A hard time to be an indie
As a counterpoint to the utopian bliss of the Sundance Filmmakers Lab, I’ll direct your attention a speech given by James D. Stern last week on the present and future of independent film.
In my post-mortem on The Nines, I wrote that the business model of selling your indie at Sundance for theatrical release was largely mythology. The numbers are stacked against you, and have only gotten worse.
According to Stern:
An astonishing 9,293 films were submitted to Sundance last year. Of those nearly 10,000, only 218 were screened. Of the lucky handful to get bought, so far only three have been released theatrically.
From January through May 2008 … the number of indies that grossed over $1 million dollars went from 16 to six. Less than half.
Fewer indies are making it to the big screen, and fewer of those movies are earning money. And video isn’t the savior it once was. DVD and TV deals are smaller, when you can even get them.
Stern acknowledges that changes in the distribution system — particularly the rise of streaming video — may help out in the next few years. Right now, Netflix is like an infinite video store, but once it becomes possible to monetize each viewing of a movie, there’s suddenly value to being one of its 10,000 movies.
Provided they actually pay us for our content in appropriate ways, these are the once and future friends of independent film.
But to his credit, Stern won’t let filmmakers themselves off the hook. In mythologizing the struggling writer/director auteur, we’ve created a genre of movies that are built to fail. Quoting Patrick Goldstein from the LA Times, Stern notes:
“The real problem with the indie business isn’t quality, but discipline. We have a generation of filmmakers who feel entitled to make personal films… and a generation of executives who’ve been willing to essentially use specialty films as a loss-leader to launch their division or win awards. If people in the indie world want to start making money again, they have to start treating their investment like a truly precious natural resource, not like Monopoly money. Discipline is not antithetical to art.”
That’s an idea I’ve been trying to reconcile while up here at the labs.
My friend Howard Rodman often says, “The point of studio development is to take a script only you could have written and turn it into something anyone could have written.” I’m keenly aware that our goal as writers and advisors is to make projects more unique and specific.
Yet the fact that we can say a script “feels like a Sundance movie” belies this intent. It’s shorthand for challenging, quirky, maddening and (if we’re being honest) non-commercial. We want these movies to exist. But we need to be honest about their prospects.
Stern argues that filmmakers need to keep their audience in mind from a project’s initial conception — even if that audience isn’t a typical mainstream audience.
I was blown away when I found out that the #32 film on the all-time documentary box-office list is a little 2005 film I’d never heard of, called “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.” (It’s about wild parrots living on Telegraph Hill, by the way.) Can you imagine how tiny the market sliver is of people willing to take a night out to go see this peculiar-sounding film?
Well, the filmmaker did imagine them. Rather thoughtfully, in fact. And then proceeded to use viral marketing to rally those people into the theater, by making the film an event for every bird-lover on God’s green Earth.
Audubon Society members. Bird-watching clubs. Breeders. Veterinarians. Humane Societies. Feather-fancier magazine subscribers. There are a lot of people out there who really love birds. And I think every last one of them went to this movie.
Every filmmaker would like her movie to break out of its niche and gain wider exposure and acceptance. But Stern’s point is apt: figure out your base, and develop a marketing plan that succeeds even if it never goes beyond that. If this sounds more like planning a small business than planning a movie, that’s sort of the point.
I wouldn’t make another indie the way I did The Nines. I’d figure out how I was going to make money before figuring out how to get money.
There is more to Stern’s speech, which is certainly worth a read.
Articles
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Great advice. I’ve sat through a number of end of the year student film screenings wondering ‘who is this for? I was chastised for making short films that seemed too ‘Hollywood’ but I thought – I want an audience. I don’t think you have to give up your personal poetics to tell an involving and accessible story.
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I couldn’t agree more. It’s important to think your script through from a sales and marketing perspective even before you start writing it. The Parrot movie is an excellent example. I recently sold a script that takes place in the world of boat sales and the producers are doing something similar trying to reach out to boat shows and boat enthusiasts to build some word of mouth. We’ve had little luck with festivals and distributors but within the boating community we seem to be getting quite a nice response.
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
With all due respect to Howard Rodman (and respect is due), I think it’s time to stop seeing such a gulf between the studios and indie film, despite the real creative challenges and conflicts that can arise in the development process. There is something value that we can learn from the studios, which is what it means to be responsible to the profit margin — something that is always a greater concern for those putting up the money (which, in the end, is the ultimate risk) than to those who use that money to create work of creative value. The conflict between art and commerce exists because film is expensive, because the audience for films that are less formulaic appears to be shrinking (or they’re harder to reach, or who knows), because the days of platforming a film are largely over, because marketing indie film is hard and requires a genius that, at the end of the day, is rare (the Weinstein’s nailed it in their Miramax days), because now even indie movies need movie stars (something Kimberly Pierce recently spoke about when she talked about the unique conditions that made “Boys Don’t Cry” possible), etc, etc.
When indie films sold at Sundance it was because they also sold at the box office. Now that that is for the most part not the case, all bets are off. And, frankly, in this market, even trying to make more serious commercial films is an uphill battle. A very successful writer/director recently mentioned that the studios have told Steve Zallian “no more dramas, and he wrote Schindler’s Freakin’ List.” But let’s be really, getting Schindler’s List made wasn’t easy, and it had Steven Freakin’ Spilberg at the helm. So often it takes magic to get a movie made. Like the magic of Sean Penn signing on to Milk, and Josh Brolin’s star breaking at just the right time so that they could get the movie made with him in it instead of Matt Damon, and all the planets aligning so that an unlikely film could come to the fore.
As frustrating as it is, we all profit from facing reality and figuring it out. Is it optimal that things are as they currently are? Not if you care deeply about story for its own sake, but nonetheless, it is so. It’ll be interesting to see what strategies we all devise to tell the stories that matter to us in a difficult time. I look forward to seeing the kind of genius creativity that emerges from that.
