Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Steve Martin, the Duplass Brothers, and who says what's good!










I remember watching Steve Martin on Charlie Rose sometime last year promoting his autobiography. Right away, I was on the same page w/ him as he mentioned he enjoyed reading biographies but was always frustrated that important details would be glossed over. Say, in the case of an entertainer, it would be mentioned about some huge break or opportunity but never the details of how said "big break" came about. This has always been my beef w/ these such endeavors and I'm w/ Martin 100%. It's almost as if these folks want us to believe they were struck w/ lightning on Mt. Zeus and came as fully formed demi gods!

Martin went on to say he's frequently asked the question, "What's the best way to make it in the entertainment business?" He explains his answer is always the same, however none too popular. He speculates people want to hear, 'it's about getting the right agent' or 'networking and knowing the right people,' etc. His response is, "you have to be so good, you simply can not be denied!" This is so obvious in way, but it's a statement that really packs a punch...

Along these lines, filmmaker Mark Duplass was recently on David Branin and Karen Worden's show Film Courage, listen here http://filmcourage.podbean.com/2009/10/19/filmmaker-mark-duplass-on-la-talk-radios-film-courage/. Again Duplass makes a statement very similar to Steve Martin's, "Filmmakers should put all their time and energy into making good films!" He goes on to state in his theory that there is such a lack of really quality material, especially on the festival circuit that, "you can leave you film in a drawer and eventually someone will find it". Duplass continues to say that many big festival programmers he's spoken with over the years say they have trouble filling their 60 slots w/ really good short films. He goes on to say that many folks create these labyrinthine conspiracy theories about how you have to "know someone" to get into a major festival like Sundance. In his words, it's just an excuse to massage the battered egos of filmmakers whose films weren't good enough to make the cut and hence rejected from said festivals. Obviously, Mark Duplass and Steve Martin are on to something. Make sure you're damn good before you start shouting from the rooftops! But, there is a slight caveat here and that is: Who says what is and isn't good?


In the case of Steve Martin, there's no question he is and has been a huge talent for decades. His first film The Jerk was a huge, bona fide hit as well as being LOL, piss in your pants funny! But what about pre-jerk Steve Martin? The dorky guy who'd come on SNL in the '70's w/ the banjo and stupid looking rabbit ears? I've gone back and watched some of that stuff on youtube 'cause I was too young to see it live. Piss in your pants funny? Not so much, at least not to me. And what if a guy just like me was casting or directing The Jerk? Ya know, Martin's okay but I much prefer Danny Ackroyd or Bill Murray for that part... Would Steve Martin still ending up being a star? Probably, if not the Jerk, then another chance would've come.

Now, what about the Duplass Brothers? As Mark makes clear their film This is John (about a hapless fella played by Mark who has almost a personal crisis leaving an outgoing message on his answering machine,) getting into 2004's Sundance film festival absolutely made their careers. I've seen the film a few times on the DVD of their first feature, The Puffy Chair. It's funny, my girlfriend laughed out loud a few times at Mark's antics, I liked it... at about 4 minutes... the problem is the film's 8 minutes, and the joke starts to get a bit stale. Mark D so much as said the film was poorly shot, poorly lit, and sound was very dicey. I'll throw in I thought the film would have been much better shorter. Not exactly so good it can't be denied. Another short on the DVD, Scrapple, I think is a much, much better film. Brilliant performances by the two leads, funny, poignant, and real. What about the feature film itself, The Puffy Chair? In the Film Courage interview Mark Duplass said repeatedly that distributors, "loved" the film but didn't know how to market it. The film had a DIY theatrical release and DVD was through Red Envelope and Village Roadshow. Every time I heard people "loved" the film I had to cringe a bit. It took me three times to get through the film, and then eventually w/ the FF working through a big chunk of it. Mark Duplass is a funny, charismatic guy, but like nothing happens in this film for close to 40 minutes. We spend a good chunk of the film staring at a guy with short buzz cut and long beard, who's staring at a nature show about a Salamander or lizard of some sort. I'm sorry but a bunch of people sitting around blowing bong hits talking about "life" unfiltered through any artistic precision makes for a difficult viewing experience. As a matter of fact, some 10 years prior this was the punch line for the type of crappy film that was flooding Sundance in the mid 90's... A decade later this type of film would be at the forefront of the whole 'mumble core' movement. Bottom line: The Puffy Chair and it's ilk are hardly the kind of films that are so good they can't be denied.

Furthermore, in my view Alex Holdridge's In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Ben Cocio's Zero Day, and Unica's Blue in Green are much, MUCH better examples of the minimalist, character based material that folks like the Duplass Brothers and Joe Swanberg have vomited up over the years. (Sorry, Matt Dentler!) I'm willing to bet any amount of money that if the Duplass' put their DVD in a drawer and someone found it years later the reaction more likely would be 'oh, some guys just messing around w/ their camcorder' than 'oh my, I better rush this over to the Sundance, AFI, and MoMA!' As far as I'm concerned, an Oscar winning screenwriter from years ago said it best, "nobody knows anything" in this business. How true!














