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DGA Indie Directors Committee
A Meeting in the Life
By David Geffner
Recent IDC meeting attendees from left: Rick King, Michael Uno, Charles Burnett, Duane Clark, Christopher Coppola, Mary Lambert, Penelope Spheeris, Jeremy Kagan and Stephen Gyllenhaal
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A crisp November afternoon
in the DGA's sixth floor boardroom was the backdrop for the most recent gathering of the Independent Directors Committee, a group which now counts among its members some of the best and the brightest of independent Hollywood. Shining creative lights like Miguel Arteta, Christopher Coppola, Tamara Davis, Spike Jonze, Doug Liman and Alexander Payne are the newest additions to the Independent Directors Committee. The Committeee has been meeting regularly since it was created more than two years ago with a very simple mandate: to broaden the base of DGA membership to include regional and indie filmmakers who, in years past, have shied away from joining any of the industry's major labor guilds.
Right behind those aims, but certainly not any less important, Steven Soderbergh, one of the Committee's founders, has expressed his hope that the group can "inspire and foster dialogue among independent filmmakers," a sector of the industry that has traditionally worked in isolated cells, only finding common ground when their movies make it into the same film festival.
Among the topics discussed at this the meeting were a revamped ad campaign to raise awareness of the DGA with the indie film community. Led by longtime indie advocate and documentarian, Penelope Spheeris, the new marketing push will be "younger, hipper and generally more visually fun than what many indie filmmakers associate with the DGA," Spheeris joked. Holding up a press still from her own popular documentary series, The Decline of Western Civilization, Spheeris is seen with a supremely burly young rock 'n' roll roadie sporting a mohawk. "We want to try something along the lines of that famous Groucho Marx quote for the ad copy," Spheeris smiled. "I would never want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."
Breaking away from anything smacking of a corporate mold was the order of the day for the Independent Directors Committee, as it has been since the group formed. At the core of its recent work is the "Directors Finder" screening series. Reserved only for DGA indie films which do not have distribution agreements in place, the "Directors Finder Series" has, at least on a percentage basis, exceeded the Committee's best expectations.
Of the 49 feature films screened during its two-year run, eight have gone on to secure distribution. Several participating filmmakers have directly acknowledged the Directors Finder Series as providing the key screening which eventually led to their films being picked up. Those directors include Marty Davidson and his feature film Looking for an Echo, picked up for theatrical release by Regent Entertainment, and Laurie Agard with her children's-themed film Frog and Wombat, picked up by HBO, Showtime and Blockbuster Home Video.
DGA Assistant Executive Director Elizabeth Stanley broached the topic of screening the work made by DGA indies before they became members in the Directors Finder Series. "If we're going to support independents," offered Michael Uno, "we need to do it over their entire careers and not just the films they make after they join the Guild. I think it's also a strong lure to getting independents to join. I have a friend now that would definitely make his next picture DGA if he knew he could have a shot at getting one of his past films screened and maybe even picked up."
With other promising bits of business on the Committee's plate - the unveiling of a redesigned Committee page on the public portion of the DGA website and the continuation of the DGA's involvement in many prominent indie film festivals - the afternoon quickly passed with many excited by the new projects.
L.A. independent filmmaker Charles Burnett, who has been with
the Committee since the beginning, said, "The Independent Directors Committee is a great thing for me because I've been a very solitary person and, as a group, we can act as the eyes and ears for independents. The Committee seems to be in the vanguard of all the new technologies. Helping to structure contracts and agreements in areas like Web broadcasting, digital video, that will affect how directors relate to these new media and profit by them is an area where the DGA can be very helpful."
Burnett, who is currently working on two documentaries - one funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities concerning Nat Turner, the other on a history of the blues co-produced by Martin Scorsese - describes himself as "fairly shy" in deciphering his role on the Indie Committee. "Many independents, like myself," Burnett said, "work in isolation and are not accustomed to being part of a large group. Before I joined the Guild, I felt like I was floating on a raft all by myself, surrounded by sharks. It's hard to see, particularly as a young filmmaker, that the Guild has been dealing with directors' concerns for many years and can help pull you off that raft and onto the boat."
Burnett's comments struck an interesting parallel to new DGA and Committee member Miguel Arteta, whose digital video feature, Chuck and Buck, as well as his first effort, Star Maps, were big favorites at past Sundance Film Festivals.
Arteta, who joined the DGA after directing an episode of Homicide last year, typically makes indie films with extremely low micro-budgets. Arteta joined the Independent Directors Committee three months ago and had these recent thoughts on its role in the indie community: "I really want to help the DGA become more flexible to the needs of the independent 'no-budget' director, many of whom are working in the digital medium."
Arteta's comments echoed a lively roundtable discussion, at the recent November meeting, on independent film and how the new media formats are changing the rules for indie directors.
"I believe it's a time of tremendous opportunity and also a time of great uncertainty," began Duane Clark. "With the advent of digital technology, the cost threshold has been significantly lowered so a lot of people who could never make movies are getting the chance. On the flip side, and what I believe is a negative trend, the studios have co-opted indie filmmaking through their classics divisions. The game for getting your film picked up is exactly the same as it is for studio pictures - who's in it and how can we market the independent film, as opposed to placing a premium on the story."
Responding to a question of how the internet has changed indie filmmaking, Christopher Coppola had these thoughts: "The internet has affected short-form filmmaking quite a bit. But not necessarily for the better. I was in a meeting the other day at CAA to discuss new media. Their view of digital shorts is that they're calling cards to do bigger, more traditional features. Many indies are viewing websites as a place to showcase digital shorts as calling cards rather than fully realized short films."
Coppola went on to note that digital filmmaking has spawned "tons of films being created in people's backyards, with the large majority not all that great. Where the DGA can take the lead is to get the more established talent involved with new media. That, in turn, will push up the level of interest on the part of distributors because the work will reach the same level of quality typically associated with work created on film."
Touching back upon Duane Clark's lament about indie marketing, Coppola recounted a story about a filmmaker friend who was reaching back to the days of drive-in movies and distributing his digital film in a baseball stadium. "There are no stars in it," Coppola marveled. "But, its theme is baseball so people inside the stadium will want to watch it. Digital filmmaking can bring movies to places where film won't go, and introduce independents to audiences who don't live in New York or Los Angeles and go to 'art house' movies."
Committee member Rick King tried to give the discussion context, wondering how the DGA could help to unite what King viewed as a fragmented indie community. "People like John Cassavetes were able to make films outside the studio system their entire career, and that was by choice. Those kinds of filmmakers are now much less common. Independent film is seen as something you go through before graduating to the studio system. A lot of directors burn out after only making one or two movies because they can't sustain a career outside the mainstream. This Committee needs to bridge that isolation and rediscover the independent community that once was so strong."
Mary Lambert seemed to effectively sum up the afternoon's concerns, if not the entire mission statement of her fellow DGA independents. "I don't think this Committee is necessarily about alternative or independent filmmaking, because, as others have said, the studios have co-opted those terms and rendered them meaningless. The most interesting and pertinent issue we can talk about is: how are we making movies that are different from the formulaic films the studios churn out? Our job is to support those DGA members who want to make regional films and digital films and films with stories and themes that are not being told by mainstream Hollywood. That's what I think this Committee is all about."
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