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:48 pm
There’s nothing more frustrating than writing a complete script, having it actually come together in a way that met or even exceeded your expectations (such a rare outcome!) and then find… the premise was flawed from the beginning. There’s no money for a movie like this, because their is deemed to be no audience for it.
But what can you do? It’s hard enough to successfully tell a story in this format. Once you hit on something that can actually work as a movie, it’s hard not to pursue it and worry about the marketplace later (especially with those projects that are on the bubble of being commercially viable).
Of course, there’s just something fundamentally absurd about the system–I mean imagine designing a roller-coaster on your own at home, having it come together to perfection, and THEN having to go out and sell it to theme parks. People would call you insane for trying. And yet that’s what most of us on here are doing.
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
All right – it certainly seems to be a “new media tuesday” with yours being the third blog post I’ve read today regarding the topic.
The first was this : http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/575 – a talk by Clay Shirky that’s worth its weight in gold when the thinking is applied to indie entertainment.
The second was this:
http://mikeking.berkleemusicblogs.com/2009/06/23/how-an-indie-musician-can-make-19000-in-10-hours-using-twitter/
I love Patrick Goldstein’s quote above. It’s sharp and true and the very reason I loathe government grants for film projects. When you’re given a grant it’ has the feeling of being a “write off ” for the government. And if you’re not expected to pay it back then you really don’t have an incentive to work that hard do you? For too long, too many films and too many filmmakers received (too much) money for films with no business plan other than to be “award bait.”
In today’s world it’s possible to make an interesting, entertaining film of value for less than $10K (it’s been done). But with the tools outlined in the two links above there’s the real possibility of the filmmaker making money ON THEIR OWN without ever seeing a traditional distributor enter the picture (pun intended).
We don’t need another Atom Egoyan (sorry Atom)in new media – we NEED a FRIKKIN’ ROGER CORMAN. Someone who will go out there and make movies that make money and show others how to do it. Entertaining, populist movies (or web serials, or what have you) that sell themselves, the filmmakers, the brand and the t-shirt (to borrow from Amanda above).
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:48 pm
I think what Bill Cunningham said is exactly what has been wrong with the Canadian film industry for so long. This attitude that `I don’t care what other people think of my movie’. Sure, Canada has Atom Egoyan, but most people don’t want to see an Atom Egoyan film. I’ve seen more than half his movies and I don’t want to see any more. You can’t make movies for 1% of the population and then complain that no one is seeing your movie.
Oh, and I saw The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill at one of my local movie theatres in a packed house. It was packed because it was getting excellent reviews. I am surprised that James Stern hadn’t heard of it.
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Isn’t “non-commercial indie” an oxymoron. Movies that fall into the category of “feels like a Sundance movie” are their own market, aren’t they? What else would you call Away We Go or Juno? That’s part of how they’re marketed. It’s part of their appeal. I find it hard to believe that the indieness of a film is its problem.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:07 pm
“Yet the fact that we can say a script “feels like a Sundance movie” belies this intent. It’s shorthand for challenging, quirky, maddening and (if we’re being honest) non-commercial.”
Quirky, yes. Challenging, not really. Sundance movies tend to be bland and safe, (with the occasional exception, like the genius PRIMER). Challenging is more of a Cannes thing.
Anyway, the anti-art house slant here is getting nasty. If we can’t make space for uncompromising, chalenging films, I’m not sure why anyone seriously interested in cinema would want to bother with the rest. If the future means less EXOTICA andTHE SWEET HEREAFTER, and more JUNO and LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, then it is a very bleak future.
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:55 pm
“It’s shorthand for challenging, quirky, maddening and (if we’re being honest) non-commercial. We want these movies to exist. But we need to be honest about their prospects.”
Or maybe we need people with better instincts for what the public will enjoy.
I’ve always wondered why the movie Lars and the Real Girl wasn’t released more widely. I only read rave reviews about it and everyone I know who saw it loved it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. They didn’t even release it widely enough to make a profit, the dumbasses.
Here are the numbers:
The movie had a $12,000,000 budget. According to boxofficemojo.com, it made $90,418 opening weekend in 7 theaters for a $12,916 average per theater.
The Proposal opened this past weekend in 3056 theaters and grossed $33,627,598 for an average of $11,004 per theater.
At 5 weeks, Lars and the Real Girl averaged $2,456 per theater after the number of theaters was reduced from its peak the week before.
The latest Night at the Museum, just averaged $2,636 this week, its 5th.
It looks to me like decent marketing in various markets, in conjunction with a much wider release, could have made this movie – and everyone involved with it – a LOT more money. Can you explain why it would not have made sense to release it into more than 321 theaters during its entire run? Other than thinking that challenging, quirky and maddening = noncommercial, I mean?
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:07 pm
spoon -
i’ve been a longtime reader of this blog and the anti-art slant has always been rather pronounced. and i say this as someone as whose favorite film last year was the dark knight. and even though i love “tentpole” films like tdk, i also love cassavetes and jarmusch and haynes and mann and jodorowsky. i’m 28 and almost all of my friends want intelligent, well-crafted movies, irrespective of genre. sure, there are people who just want to be “entertained,” but most of the people i know enjoy coming out of a film wrestling w/ it, grappling w/ it, discussing it, arguing over it. yes, there’s a place for mindless entertainment, but not every movie needs to be that–there are PLENTY of movies like that already.
i can’t help but think that the real subtext to all of the corporate-speak on this blog is really a sort of thinly-veiled philistinism of “art crap is boring, bring on teh transformers 2 lol.” i used to have a girlfriend from nyc and when i lived w/ her in the city we would sometimes hang out w/ a few of her acquaintances, law students and business students who had absolute contempt for any and everything “arty.” if it didn’t make money, it was beneath contempt. no results, no quarter. i can’t help but sniff out the same stale aroma around this blog. and listen, i have little love and patience for the “mumblecore”/amerindie/IFC crowd and the dreadfully tedious “art” films they champion. grabbing a camera and pointing it at your pasty friends humping on the couch is not art–it’s solipsism. there’s no craft or skill or talent in anything this lot’s ever churned out. but, i will say that it’s interesting that several of the key figures in this movement are moving on to bigger things (e.g., greta gerwig, mark duplass). also, time and time again has shown that it always takes an “indie” or non-mainstream filmmaker to resurrect a “non-bankable” actor’s stalled-out career (tarantino w/ john travolta, aronofsky w/ rourke, etc). oh, and the handheld thing you see everywhere now? yeah, 100% john cassavetes.