Friday, October 16, 2009

Where's that confounded audience part 2!!!








This is a follow up to my post on finding your (confounded) audience. So, I suggest you read this first http://thenightstalkintippytoe.blogspot.com/2009/10/wheres-that-confounded-audience.html before delving into this. I made reference to the fact that I'd always been suspicious of the whole DIY model because invariably every success story I was aware of had a huge leg up from traditional media sources... that is until I heard about the success of INK. Now, I will amend that a bit because there have been some successful DIY cases before INK such as Lance Weiler's The Last Broadcast, which was made and distributed entirely in the digital realm and supposedly has grossed 4 million. As well as Four Eyed Monsters by Arin Crumley and Susan Buice which made use of video podcasts and sophisticated online marketing techniques to drive their film to financial success. You can get details on how they did it here
http://powertothepixel.com/news/arin-crumley-susan-buice-at-power-to-the-pixel-in-london

Now, the reason I can relate to INK, is because it follows a more traditional model. (I was also a huge fan of Alex Holdridge's In Search of A Midnight Kiss, which I thought was a much better film than all those mentioned thus far. However, because it was released by IFC Films and got an Ex Lax release it didn't catch fire like some of these other films did.) Crumley and Buice were essentially able to build and cultivate an audience thru their video pod casts in 2005. Weiler now refers to himself as a "story architect" and was and is able to incorporate audience interaction in his work, much like the 4 Eyed crew did w/ the podcasts. At one point one of the fans who'd shown up at a screening of 4 Eyed literally said, "it doesn't matter how the film is because I'm so invested in these two from the podcasts." The film literally takes a back seat to the shill!!! This is somewhat troublesome to me, but on the other hand, what's the alternative?

I suppose we need to go backwards a few decades. In the early to mid 80's when the whole video revolution really started to take off, there was such a demand for product that some amateurish producers were making a nice living off their back yard epics. As the story goes if you had a slasher flick, tits and tires, and/or combo of all the above that was of even a modicum of quality you were able to put a down payment on a house! By the time I got into the film game in the mid 90's the market had matured quite a bit, but some SOV (shot on video) films were still doing well. But, primarily it was all about the Indie lottery sweepstakes: make a scrappy Indie, get into a quality festival, sell said film to distributor, get an agent, start writing scripts and making films for the big boys... You know the films and filmmakers: El Mariachi, Clerks, Slacker, Laws of Gravity, Following, etc. etc. Despite what any filmmaker would tell you about the "indie lifestyle" and the passion etc. the fact is everyone was shooting for this goal. And in accordance, there was an explosion of films and filmmakers wanting to get in on the action. And in response to that you had a plethora of film festivals sprouting up all over the country to accommodate all these budding filmmakers.

By the time we get to this current decade, and all that hedge fund money sloshing around wall street starting to fund Indiewood, and all the XL1 and Panasonic dvx 100's flying off the shelves, and the wanna be Coppola's, and all the film festivals you get the pretty clear picture there's a major glut of product. A MAJOR GLUT OF FILMS AND FILMMAKERS! Of course, a lot of quality films have made it through the festival/indie distributor pipeline, but more and more quality films were getting shut out of the party. Or, even worse, if you had a quality film that got into a top notch festival, because of the glut of films, the distrib's can afford to make paltry offers. Filmmakers were and are being forced to take the bend over deal. My friend Jonas Ball's (he played Mark Chapman, Andrew Piddington directed) film The Killing of John Lennon being a prime example. The film was made for about 1 million, took several years to shoot, 10x better than the Jared Leto crapfest Chapter 27, but got a weak deal from IFC Films, lousy one week in LA and NYC, on to ppv, vod, dvd, etc. etc. Doubtful the filmmakers will see a dime! And it's a very common story. In my own case, my film The Real Casino http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000R900PO/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used has gone similar travails in the distribution game. After airing on IFC/Bravo, PBS, and a bunch of festivals I signed a couple different deals. One w/ a really lousy rinky dink outfit called Sub Rosa Studios or SRS Cinema. They specialize in cheesy horror titles and although they did a great job w/ the DVD cover art, have yet to see a dime in close to 10 years. The other deal w/ a company called Hypnotic /Wellspring media which was an online division of Universal and turned out very nicely as they sold the film consistently to overseas outlets. Then they sold their library to Shorts International which has been a complete fiasco. I did get a small advance when they re-upped my deal a year and half ago, but I'm still waiting to go on itunes after 18 months and have yet to get a sales report! Not an unusual story.

