Great film, but no market for it: Sorry...

[ALAN]

Ask for it.

I ask for it at all my favorite video/DVD venues. Often, they've heard of it.

Just keep asking. We are the publicist.

[steve hyde]

... I should have been more specific. It has some distribution and has had a very limited theatrical run. It's on netflix and now the DVD can be purchased , but let's face it, DVD sales is not how you make money on a feature film.

What I meant, more specifically is that it hasn't been picked up by a "major distributor" in the wake of its appearance at the Academy Awards. Getting show at the Academy Awards is worth $$$ in advertising, but if nobody is willing to print several hundred copies of it for a decent sized release then a lot of the momentum is lost. (keep in mind some films have an opening weekend with 4500 theatrical release prints in the United States) and most big releases make the bulk of their profit on the opening weekend. This is why marketing is more important than making a good film (in financial terms)

As Roger Evans said, lots of bad movies are made and they make a profit. The reason that is true is because by and large, movie reviews don't sell movies on opening weekend because there aren't any reviews yet.

I think the reason it didn't get picked up is for cultural-political reasons. I'm not suggesting that the major distributors are pro-war or anything like that. I realize that the majors are bottom line oriented and will release anything that they think will sell. ... I guess they assume that American movie-going audiences won't go see a humanizing film about Iraqi people in their own language.....

[steve hyde]

So back to film - It's even more shocking is when a company pays for what many consider to be a great film and then do not release it as it's not, what they would consider, marketable or would not fit their companies image or just hate the director so much they want to ruin them (as per the El Topo and The Holy Mountian issue - Jodorowsky vs' Alan Klein)

Chris.

....I missed this bit.

The Jodorowsky stuff is an interesting case, but definitely shock cinema so no surprise he never got major distribution. Not to mention many of his filmmaking practices were pretty unethical with the killing of animals and what not. ... Didn't John Lennon step in to support the distribution of El Topo? I once heard something about that...

Steve

[steve hyde]

It's definitely sad that this guy can't get his film distributed. I haven't seen the film, but if he's humanized the Iraqi people and and focused on their suffering, then he may never get distribution considering the politics of our time and the politics/religious/ethnic make up of the Hollywood power structure. I've read great things about Iraq in Fragments, but if he can't get distributions after winning such prestigous awards, then he's definitely being silenced by "the powers that be."

...That's what it looks like to me. The sometimes obscured, yet very real, powers that be..

Steve

[steve hyde]

One of the saddest things I ever saw was how Les Blank had to drive around in an old station wagon and go town to town to show his movies to tiny little audiences who knew he was the greatest documentarian ever. We're talking about Les Blank, and not that long ago, either. He still can't get money.

It's an occupational hazard, and in these hypercapitalist days the only solution I think is to get your own station wagon and drive around and do the things you want to do, and don't expect much. Remember, Thoreau had to publish his own books and keep them in the garage, and the only reason we know about him today is because he had famous friends.

http://www.lesblank.com/main.html

Yes, one of the best. I still love "Gap Teethed Women". One of the great short documentaries ever...... It's good to know that making a great film or a purposeful film or a meaningful film is no guarantee to financial success. I think I will give up on the idea of fine art documentaries and switch to something a bit more safe like commercials for insurance companies or something... That will add to the diverse cultural mosaic of cinema. Yeah! :roll:

Steve

[teadub]

Just kidding. Distributors seem to have no balls these days. I mean, documentaries are hotter than ever, thanks to Moore, Gore and Burns (or should that be Burns Moore Gore?) But only if you are a "brand name" director. If the media were to pick up on this guy's story about the making of the documentary and make him a media darling like "those other guys" then perhaps the distributors might be more interested.

Roger

Hasn't this always been the case? Pennebaker, Burns , Mayles, Wiseman (maybe) are the ones who had the attension in the 60's / 70's / 80's. Which I would argue was the last time documentaries had a lot of publicity.

To your point about the filmmakers backstory. Look at Herzog now, his Grizzly Man doc gave him more publicity then that 3 hour strongman feature with Tim Roth; not to mention all the great documentaries he did in the 70's. And now with renewed interest and Anchor Bay re-releases of his DVD catalogue he is doing features w/ christian bael based on an old doc of his.

[Nigel]

Steve,

You know my jab about the free market was more about our chats than the quality of the movie.

The fact remains that if you feel that the film isn't being seen and should have a platform then give it one. Distribute it. If you feel that distributors have made poor choices then that is your opinion.

Either way both your feelings for the film and the lack of feelings by others are equally fickle and both valid. To use the--Just because--analogy doesn't really do your point justice or the film. Just because Al Gore has a platform doesn't make any platform true/false/otherwise.