but now that i’ve lobbed a bunch of turds, allow me to say something unreservedly positive about this blog: it’s been a perfect example of everything i never, ever want to become.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:30 am
I worked in the mainstream videogame industry and I was surprised (and frustrated) with how market-focused the project was. Now that I’m dipping a toe in indie game development I’m seeing a lot of parallels here. Oversaturated market, products with a demographic of one, and lots of gatekeepers standing (or attempting to stand) between the creator and the audience.
The way indie developers seems to make money these days is by doing a digital end-run around the traditional publisher/distributor hierarchy and taking it straight to the web. I see what Whedon and crew did with Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog as being the film version of that model.
Even with Whedon’s brand recognition, I think a lot of the success of that project came from how laser beam focused it was on its audience, both in form and marketing. The takeaway I get from all this is you should identify and quantify your target market, if only to adjust your expectations for success. If you (and your budget) are ok with an audience of twelve, go ahead with that vanity or artsy project.
Important note: I’m not saying don’t make those projects, but having a grasp on their potential from the beginning helps with establishing a realistic scale for the production of the project. If that helps the project stay in the black (or at least an acceptable shade of red), then it greatly increases the chances of there being a second project. PRIMER especially felt like it had a very consciously-restrained scope and I think it was better off for it.
June 24th, 2009 at 2:26 am
What’s the best way to go about identifying your audience?
June 24th, 2009 at 6:12 am
John,
The numbers are a little skewed. I believe there were 3,661 feature films submitted to Sundance and 9,293 shorts and features. I think everyone is talking about features and not shorts as I can’t remember the last time in the past thirty years a short received theatrical distribution.
Back to the discussion. Is it possible to clarify market? Does JUNO and LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE have a specific market? What about NAPOLEON DYNAMITE? Or CHUCK AND BUCK? Yes, I’m sure if someone made a film about knitting then the knitting community would watch it first. But does this mean we have to start making films about hobbies?
June 24th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Interesting. John, I see you’re going to be participating at the ‘Writers of Genre Series’ on July 22nd. Sounds like it’s gonna be fun! Wish I could make it.
June 24th, 2009 at 7:31 am
great advice!!!
June 24th, 2009 at 7:45 am
“Anyway, the anti-art house slant here is getting nasty. If we can’t make space for uncompromising, chalenging films, I’m not sure why anyone seriously interested in cinema would want to bother with the rest.”
Funny that this article would pop up today. Check out: http://www.moviemuser.co.uk/Article/Default.aspx?ArticleID=356
Basically, “bothering with the rest” involves a lot of time and a lot of money, and the writer of the linked article makes a solid point. I enjoy artsy-movies as much as the next filmophile, but going out to find them is alot of effort, and that’s even if you know they exist.
As far as I’m concerned, film is film is film, whether it’s a blockbuster, Oscar-contender, indie film, or youtube short. I doubt, Spoon, that you’ve the time or finances to go see every indie film out there, and even if you did, you’d have to ask yourself how prevalent such passion is among people in general, including film-enthusiasts. The truth is that it isn’t, and I think Mr. August and Mr. Stern are just being very, very realistic.
Making “art” for “art” sake is fine and respectable, but what is art if not appreciated? And to be appreciated, people need to see it. Paintings require a glance; books, several self-set sittings; but movies require funds and 2-3 hours blocks of time. It’s just very difficult, and filmmakers, indie or otherwise, need to consider making the approach to that easier.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:18 am
“i’m 28 and almost all of my friends want intelligent, well-crafted movies, irrespective of genre. sure, there are people who just want to be “entertained,” but most of the people i know enjoy coming out of a film wrestling w/ it, grappling w/ it, discussing it, arguing over it. yes, there’s a place for mindless entertainment, but not every movie needs to be that–there are PLENTY of movies like that already.”
My sentiments exactly. As a new writer I want people to argue about certain movies. I try to allow people to see the movie they see, not the movie I see. It seems to work better with viewers than readers. I actually read the cscript for what became Hancock and it was truly a reader’s script. I can definitely see why they changed it. It was seriously depressing but I bet readers loved the cute slug lines though they had no bearing on the filming.
As far as Indie fare the problem is the “quirky, maddening” part. Every movie should touch the “current zeitgeist.” You can’t expect people to get used to CGI and action and fun to go to a solemn movie about some guy’s warts.
The indies that do well are the ones that offer mainstream fare. They don’t think of themselves as indies but as movies NOT made by a studio.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Aaron, while you and your friends may want intelligent, well crafted movies, you (unfortunately) don’t represent the movie going public. And you’re really going after James Stern for having a corporate bias? The guy who financed I’M NOT THERE and co-directed EVERY LITTLE STEP? Really? Maybe he’s someone you should pay a little closer attention to, because he actually understands the business side of things (and shares your interest in intelligent, well crafted movies).
