[Reader-list] Declaration of Indies: Just Sell It Yourself!

[Sanjay Kak]

Declaration of Indies: Just Sell It Yourself!
By MANOHLA DARGIS

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/movies/17dargis.html?th&emc=th


LAST November inside a conference room at the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles, a film consultant named Peter Broderick was
doing his best to foment a revolution. Mr. Broderick, who helps
filmmakers find their way into the marketplace, was spreading the word
on an Internet-era approach to releasing movies that he believes
empowers filmmakers without impoverishing them economically or
emotionally. Mr. Broderick divides distribution into the Old World and
New, infusing his PowerPoint presentation with insurgent rhetoric. He
has written a “declaration of independence” for filmmakers that — as
he did that afternoon — he reads while wearing a tricorn hat.
In the Old World of distribution, filmmakers hand over all the rights
to their work, ceding control to companies that might soon lose
interest in their new purchase for various reasons, including a weak
opening weekend. (“After the first show,” Mr. Broderick said,
repeating an Old World maxim, “we know.”) In the New World, filmmakers
maintain full control over their work from beginning to end: they hold
on to their rights and, as important, find people who are interested
in their projects and can become patrons, even mentors. The Old World
has ticket buyers. The New World has ticket buyers who are also
Facebook friends. The Old World has commercials, newspapers ads and
the mass audience. The New World has social media, YouTube, iTunes and
niche audiences. “Newspaper ads,” Mr. Broderick said, “are mostly a
waste of money.”
The 200 filmmakers inside the conference room laughed, soaking up Mr.
Broderick’s pitch as if their careers depended upon it, which perhaps
they do. Independent filmmaking has never been for the faint of heart.
But the consensus is that the past few years have been especially
brutal. Sales have slowed, deal prices have dropped, and most of the
major studios have retreated from the independent scene, closing or
scaling back divisions like Warner Independent Pictures and Paramount
Vantage, which released the kinds of movies that win critical hearts
and awards. And good films are going unsold. Given the changes and
downsizing, these might seem like worrisome times for movie lovers as
well. After all, if these companies disappear, how do we find the next
great American independent filmmaker, the new Jim Jarmusch, Wes
Anderson 2.0?
For consultants like Mr. Broderick and filmmakers like Jon Reiss (the
documentary “Bomb It”) the answer lies in self-distribution, in
filmmakers doing it themselves or, more accurately, doing it
themselves with a little or a lot of help from other people, including
consultants like Mr. Broderick and Richard Abramowitz. Last year Mr.
Abramowitz, a film-industry veteran who runs an outfit in Armonk,
N.Y., called Abramorama with one full-time employee (him), helped
shepherd Sacha Gervasi’s documentary “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,”
about a 1970s metal band and its rebirth, into a success, with almost
$700,000 at the North American box office. Consultants guide
filmmakers on every angle of distribution. They can simply offer
advice, but can also develop a marketing strategy, book theaters and
collect the money.
If the D.I.Y. drumbeat has grown louder in recent years, it’s not only
because the major studios have backed away from the independent
sector. That’s a factor, but there are other issues involved, among
them that the economic barriers to filmmaking have never been lower.
Martin Scorsese once said that John Cassavetes’s first feature,
“Shadows,” shot in the late 1950s with a 16-millimeter camera, proved
to filmmakers that there were “no more excuses,” adding, “If he could
do it, so could we!” Still, even in the glory years of the new
American cinema movement, from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, when
the major studios appeared more open to original voices, Cassavetes
had to self-distribute his 1974 masterpiece “A Woman Under the
Influence,” which he did successfully, pulling in $6 million
domestically.
Inexpensive digital cameras and editing software have lowered the
barrier for filmmakers even further. Yet even as the means of
production have entered into more hands, companies — large and small —
continue to dominate distribution. Hollywood’s historical hold on
resources and the terms of the conversation have made it difficult for
an authentic alternative system to take root in America. The festival
circuit has emerged as a de facto distribution stream for many
filmmakers, yet the ad hoc world of festivals is not a substitute for
real distribution. And then there’s the simple fact that there are
independent filmmakers who do not fit inside the Hollywood (and
Hollywood-style) distribution model and do not want to. For some
stubborn independents D.I.Y. distribution has at times been either the
best or only option.
In 1992, the year before Disney bought Miramax Films, thereby
initiating the indie gold rush, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
became a model for true independence when they distributed their own
documentary “Brother’s Keeper” (1992) to substantial critical and
