"I've shot it, cut it, now how do I get it shown?"

by David Geffner
photos by Robert Hale

	Left to right: Bob Berney, Senior VP of Marketing and Distribution for IFC, Eamonn Bowles, President of Magnolia Pictures, Jennifer Todd, producer, Gary Garfinkel, VP of Acquisitions for Showtime Networks, Elvis Mitchell, New York Times film critic, Doug Mankoff, President of Echo Lake Productions, Penelope Spheeris, DGA director member, Mike McClellan, VP and Co-Head Film Buyer of Landmark Theaters and Allison Anders, DGA director member. photo by Robert Hale Click picture for larger view.

Come they did. First to a pre-seminar party in the Guild atrium, where new Guild members like Jacques Thelemaque, attending with his creative partner and wife Diane Gaidry, swapped war stories from the indie trenches. Thelemaque's first feature film, Dogwalker, shot on digital and made under the DGA's Low Budget Agreement, was nominated for a Gordon Parks Award, but has yet to find festival exposure or distribution.

The Sundance Film Festival is still the flash point for indies seeking distribution. But a successful run there or at Toronto, Cannes, or Berlin, is not enough to guarantee a release in these recession-plagued times; and therein lies the problem. With ad costs soaring into the millions of dollars just to get a feature through its opening weekend, independents are having a hard time staying in the game. In his welcoming remarks, IDC member George Hickenlooper singled out directors like Tony Barbieri, Lisanne Skyler, and Rob Schmidt, whose films have all blown away fests and critics, yet are still searching for a release.

Moderator, New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell, posed that question starting with a case study of Memento. Director Christopher Nolan's offbeat tale of memories lost and stolen, has garnered more than $25 million via an independent distributing effort by New Market Films. Co-producer Jennifer Todd, and Senior VP of Marketing and Distribution for IFC Films Bob Berney, were on the panel to share how they did it.

	.Attendees at the pre-seminar reception Click picture for larger view.

Off and running to Berney, who started way back in 1982 as the owner of the Inwood Theater in Dallas, one of the first art specialty theaters in Texas, meant putting together a publicity and marketing team a year in advance of Memento's release. Berney opted for a "grass-roots, organic campaign" that would build box-office steam through a gradual word-of-mouth.

"I was told time and again by everyone in the distribution community that audiences would reject Memento out of hand because of its complexity and the switch ending," Berney said. "The distributors loved the film, but they had unilaterally determined that audiences would not. It took the faith and a personal gamble by the filmmakers to give this film a chance."

Michael McClellan, VP and Co-Head Film Buyer for Landmark Theaters, who worked directly with IDC member and director Penelope Spheeris when she self-distributed The Decline of Western Civilization: Part III, praised Berney's choices with Memento. "One of the reasons we're here talking about Memento, is because Bob Berney and his team did not yield to the pressures of the larger chains by adding runs and nullifying their core runs," McClellan said. "The film was able to play for six months, rather than two or three, because he did not try to compete straight away with the bigger Hollywood releases."

Competition for the hundreds of new screens that have proliferated around the nation was on the mind of Eamonn Bowles. The former Shooting Gallery president talked about his former pet project, the Shooting Gallery Film Series, an ambitious attempt to bring independent product into mainstream theaters via a direct partnership with various exhibitors.

"We partnered with Loews Theaters in most markets, and had a home of 15–17 cities nationwide," Bowles said. "Our first film was Judy Berlin, which was a poster child for the series. It played Sundance, and Eric Mendelsohn won best director there. Yet because it was a black and white movie about un-sexy middle-aged people in the suburbs, no one would put it out there. We did more than half a million dollars with it in the series, and for the economics involved, the film did very well."

Mitchell asked Bowles to highlight the Shooting Gallery's most successful and surprising film in the series, Croupier. Bowles responded with a story of how he got a fax about the movie one day in his office. "I knew absolutely nothing about it, but the fax had a great ad image," Bowles said. "So I went to the screening and New Yorker Films was the only other distributor there. We resisted putting Croupier in the malls until we had built up very compelling word-of-mouth. Creating a context for a film is the biggest thing marketers have to do. You can't undermine the audience's expectations of what they are going to see."

Gary Garfinkle, VP of Acquisitions for Showtime, was on the panel to explain how Showtime aggressively pursued the film after its Park City screenings. Things Behind the Sun premiered on Showtime in three different time zones, playing to roughly five million people. "That number is vastly higher than the amount of people who would have seen the film in its initial theatrical run," Garfinkle said. "I know filmmakers are apprehensive about accepting a television offer. But Allison's film is a prime example of how cable TV can work to the filmmaker's advantage."

Anders said she called a friend at the Sundance Channel when faced with competing offers. "If you can get past the vanity of the theatrical screening," her friend told her, "then you'll see there's no downside [to screening the film on cable TV]."

"The kinds of things I got from Showtime were far beyond what I've ever gotten from my past theatrical releases," Anders said. "I had benefit screenings for rape crisis centers, and input into the trailer and the poster, every step of the way. It all came down to numbers — far more people would be exposed to the issues this film presents on a cable TV premiere compared to a few weekends in an art theater."

For the final and perhaps most unique case study on the panel, Mitchell solicited IDC member, Penelope Spheeris. The director introduced a photo still from the opening night of The Decline of Western Civilization, released back in 1980. Spheeris said the Mann Theater chain had told her they could not book a theater on Hollywood Boulevard because no one would come to the movie. "They gave me one booking at midnight, and as you can see by the photo," Spheeris said with a smile, "the police had to shut down Hollywood Boulevard because so many people came. I got a letter from Darrell Gates, the LAPD chief at the time, saying that I should never show the movie in Los Angeles again. That was when I knew I must have really done my job."

	Elvis Mitchell chats with seminar attendee. Click picture for larger view.

McClellan explained how Landmark's in-house marketing team brought in an intermediary to help book theaters for Spheeris. Checks would arrive unannounced in Spheeris' mailbox from theaters all over the nation. The director estimated spending roughly $4,000-$5,000 per city to advertise the film.

Urged by moderator Mitchell to end the seminar on a high note [after so much gloomy talk about the glut of indie product on the market], Spheeris offered these insights: "We've talked a lot tonight about marketing, P&A, and other gimmicks to get your films sold. But we've ignored the fact that we're making these movies for the love of the craft and the love of filmmaking. Never once in my career did I ever think about all those considerations that are our nemesis. I just went about making the movies because that's all that I could do. I just had to make the movies."

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