No one on this site is determining a movie’s worth based on its box office receipts–but everyone in Hollywood is. And we, as aspiring or working screenwriters and filmmakers, need to find a new way to keep investors interested, because if you thought the past few years were ugly (in terms of quality), it’s going to get much worse before it gets better.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:19 am
I think that many of you are completely out of touch with what audiences want to see. Sure, you and your friends probably want to see uncompromising films from great directors that make you think. But that’s not commercial. Commercial is appealing to the hundreds of million people between New York and LA who aren’t cinefiles like the readers of this blog, the people who want to stuff their faces with overpriced food, forget their 40-hour workweek, and be entertained for 2-3 hours without having to think about a damn thing. When indie darlings sell out of Sundance and see a theatrical release, they’re generally light, airy movies with pretty music and cute faces (Little Miss Sunshine, Juno). When a director comes along and makes a movie that might challenge us cinefiles and alienate the hundreds of millions who aren’t, it better have a powerhouse director and actor so it can be nominated for an academy award, because otherwise it won’t get a greenlight, and it probably shouldn’t. If There Will Be Blood starred a no-name actor and was the director’s first feature, how many people would have seen it? Even under the exact same marketing campaign? Not enough to break even. And that’s why good indie cinema is dying. If you want to revive it, make a movie like BRICK, earn some money, impress the few people who see it, and use it to attract bigger talent for your next project. Indie cinema is dying due to a lack of storytelling proficiency. The 90s saw PT Anderson, Wes Anderson, Tarantino, Coens, Kevin Smith, Ed Burns, etc, etc make great indie films. Where are they now? Making studio pictures. Who is replacing hem on the indie scene? So far, nobody and don’t think for a second that’s down to marketing, the current distribution climate, or any other part of the studio system. It’s down to bad storytelling, haphazard material, and stale visions.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:40 am
I don’t think that anyone here is advocating that people shouldn’t make the sorts of movies they want to make. Just make the movie for the budget the audience for it will support.
It’s the old school AIP model, folks. Make the poster and the marketing for it and see if you have an audience and distributor response strong enough to justify the money you’re thinking of spending. If not, don’t.
There are too many filmmakers out there with the grossly mistaken notion that just because they’ve made their film that someone MUST distribute it in theaters across the country. No.
Audience first. Then movie.
This is going to play more and more into the indie film model as media is going to become more and more about providing a playground for the audience to interact within and less and less about broadcasting a single message from one source. [See the Clay Shirky video link above for clarification].
Lars and the Real Girl has NOWHERE NEAR the audience potential that The Proposal has. Proposal will flatten out a bit numbers wise while Lars will drop off the cliff…
But the kicker is Proposal will KILL on DVD, Cable and so forth. That’s why they keep it in theaters. It will provide a viable alternative to Transformers which has already opened to $16M as I write this.
Does this mean that Lars is a bad movie? No.
It simply means the audience size doesn’t justify the expenditures related to costly theatrical screenings. More people will see Lars on cable and DVD than they did in theaters… but again, NOWHERE NEAR the numbers that Proposal will do in those media categories. The distributor in both cases is simply going with their strengths and targeting the media that will bring about the best return on investment.
[And yes, this is how they think about these things. I sit in marketing meetings designing new strategies and key art looks because the distributor found the audience responses to certain aspects of the movie didn't play as well as they thought]
Think about the audience:
The audience is the one in control.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Art is universal. The problem with independent movies is by and large they’re just not that well made which is also the problem with studio projects. I think part of it is the economic reality of the situation where audiences want feel good happy stupid stories instead of darker more serious fair during troubling times but film is film and film is mass entertainment. If you’re trying to make a film that’s about the personal struggles of an emu farmer alone on the Australian outback as he deals with the personal demons of his abusive childhood then maybe you should write a novel or a short story or something where that kind of thing functions and not try and make a movie about it. Film is action. If you’re entire artistic philosophy is that action is overrated and pensive thought is what it’s all about then you probably shouldn’t be a filmmaker.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Epic you’re=your fail.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Aaron, Christian H, and the other defenders of indie -
I don’t think John August is at all saying that you shouldn’t make “intelligent, well-crafted” movies. He’s simply saying that your movie needs to have marketability if you expect it to be financed or released. To me, this blog has always been about making smart and well-written movies that the general public would want to see. You seem to be operating under the assumption that that’s an oxymoron. It’s not.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Thanks, all, for the kind mentions.
My own thought is that “independent cinema” is susceptible to many means, depending upon what one’s independent from. Not studio industrial cinema? Not mainstream narrative conventions? Not financed by anyone but the filmmaker?
When I think of American independent filmmakers like Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Barbara Hammer, Kenneth Anger, I think of people who made films because they had to–with no expectation of distribution. When I think of American indies like John Cassavetes, Oscar Micheaux, Russ Meyer, Robert Downey Sr., Jim Jarmusch, I think of filmmakers equally driven–but also wanting a real audience for their work.
After the success of Sex, Lies and The Crying Game–after the Miramaximazation of independent cinema, and the unleashing of the Cell-Phoned Agent on the Sundance Festival, the game changed. “Independent” became a genre, all-too-typically meaning the hapless hitman story, or the fucked-up romance. Films were made as calling cards. Indie cinema was the farm team. Make a film that’s small and interesting and you just might, if you were lucky, be hired to make a film that was neither.
Stern is right (and John is right to quote him approvingly) that if you’re toiling in the vineyards of independent cinema, you’d best be thinking if anyone really wants to drink that wine. And of the distributors. And of the ancillary markets. In short: have a business plan.
But I would also maintain that working for years on a film because you have to, and then sending it out into the world–a note in a bottle if you will–is an equally legitimate enterprise. I feel that way about Cassavetes’ Shadows. I feel that way about Putney Swope. And I feel that way about Art Clokey’s Gumby, the Movie.
June 24th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
“The real problem with the indie business isn’t quality, but discipline. We have a generation of filmmakers who feel entitled to make personal films… and a generation of executives who’ve been willing to essentially use specialty films as a loss-leader to launch their division or win awards. If people in the indie world want to start making money again, they have to start treating their investment like a truly precious natural resource, not like Monopoly money. Discipline is not antithetical to art.”
Honestly, I don’t know where to start with this very ridiculous comment. It’s business-heads with attitudes like this, who have essentially ruined the art of film. If studio execs are too dumb to actually think of creative ways to market non-paint-by-number films, they should hire people with some another strategy. Don’t blame the auteur and their ‘personal’ films. Annoying.