commercial success. In the years since, those entering
self-distribution have included emerging talent like Andrew Bujalski
(who initially sold DVDs of his 2005 film “Mutual Appreciation”
online) and established filmmakers like David Lynch (who released his
2006 movie “Inland Empire” in theaters himself). As self-distributed
movies have found levels of critical or commercial success or even
both, others have followed, including “The Talent Given Us,” “Note by
Note: The Making of Steinway L1037,” “Ballast,” “Helvetica” and “Good
Dick.”
Some self-distributed titles find their audiences with help from
consultants, while others make their way into the marketplace with the
help of consultants and companies that take a fee, rather than a
percentage of the profits and all the distribution rights. Innovative
strategies abound. Mr. Broderick is an advocate of what he calls
hybrid distribution, which, as he has put it, “combines direct sales
by filmmakers with distribution by third parties.” Thus filmmakers
hold on to their sales rights and sell the DVD retail rights to one
buyer and the video-on-demand rights to another and so on — rather
than handing them all over to one distributor, as has been
traditional. This allows filmmakers to reach audiences directly while
controlling their own work and destinies, at least in theory.
The new D.I.Y. world is open-source in vibe and often execution.
Participants refer to one another in conversation and on their Web
sites and blogs, pushing other people’s ideas and projects. (On his
Web site, peterbroderick.com, Mr. Broderick even posts discount codes
for other people’s books.) But these new-era distribution participants
are not engaging in blog-rolling. By sharing information and building
on one another’s ideas, they are in effect creating a virtual
infrastructure. This infrastructure doesn’t compete with Hollywood;
this isn’t about vying with products released by multinational
corporations. It is instead about the creation and sustenance of a
viable, artist-based alternative — one that, at this stage, looks
markedly different from what has often been passed off as independent
cinema over the past 20 years.
Although D.I.Y. has become shorthand for this new movement, a more
complex idea of the filmmaker-audience dynamic is emerging (Mr. Reiss
calls it “a sea change”), partly as a response to the shifts in the
industry, though also in reaction to the changes in the audience or
more specifically audiences. Although some viewers still enjoy the
ritual of going out to see movies, others don’t want to experience
their entertainment in a theater, preferring to immerse themselves in
a media-saturated world across a variety of platforms. “My son,” Mr.
Reiss said, speaking by phone from Los Angeles, “consumes media on his
computer and his iPod, and he will occasionally go out to a movie
theater.” He tries to encourage his son, who’s 13, to go to the
movies, but finds it tough. “He would rather interact with media on
his computer than anywhere else.”
One of the buzzy ideas in D.I.Y. is transmedia, a word borrowed from
academia, in which stories — think of the “Star Wars” and “Matrix”
franchises — unfold across different platforms. “Star Wars” helped
expand the very idea of a movie, because it involved a constellation
of movie-related products, from videogames to action figures, all of
which become part of the understanding and experience of the original,
originating work. This isn’t just about slapping a movie logo on a
lunchbox or a screensaver: it’s about creating an entertainment
gestalt. As the theorist Henry Jenkins writes, “Reading across the
media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption.”
In other words, you can sell one ticket to a moviegoer or enlist fans
into media feedback loops that they in turn help create and sustain.
It might seem counterintuitive that D.I.Y. independents are borrowing
a page from the George Lucas playbook. But only if you forget that Mr.
Lucas is the most successful independent filmmaker in history. 20th
Century Fox distributed the first “Star Wars,” yet Mr. Lucas kept the
sequel and merchandising rights. “If I make money,” he said when the
movie was released, “it will be from the toys.” The new generation of
D.I.Y. filmmakers might not be pushing toys on their Web sites (though
I’d like to see an Andrew Bujalski action figure), but they do peddle
DVDs, posters, CDs, books and — much as Spike Lee did before them —
are getting hip to selling themselves alongside their art.
The downside to this new D.I.Y. world is that filmmakers, who already
tend to expend tremendous time and effort raising money, might end up
spending more hours hawking their wares than creating new work. “I
struggle with this all the time,” Mr. Reiss said. But artists who want
to reach an audience are rarely if ever really free of the
marketplace, and filmmakers working in the commercial arena tend to be
even less so. For Mr. Reiss and other do-it-yourselfers, the most
important thing is to reach their audiences, any which way, niche by
niche, pixel by pixel, in theaters or online. “This is the other voice
of film,” Mr. Reiss said with urgency, “and if this dies, all we’re
left with is the monopoly.”

» A version of this article appeared in print on January 17, 2010, on
page AR1 of the New York edition.