This leads us back to importance and power of DIY distribution, which just a decade ago felt like a desperation move that signaled your film just wasn't good enough to be picked up by the big boys! Now, it's become almost a necessity. And my main beef w/ the whole DIY is it invariably involves a whole lot of gimmickry that starts to subsume the film itself. Many times it involves the idea of interactivity and approaching the medium as a video game of sorts. Bring the audience in to enhance their experience. If you don't like the scene where Tommy D (Joe Pesci) in GoodFellas get whacked, change it! How 'bout when Charles Foster Kane won't back down to Boss Jim Gettys, just click another option see how it changes the film. I think you get the drift. The fact is all this stuff starts to take us away from the main objective of the Indie filmmaker: to make quality films that you can't just go see at your local multiplex. Of course, we have to find new and innovative ways to connect w/ our audience, but first we have to create something worth seeing!

Having said all this I intend on adding some new scenes to my doc Warriors of the Discotheque: The Starck Club Documentary. First I'm going to put the scenes on http://www.youtube.com/user/jfa42 and let my audience vote for which ones they want. Gotta get w/ the times. Of course I still plan to put in the scenes I think are best.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Where's that confounded audience?











Remember the Led Zeppelin song The Crunge from Houses of the Holy where Bonham whispers at the end of the song, "where's that confounded bridge?" I've been reading quite a bit over the years about how vital it is for Indie filmmakers to find, create, bolster, and maintain an audience for their films (Do It Yourself- DIY)! It's obvious on a certain level, but for years and years I thought this was a lot of bunk!!!

Many folks like to point to The Blair Witch Project as an example of homegrown, DIY marketing to help create a mega hit. Of course, there was a lot more to the story. TBWP got it's start as a series of 10 min. segments on IFC, not exactly cable access. The first segment aired on John Pierson's show Split Screen in 1997 on the 10th episode and included the set up of the phony history of the witch in Maryland, the lost footage from the missing film student's, etc. This was a cliff hanger episode, which lead in to the next season, starting w/ episode 11 in Spring of 1998 which included snippets of the "found footage". I watched that episode and the whole season because I directed a segment for said show entitled The Real Casino which appeared on episode 18 of the same season. Anyhow, I was impressed with eeriness of the 'found footage' which ended up becoming the backbone of the feature film. Almost a full 7 months before the film got into Sundance, or had a website, fans were bombarding the http://www.grainypictures.com/ website message board w/ millions of hits. Of course, the film got in to the little festival called Sundance, (John Pierson was on the board at Sundance) and then got picked up by Artisan and the rest is history...

Once someone examines this history it starts to become clear why this isn't exactly DIY marketing. When you first hit the light of day on a cable network that was a subsidiary at the time of GE/NBC and get into a major festival it starts to look a whole lot more like traditional use of media, but dressed up as something brand new and cheery. And the fact of the matter is no matter how many examples people trot out about how the 'net is gonna be the great equalizer, how people are gonna be able to sprout up out of Peoria, and all points beyond, to market their film to the audience and create the next Blair Witch. The fact is when you investigate further you see the use of traditional media, and huge corporations always seem to be in the mix. One need not look any further than the new Paranormal Activity to see the fingers of traditional media creating a hit. No matter how hard some may try, the fact is you really need the big boys and traditional media to help foster a huge hit. I believed that because from empirical evidence it was true. Sure, there were films like The Last Broadcast or the whole mumble core movement, but the fact is those films didn't make a dent in the mainstream consciousness.

However, ten years after TBWP one film has begun to change my mind... A little film from Denver, CO called INK!!! http://www.doubleedgefilms.com/ Here's a film that did get into a quality fest, The Santa Barbara Int. Film Fest, but rather than ride the fest circuit forever and hope for a decent distribution offer, the filmmakers took the bull by the horns and actually used DIY to create and foster an audience! Rather than sit here and explain everything they did, it'd be easier to go here and read for yourself... http://doubleedgefilms.blogspot.com/ I can give a basic brush stroke look at it. The filmmakers were very wise in creating some buzz at a major festival first, then coming back for some home cooking and building an audience in their home town of Denver. They organized a theatrical run that lasted something ridiculous like 20 straight weeks, WOW!!! Then they used that success to slowly invade LA, first at the Egyptian theatre, then at Holly Shorts festival at Laemmle Sunset 5, where yours truly's film Warriors of the Discotheque: The Starck Club Documentary www.createspace.com/273024 screened earlier that day. Then after a few successful solo screenings they secured a one week run... Again w/o a distrib. w/o a huge pr firm, w/o major media! This has truly been DIY!
This is the first film I've come across that's made me truly believe that we don't need the big boys to actually get our work out there and be seen. But, not only be seen, hell I can put my work on youtube for that. It may be possible to even make a living selling our work to that audience we found, created, and fostered over time....
Btw, you can help bolster me up here www.createspace.com/273024