June 24th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I’m honestly shocked and disgusted by the populism here. “Non-commercial” means nothing except that it’s not easily marketed. There are plenty of talented filmmakers on the indie scene making great films, much better than those of Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino.
The only thing to learn here is that, despite articles that try to reconcile art and business, the two will always be in diametric opposition. Always. Money wants the majority of people, and the majority of people don’t want art. Democracy rarely produces the best candidates.
I will say, though, that even on the cinephile scene, competition is cutthroat. I haven’t been to a theater in ages. Why would I? Cinephiles don’t care about what country a film is made in or even what year. Much of the history of cinema is available on DVD at my fingertips. This radically increases the amount of competition for art film indies.
Why am I watching your film over Bela Tarr? Why am I watching your film over a number of other talented directors from any number of countries made in any year? Indies not only have to compete with “commercial” garbage, but also the canonized art films. It’s truly a terrifying world.
June 24th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
I agree that specialty / “personal” films do have a place, but the gist of what John (and Stern) is that you need to figure out what that place is, and target the audience that is in that place (and budget according to the size of that audience).
I don’t think that all smart, well-written films that the public hasn’t seen are obscure because the public didn’t want to see them. It’s because the filmmakers (in which I include the Producer, whose job explicitly includes this kind of analysis) and execs (including Marketing execs) couldn’t clearly enough identify the target audience, budget accordingly, and then figure out how to reach that audience once the film was finished. (Or it was just bad luck, based on factors beyond their control.)
Sometimes good films don’t find an audience not because there wasn’t one and it was “too personal” but because of these business concerns. “Cult classic” is the terminology used for this very phenomenon: films that indeed did have an audience, and after their initial box office run managed to actually find that audience.
What I think John is recommending is that Indie filmmakers take this process more under their own control, so they’re in the know and can make rational decisions about what size of budget to seek, and participate actively in how their film will be marketed. As an Indie, you don’t have the luxury of a big corporation to do all this for you — you need to take responsibility for more aspects of the filmmaking process than perhaps you’d like.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
I think this is more a function of economics & timing than it is a lack of demand for small, introspective films. We’ve effectively been in a recession for three years; during downturns, the studio system contracts and practices exclusivity with fewer, bigger films (think mid-’90s filmmaking), while the small players (mom and pops in traditional business models) are forced out of the game. During this period, innovators should be preparing for the upswing and finding new ways to beat the system, rather than practicing defeatism.
Americans are becoming no less existential, we’re just not in the mood to be reminded about how depressing life is. So we escape with comic book movies instead of films that provoke us to challenge our wealthier convictions.
But I do wholehaertedly agree with the mentality of thinking of your film as a small business, because it’s during the upswing that opportunity exists, and those who are ready for it will find success. Cycles, my friends, cycles.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Good Lord, this has become a street brawl. I find Cassavetes to be an amazing story-teller. I find his films to be quite absorbing and fulfilling. I don’t want a world where films like ‘A Woman Under The Influence’ don’t get made or can’t find an audience. These are necessary films but look at the work: it’s emotionally involving, not obtuse. That’s marketable no matter the budget or cast name.
Hitchcock managed to navigate the studio system – satisfy his artistic impulses and still make money for his distributor. I think there may be a mindset that if it made money – someone must have sold out artistically and the whole enterprise is branded ‘Hollywood’.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
I agree with Bill Cunningham re: making the movie for the budget the audience will support. That’s not anti-independent, by the way, it’s just good old fashioned strategic thinking.
Rebecca, to take a quick stab at your question about why Lars wasn’t released more widely… My fiance works in the exhibition business and one thing that I’ve learned from him is that exhibitors care about getting popcorn-buying arses into the seats, and the people who see Lars and the Real Girl don’t buy popcorn (which is where exhibitors make the bulk of their money). At the same time, studios want a big opening weekend because, if they can get that, they can turn a profit even if the business drops off after that. Plus, they get a better split of the profits the first two weekends, so they have every reason to favor movies that open big. Lars didn’t, and couldn’t have no matter how many theatres it was in. It’s just a small little movie. Doesn’t mean it’s lacking in value, but it does mean that it doesn’t make sense for it to cost a lot.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
“…the people who see Lars and the Real Girl don’t buy popcorn”?
I don’t get that. We bought popcorn when we went to see it. And I still don’t get the reason why it wasn’t promoted and released more widely. How exactly are sleepers determined? By their opening weekends, among other things?
There’s no way the movie could have opened any bigger than it did, it was only showing in 7 theaters! My point is that it matched the average per theater, in weeks 1 through 5, of major blockbusters. I’m not saying that it would necessarily match those blockbusters over the entire life of the film. I’m saying that if it had been marketed in more areas the way it was in the areas it was showing, it probably would have made a LOT more money. And if it had been released more widely, more people would have seen it and it would have made a LOT more money in the aftermarkets, as well.
Look at how well The Hangover is doing. I saw it and loved it, but Ryan Gosling was MUCH better known than freaking Bradley Cooper is now, and how many theatergoers knew anything about the other two in that movie? Plus, the trailer for Lars was much better than The Hangover.
Sorry, I still don’t see it. A movie that manages to fill as many seats in the theaters where it’s available to watch as blockbusters with big names, budgets and marketing campaigns do in their theaters for more than FIVE weeks deserved much more than a release that peaked at 321 theaters.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:05 am
“I don’t think John August is at all saying that you shouldn’t make “intelligent, well-crafted” movies. He’s simply saying that your movie needs to have marketability if you expect it to be financed or released. To me, this blog has always been about making smart and well-written movies that the general public would want to see. You seem to be operating under the assumption that that’s an oxymoron. It’s not.”
Isn’t that what I said? Don’t make a movie about someone’s warts.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
@ Rebecca,
They don’t buy it in the volumes that are profitable for the theatres. It’s the blockbuster audiences that account for the majority of the concession sales, both because those audiences are larger in sheer numbers and because they buy more concessions per capita.
