing sites abandoned by General Cinema, Mann, and other chains to high end art theaters. It didn’t go so well and the theaters lasted only a few years, after all some markets cannot sustain an art house with several screens. Sadly Norther New Jersey (i.e. Montclair) streamlined years ago - the town had 3 theaters, combined with 11 screens of art films, we’re now down to 6 at the Clairidge.
Perhaps indie is as meaningless and as broad as “IMAX” has become. I hate to see it as a brand in the way that I hate that people say they like “indie films because they are different”. I really hate hearing people say that on an elevator ride up to the car in the Montclair parking garage. New York City of coarse is the greatest city for film lovers - where else will a Turkish art film sell out at 9:40 on a Tuesday night at the Film Forum? Not in Ann Arbor.
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