Not everything is a political issue.

Just wait and see what happens. You never know what is going on with the film and I would find it reasonable to believe that an editor may not know what deals are being done until they are inked.

Not all choices need to have politics behind them.

Good Luck

[Scotness]

Don't forget the way they distributed OutFoxed!

Scot

[dsam7]

Good Luck[/quote]


That is why free-markets under Capitalism are not a "level playing field" as the late Milton Friedman insisted. There is nothing level about the free market.... or anything free about the free market for that matter. It is all rhetoric and spin that starts with words like *freedom*, *free* and *liberty* and then the meaning behind the words is spun to mean the exact opposite.


Steve[/quote]


Steve, I accept what you are saying but must take issue with your comment about the free-market. A genuine free-market or classical liberalism, (not a system of some freedoms and controls or government favours to friends or unearned subsidies etc that we live in today) does rest on a "level playing field" because all human interaction is VOLUNTARY. No one ( including the government) has the right to initiate force in any area of life - whether it's in demanding financing for a film or seeking preferential treatment for a business because it supports a particular political party.

I agree that there are many films that don't deserve the time of day as far as quality or content is concerned, but as long as they exist freely in a society where the gun ( force) is absent from human relationships, then the onus is on the individual to earn backing for his ideas/project through argument or persuasion. A genuine free society is about the free, exchange of ideas and property, not about unearned subsidy,force, favours, quotas or corruption - ( not the way our governments and their friends operate!).

[mattias]

they don't get picked up for mainstream theatrical distribution, that's true, but small movies don't make money in theaters anyway, if they're released it's just so that the dvd will sell more later, which it does for theatrical films. the thing is that film festivals have started taking over this for smaller films. you reach your entire audience, the art house crowd, at a very low cost, and if you win a few awards you get free publicity too, maybe even a couple of reviews in the local newspapers. then you release the film to television and dvd on as many international markets as possible and hopefully make some money there. i like this scheme actually. unfortunatelyu there aren't enough festivals in sweden, most of them are for shorts only, so here you still need a limited theatrical to reach people.

/matt

[steve hyde]

they don't get picked up for mainstream theatrical distribution, that's true, but small movies don't make money in theaters anyway, if they're released it's just so that the dvd will sell more later, which it does for theatrical films. the thing is that film festivals have started taking over this for smaller films. you reach your entire audience, the art house crowd, at a very low cost, and if you win a few awards you get free publicity too, maybe even a couple of reviews in the local newspapers. then you release the film to television and dvd on as many international markets as possible and hopefully make some money there. i like this scheme actually. unfortunatelyu there aren't enough festivals in sweden, most of them are for shorts only, so here you still need a limited theatrical to reach people.

/matt

It's way less predictable in the United States. Sometimes small movies have huge success in theaters. These days this is especially true with documentaries. Take the *feel good* documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom" as an example. This little video camera documentary made its take on a theatrical run. Now it continues to have revenues that trickle in from DVD sales and rentals, but the bulk of the profits were made at the box office.

Selling your program to TV is another avenue, but selling to television is not high-stakes gambling like a theatrical release is. When an *independent* sells to television, that is usually a last ditch effort to recover the costs of production. (at least here in the States) with few exceptions.

Steve

[steve hyde]

Good Luck


That is why free-markets under Capitalism are not a "level playing field" as the late Milton Friedman insisted. There is nothing level about the free market.... or anything free about the free market for that matter. It is all rhetoric and spin that starts with words like *freedom*, *free* and *liberty* and then the meaning behind the words is spun to mean the exact opposite.


Steve


Steve, I accept what you are saying but must take issue with your comment about the free-market. A genuine free-market or classical liberalism, (not a system of some freedoms and controls or government favours to friends or unearned subsidies etc that we live in today) does rest on a "level playing field" because all human interaction is VOLUNTARY. No one ( including the government) has the right to initiate force in any area of life - whether it's in demanding financing for a film or seeking preferential treatment for a business because it supports a particular political party.

I agree that there are many films that don't deserve the time of day as far as quality or content is concerned, but as long as they exist freely in a society where the gun ( force) is absent from human relationships, then the onus is on the individual to earn backing for his ideas/project through argument or persuasion. A genuine free society is about the free, exchange of ideas and property, not about unearned subsidy,force, favours, quotas or corruption - ( not the way our governments and their friends operate!).