Seven theatres is a small number, but it’s not unusual for a film like that. It used to be that a film like that would platform, meaning that it would open in, say 7 theatres, and then build from there as word of mouth built. Platforming a film is getting harder. The studios generally don’t do it, and there are fewer and fewer platform distributors, something I recently heard from Nathan Kahane, the producer/financier behind Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, which would have benefitted from a proper platform release (which it did not get). Kahane was also behind Juno, by the way.
Not to belabor the point, but The Hangover was inherently marketable to a mass audience in a way that Lars and the Real Girl aren’t. That’s why it got a broader release.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Rebecca: part of the way these things are determined is related to audience test scores too. But I do think you have a point — certain movies that may have broken out never get a chance because studio execs have zero imagination. Slumdog is the exception that proves the rule (am I using that phrase properly?). There’s a movie that very nearly went straight to DVD. And if it had, people would’ve laughed in your face if you tried to tell them they’d made a huge mistake, that it would’ve made $100 mill if they’d released it properly. So while the business model makes SOME sense most of the time, the arrogance behind it is always unfounded.
June 25th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Rebecca, I too loved LARS and, like you, bemoaned its lack of audience.
But let’s be honest here; the story of LARS isn’t exactly mass-market: A man falls in love with his inflatable doll.
Yes, critics loved it and MGM, which distributed it, tried to release it with some TLC. As you report, they platformed it with only 7 theaters, and people came.
But as it widened out, the audiences it needed to justify the larger release you feel it deserved didn’t come. If anything, you should be blaming that absent audience, not the distributor.
Maybe it was just an arthouse release and, if so, $12 million is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s actually quite good at that level.
What many people don’t realize is the enormous cost of theatrical distribution these days. A wide release is $25 million minimum and often more than that.
And that is probably the single most important statistic affecting the film business, indie or otherwise, these days. You can always make a film for less, like JUNO, etc., but the cost of releasing and marketing them keeps going up.
That’s why you see so many films with A-list names going direct to DVD today. Those that are lucky enough to get any release, actually.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I think I’d have to look at what marketing they did, before I completely accept these arguments. Because even weeks 4 thru 7, the movie was still getting a very respectable 2,000 avg per theater and more.
Because the movie was hilarious, and I think the weird ass premise was what set it apart from other everyday films. It just seems like its avg per theater numbers in the first week or two would have justified bigger marketing. Few movies keep their averages up through the 7th week anyway, and when you get a really good early response, it seems like a no brainer to throw your money behind it. I really enjoyed Juno, but I thought Lars was much better and could have grossed a surprising large amount the way Juno did. I’m still convinced it was mishandled. Badly.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Sorry, but $2,000 per theater is hardly “very respectable”.
You also need to keep in mind that more often than not these days, theaters kick out films that can’t keep up high grosses. It’s not totally up to the distributor, who would like to keep their films in theaters as long as possible.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
“Sorry, but $2,000 per theater is hardly “very respectable”.”
No? Then I must be reading the charts wrong. I could have sworn that the AVG displayed on Box Office Mojo referred to the average gross per theater. I even double checked by dividing the weekend grosses by number of theaters and came up with the same numbers. If I’m mistaken in this analysis, then yes, my whole premise is wrong. But it does look to me like I’m seeing the average gross per weekend per theater. And, if so, then over $2,000 is quite respectable after the first few weeks. If not, then please point me to a whole bunch of movies that are making well over that after their 4th week.
Night at the Museum only averaged about $2,600 per theater last weekend, it’s 5th, and that was a huge budget movie with an enormous marketing budget. Terminator Salvation averaged $1,710 per theater last weekend, its 5th. Angels and Demons averaged about $1500 per theater last weekend, its 6th.
Lars and the Real Girl averaged $2,456 its 5th weekend. Dance Flick didn’t make over $2,000 per theater after its 2nd week and it’s now in its 5th week and has made less than a thousand per theater the last 2 weeks. Yet it recouped its budget, helped by a wide opening weekend and a real marketing attempt. All I’m saying is that Lars and the Real Girl probably would have done the same. And I haven’t seen any evidence otherwise. I still maintain that it was very badly mishandled and could have made a lot more money than it did and been seen by a lot more people – which would have led to higher DVD sales.
June 27th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Rebecca, a movie released on a hundred screens BETTER have a higher avg. after 4 weeks than a movie released on 3000+. If it’s only playing in a couple of theaters per city, everyone who wants to see it needs to go to that one theater. So $2000 per screen hardly screams for expansion. That number is irrelevant. I’m not saying your argument is wrong, but it has to be based on complete unknowns (what if they’d invested in a full marketing campaign?) and not on the existing numbers.
June 27th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Well, that’s actually what I’d started out by saying, that I’d have to know what their marketing was before I was convinced it hadn’t been mishandled. But what I do know is what marketing there was in my area, an area where it was shown. And that was basically just the trailer. We all went to see it based on the trailer, then showed that trailer to others, who also went to see it. And everyone who went to see it thought it was hilarious – across age and gender lines.
I don’t, however, buy the notion that the per screen average is completley irrelevant. I can see the sense of what you’re saying with regard to the disparity between a film like this and blockbusters still available in thousands of theaters. But I stand by my comparison to a movie like Dance Flick. I still maintain that a wide initial release, with proper marketing, would have resulted in a much bigger profit plus higher satisfactory DVD sales. I believe it was a misjudgment on the part of the studio/distributor to work it as a “small” film, even though that’s what it was made as. My take is that they had a nice little gem, which could have been a halfway decent sleeper, but they didn’t believe in it and didn’t give it the marketing/distribtion that it deserved.
June 27th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Not to beat a dead horse here, Rebecca, but if MGM had gone out wide with it on its’ opening weekend, it probably would’ve gotten trounced, and been labeled an immediate flop. And many (maybe you as well) would accuse MGM of not giving LARS the TLC it needed and deserved. You can’t have it both ways.
