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July 27, 2005
Waving the Tartan flag: another indie definition
Tartan Film's Hamish McAlpine details his US biz plan to the Voice's Matthew Ross: "The man behind Tartan is Hamish McAlpine, a Scotsman known as much for his business acumen as his brash, dandyish persona (wearing white fur to premieres, getting into fistfights with Larry Clark, etc.). "I feel that America has been culturally challenged, and that's where we come in... we're sort of an agent provocateur. We don't have to answer to any American stockholders or banks; we have no one saying we are too outrageous; we have no one holding us back. In other words, we are operating in the true spirit of independence." For McAlpine, embracing the risque� is essential to Tartan's branding strategy. ... "Sometimes that can take us into sexually explicit territory and other times into intellectually explicit arenas." For the past few years, Tartan has maintained its bottom line thanks to its lucrative Asian Extreme video label, which has built up a cult following in Europe with a slate of mostly Japanese and Korean horror films... For a veteran like [Gregg] Araki, Tartan's arrival has given the indie landscape a welcome alternative to mini-major dominance. "Small distributors have become like mini-studios... There's an expectation at this point, with these runaway successes like Napoleon Dynamite, that every film needs to make tons and tons of money to be successful. But the old-school independent movies like Mysterious Skin, need companies like Tartan."
Posted by at July 27, 2005 05:09 PM
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