I'm not sure I understand your argument. It sounds like you are saying that abstractly - in a theoretical perfect world, a free-market would exist as a level playing field. Okay, I understand that in the abstract, but then you are saying that we currently have corruption in the form of favors and subsidies. Lots of favors go on in the private sectors of business, don't they? Why would that stop in an unregulated free-market? In other words, why would corruption go away in a liberal free market? Obviously it would not and the liberalization of markets has not leveled the playing field. It has only made things more uneven.

Steve

[steve hyde]

Steve,

You know my jab about the free market was more about our chats than the quality of the movie.

The fact remains that if you feel that the film isn't being seen and should have a platform then give it one. Distribute it. If you feel that distributors have made poor choices then that is your opinion.

Either way both your feelings for the film and the lack of feelings by others are equally fickle and both valid. To use the--Just because--analogy doesn't really do your point justice or the film. Just because Al Gore has a platform doesn't make any platform true/false/otherwise.

Not everything is a political issue.

Just wait and see what happens. You never know what is going on with the film and I would find it reasonable to believe that an editor may not know what deals are being done until they are inked.

Not all choices need to have politics behind them.

Good Luck

...Again we are back to the limits of language. In this case verbal language and the world of words. The word *politics* comes with a bag of meanings just like all words. Saying not everything is a political issue depends on which definition of *political* you choose to pull out of the magic hat. We can talk about household politics, sexual politics, the politics of art, political economy, the politics of the body and on and on.The definition of politic that I use is one that recognizes that people produce things to empower themselves and to empower others that they want to be empowered. That is the politics of every day life.

I am not arguing that the "major distributors" made a bad choice when they decided to pass on it. - to use a surfing metaphor - dropping in on the wave that was the Academy Award nomination. The distributors were smart. They saw that the wave was a close-out and didn't want to get pounded against the reef. At least I imagine the logic was a bit like that because if they new for sure that they would be rewarded with a smooth ride, they would have dropped in and gone for it.

My disappointment is not about the choice of the distributors. I'm not criticizing them for making the choice to pass on it. My criticism is pointed to American consumer culture and also the mass-media apparatus that works hard to shape the desires of the consumer culture.

I'll probably end up in trouble if I try to extend the surfing metaphor.

..What would the "surfrider foundation" say about a surfing location that is being destroyed by the construction of some industrial facility that modifies the landscape/seascape in some way that destroys the wave. Now the wave doesn't form at all anymore, yet people are still free to surf there if they want to. (it's freedom of choice - you can surf here if you want to) What is the point in even trying to surf the spot anymore? The big industry destroyed the site. They changed the conditions to meet their needs and since nobody took the time to fight for the surfing conditions, they were destroyed.... This is why we have "the surfrider foundation". They are a political organization that fights for the preservation of natural ocean environments.

Who fights for the preservation of cultural environments? And for cultural diversity? Who stands against the mass-media and their efforts to shape consumer consciousness by silencing the competition? Who stands against the homogenization of the landscape where mom and pop shops are closed and big Capital privatizes more and more of our social space and rebuilds it to meet its own wants. Who stands against the "powers that be" to fight against changing the conditions of the cultural landscape so that fewer and fewer alternatives exist?

If you fly a space ship outside the earths atmosphere, as I often do on weekends, and look back to earth with a lens on the flows of audio-visual media, you will start to see some really interesting patterns. You will see how audio-visual media has an impact on the way people cut their hair, on the clothes they wear, on the cars they drive, on the way they speak, on what they believe and know.

After floating around in space for a while looking down through two giant telephoto lenses attached to special anti-gravity goggles, I think we might find ourselves thinking.....damn, Mussolini was right when he made his public speech at the grand opening of Cinecita. *Cinema is the most powerful weapon.*

Steve

[mattias]

It's way less predictable in the United States. Sometimes small movies have huge success in theaters.

i was actually talking mainly about the united states. it's not that predictable here either, i was talking from a distributior's point of view. the keyword in your post is sometimes. few are willing to take the chance. contrary to production there's not a lot of vent cap in distribution. a dvd release can bring in a lot of money compared to how little it costs.

/matt

[wado1942]

Remember that distribution companies are as much political as they are corporate. Maybe some of the movies have messages they don't want people to hear. Also, it's VERY common for a company to buy the rights to a product, beit a band or a movie etc to deliberately keep it from getting distribution. A lot of times in the music industry a record company will sign a band and shelf them because they don't want to risk spending money on them but they don't want to risk other companies making money off of them. The same applies to movies. Now, small record companies will invest in groups that they KNOW won't make any quick cash to fill a niche market. Such a thing is classical music. They'll make $50,000 off of a classical recording in the first year but they'll make the same amount off of that recording for 20 years. That is the equivelant to a documentary and is not worth it to everybody.