When Gosling was hot off THE NOTEBOOK, he chose, to his credit, to do a small indie, HALF NELSON. Its distributor, the late, lamented ThinkFilm, gave it a thoughtful push and helped Gosling get a well-deserved Oscar nomination. Final gross: $2.7 million. A very respectable number for an arthouse release about a drug addict. But tiny in the grand scheme of things. Most people I know, who liked Gosling in NOTEBOOK, never even saw it.
Maybe Harvey W. in his prime could’ve gotten a bigger number for LARS. As I mentioned, I LOVED the film. And I guess we’ll never really know if MGM could’ve done better. Maybe.
But I don’t believe at all it should’ve gone out as a wide relaase. At all.
Again, it’s become all about the prohibitive expense of theatrical distribution. Hell, if it wasn’t for the success of THE NOTEBOOK, LARS may not have even had a theatrical release at all.
Peace out.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Yeah, but Lars was a lot more entertaining than an art house film about a drug addict. You know, I didn’t even see The Notebook. And I was never a big Ryan Gosling fan. I went because it was a funny movie, and everyone I know that went did so for the same reason.
I mean, none of us are stupid. We got what the underlying story was. But I doubt it had the impact on us that the film makers were hoping for. To us, the story was just a vehicle for the laughs.
I really just don’t believe it was necessary to lose money on a film with that small of a budget when there were so many laughs in it and had a name actor as the lead. Not even looking at the fact that it was quality entertainment with some nice undertones, it was a really funny movie that they could have exploited for bigger bucks.
And, to tell you the truth, what I don’t get is that so many people are not willing to consider that fact. Especially since sleepers pop up on a regular basis. Not that I think this would have been an enormous sleeper, but surely it could have recouped it’s low costs and probably made at least a small profit in DVDs.
If industry insiders aren’t willing to be brutally honest about why mistakes get made, then they are doomed to keep repeating them. If a film loses money, then mistakes were made. Usually it’s because the movie’s no good or the budget was too high…or both.
This film lost money even though it had a very small budget. It wasn’t a bad film. Reviews were great, people loved it. Somewhere, a mistake was made. Was it that the budget was too high? Hardly. Looks to me like it was a distribution/marketing mistake.
June 27th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Lots of thoughtful comments here, and i wasn’t planning to post at all until rebecca’s question about whether the budget was too high. i saw Lars (on DVD), i liked it, and i am surprised to hear that it cost $12M. while i’ve read the per week averages throughout these posts, I don’t believe i’ve seen its total gross, though i doubt it cleared $12M domestic BO. (Just checked: According to Wikipedia, so take that for what you believe it’s worth, it did about $6M domestic, another $5M foreign–quite good, all told.)
And so … to answer Rebecca … “very small budget”? “Was that budget too high?” A resounding yes, which I can safely say since it didn’t make it back, but more importantly, because … that’s a lot of money for a low budget indie. Frozen River was under or around $1M; Wendy and Lucy, Man Push Cart, etc, probably in (roughly) the same neighborhood. I’m actually flabbergasted that Lars cost $12M, and I direct and produce and have a good notion of budgets.
I don’t know where that money went except to say that they obviously had an Oscar-nominated lead, but beyond that … I’m struggling to remember–a house or two? An office, a garage, a church? No major set pieces. RealGirl licensing?
I find it hard to believe the film couldn’t have been made for under $5M, even shot on 35, depending on Gosling’s salary. Did he get 2M? According to what I’ve read, Juno was made for $6.5.
So yes, it cost way too much, and should have been made for half what it cost, and then, bad platform release or not, it would have been a great indie success (business-wise) story. $12M seems like an awful lot for what they knew going in would be a small, thoughtful, arty film with crowd pleasing potential. $6M would have made a lot more sense.
The bottom line is it’s a beautiful film full of heart, and I enjoyed it, and do agree with most people here that it would have been nice if more people could have seen it. A smaller budget might have meant more immediate financial success, which might have led to greater publicity commitment, etc., and a wider audience …
June 28th, 2009 at 1:21 am
Okay, I’m willing to eat my words. But first I have to take exception to:
“Was that budget too high?” A resounding yes, which I can safely say since it didn’t make it back…
That doesn’t follow. If I would have been right, that it had been mishandled with distribution/marketing, then it could have failed because of that. In fact, I’m still not convinced that didn’t happen.
However, what seemed like a small budget in this day and age obviously isn’t as small as I thought. According to Box Office Mojo, Juno was made for $7.5 million. Which surprises me greatly. I didn’t think it was possible to make a film like that for that little today. But, since you have brought it to my attention that it is indeed possible, then I will concede that Lars could almost certainly have been made for less. In which case, it probably would have done better in recouping its costs.
What has convinced me is that Juno was a particularly apt example. It, too, opened in only 7 theaters. But it was much more successful. It seems to me, though, that I saw a lot of TV ads for Juno right before it hit my area, which I’m not sure was the case with Lars.
Not that I think it would have done nearly the box office Juno did in any case. That was over $140 million domestically. It’s just that I cannot believe that Lars was incapable of grossing more than $6,000,000 domestically. Seriously, that just seems off to me. I would have expected 12 to 15 million to be a breeze, with an excellent chance at more.
But then, I liked Lars better than Juno. :)
June 28th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Actually, Rebecca (and Marc), how do you know that LARS actually lost money? Have you seen its’ financial statements?
MGM didn’t finance LARS. Its’ producer, Sidney Kimmel did, and as with the rest of his films, he sold off all the foreign rights, country by country. I’ll bet that LARS covered at least 50-65% of its’ 12 million cost before it even hit the US.
With MGM’s reduced marketing budget and its’ US rentals (the ticket sales returned to MGM by the theaters) at about $6 million, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if LARS recouped, or even made a small profit, when all the subsidiary income is added in: DVDs, Television sales, etc. The Showtime deal alone is worth about $2 million under MGM’s output deal.
Now all we need is SKE’s Bingham Ray to chime in here…
June 28th, 2009 at 7:14 am
You mean Box Office Mojo is not infallible? Well, there’s a shock. But wait a minute, the domestic figures, at least, were probably made public.
Anyway, according to boxofficemojo.com, the production budget was $12 million, domestic gross $5,972,884 and foreign $5,320,639 for a total of $11,293,523 worldwide. With cable, DVD and TV, the production costs were almost certainly covered. I just assumed they hadn’t quite covered the marketing costs, as well, little though I imagined them to be. Now that I’ve found out how little a movie can be made for, however, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that those were less than I thought, too.
Nevertheless, I still find it strange that the movie couldn’t have grossed 12 to 15 million domestically. At least.
June 28th, 2009 at 7:43 am
At least you and I agree that LARS was a wondeful movie. Wasn’t Gosling perfect in it?
And yet when I recommended it to a friend, she said, “Isn’t that the one about the inflatable doll”? No sale.
Alas, that’s what poor LARS was up against.
June 28th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Wow -
Okay a couple of entertainment industry business and marketing things to get out of the way here:
– Movies are entertainment. They can aspire to art, use artistic technique and craft – but ultimately they are commercial enterprises unless they are self-financed and given away for free. Otherwise they seek to make their money back in some way, shape or form.
Many people equate movies or film with theater, and it has more in common with the circus and sideshows. That’s where people saw the first movies when they were just starting out – the sideshow. The “nickelodeon.” The business/monetary aspect of it is in the name. Speaking of which…
– Ryan Gosling is not a “name.” Tom Cruise is a name. Julia Roberts is a name. Ryan Gosling is always “Ryan Gosling, the star of THE NOTEBOOK.” Please note the difference. That’s not to say he doesn’t have a following – but he is not a “name actor” whose very presence green lights a movie.
–<i/>”And yet when I recommended it to a friend, she said, “Isn’t that the one about the inflatable doll”? No sale.
Alas, that’s what poor LARS was up against.”
Yes, and the very reason why they didn’t expand the release. Nobody wants to go see a movie about a guy who f*cks a piece of plastic unless it’s porn. Even then, they watch it at home on their computer.
June 28th, 2009 at 10:12 am
“Tom Cruise is a name. Julia Roberts is a name”.
Not anymore, Bill. But then, an “entertainment business and marketing” expert like you should know that.
June 28th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Yeah, I think Gosling did nail it, Dixon. Also agree about Cruise/Roberts.
I’m a picky moviegoer and I had never seen any of Ryan Goslings films that I know of. But I knew who he was. I seriously doubt it was Jennifer Garner that got people into Juno, so a big name doesn’t always matter anyway.
Plus, you kinda blew the shock value with your asterisk, Bill. In any case, I doubt the people who went were wanting to see the doll get fucked, they were going for the laughs…of which there were plenty. And they were probably the type who thought the inflatable doll was funny. It’s true not everyone has that type of humor.
One of my pet peeves is trailers which are misleading. Either all the good stuff is in the trailer with the rest of the movie just blah, or a movie looks like it will be one thing and turns out to be something else. Lars had a great trailer. You knew exactly what you were going to get and if it wasn’t your type of humor, you didn’t have to go. But I think you had to at least see the trailer, and not just hear about the movie with the inflatable doll.
Maybe studios should start trying viral marketing with the trailers and figure out some sort of system to distribute films where there’s the most demand for them. They’ve been great at using tech advances in making the movies, they now need to realize how much money they could save by utilizing the internet in marketing more effectively. All I know is that everyone we showed the trailer to ended up enjoying the movie. Hugely.
June 28th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Just one more word on the numbers: don’t forget, the studios share those box office receipts with the actual theaters. And I believe they get less and less the longer the movie’s out there, and can negotiate a better percentage for bigger movies. So of that $11 million total domestic and foreign, the studio only sees about half that (I think) for a movie like LARS. Maybe Bill “movies are like the circus” Cunningham can enlighten us as to how this gets broken down…
June 28th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
That’s right! I don’t know how I completely forgot about that. So, with whatever the marketing costs were, it almost certainly lost money. What a shame.
June 28th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
en⋅ter⋅tain⋅ment [en-ter-teyn-muhnt]
–noun 1. the act of entertaining; agreeable occupation for the mind; diversion; amusement: 2. something affording pleasure, diversion, or amusement, esp. a performance of some kind. 3. hospitable provision for the needs and wants of guests. 4. a divertingly adventurous, comic, or picaresque novel. 5. Obsolete. maintenance in service.
Just sayin’ – movies are the “entertainment industry.”
Yes Shmopeless – domestically a movie generally has to make 3 x times its cost to see money at the studio level. ($100M movies need $300M to break even at the box office) However financing tricks being what they are, a studio pre-sells certain international rights to raise the budget and so forth and mitigate some of those costs. It is an arena of arcane formulae (tax incentives, bank notes, etc..).
At the box office, a studio is only making about 30-35% of the box office gross that first week. You’re right in saying that the percentages slowly move to the studios favor but by that time the box office take is negligible (for a studio).
They see the movie as a big marketing campaign for the DVD where the margins are very much in their favor. Great box office = better DVD sales where they actually see money.
@Dixon Steele – I stand by my statement. You say their name you instantly know their body of work. They both can walk into a studio and green light a picture whether as a lead or a producer. You would think that someone who rips off the name of a fictional Holodeck character in Star Trek: TNG would know that.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Actually, Bill, I’ve never even seen an episode of STAR TREK: TNG.
On the other hand, I certainly did see the Humphrey Bogart classic IN A LONELY PLACE.
It’s about an angry screenwriter, who beats up his agent and may even be a murderer.
Check it out. You’ll love it.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:31 am
I did…
and obviously I didn’t communicate the joke well.
My bad.