The Hot Blog

Simon is a year old film that has been in release all over Europe and was The Netherlands’ entry for the Oscars this year. Again... no distributor was waiting for or needed Tribeca to put this film on the map.

But most notably, After Innocence was picked up by New Yorker films, which invests in high quality films, but none of the five films they released last year ever got past four screens and their high gross was Moolaade with $200,000. Simon was picked up by Strand, which is primarily a specialty label for quality gay films and none of their fifteen titles ever hot more than 10 screens at one time last year and their high grosser was Testosterone with $185,000.

I have enormous respect for both of these companies. But little films aren’t growing big... a nearly dead business is getting strong in the little ball game. Yes, Mark Urman is throwing Murderball up against Bewitched and The Fantastic Four, but he knows without question that the total gross he is expecting – praying for – will be less than the first day gross draw on either film that would send Columbia or Fox execs looking for razor blades and a vein.

David Carr is an excellent writer, but the following paragraph left me doing cartwheels of frustration. (I’ll put my notes in):

DC writes: “While Hollywood concentrates on selling blockbusters around the globe - and has crashed the party with well-financed art house divisions like Universal's Focus Features and Sony Pictures Classics, both based here, New York companies like ThinkFilm and Killer Films have emerged as central players in a more guerrillalike industry, reaching far beyond traditional independent production and finance.”

DP responds: This is not only apples and oranges, but kumquats and star fruit. Amongst the four companies he throws in as examples, one is not a distributor (Killer Films). Later in the piece, Carr writes: ‘In all, more than 500 films are released in domestic theaters in a typical year, many of them by about a dozen Manhattan companies like Think and Killer.” Killer doesn’t release any films, Dave.

Of the two indie distributors that are driven primarily by pick-ups, SPC is on a different planet than ThinkFilm. Films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Kung Fu Hustle are not just pick-ups, but part of a Sony investment in Asian cinema from which the various studio get to pick and choose. (They deserve credit for the success in the U.S.... just not the rough and tumble acquisition) Who ended up distributing the very underrated So Close two years ago? Strand. Eleven Screens. Why? No one at the Sony divisions stepped up and as a marginally gay-themed story, it got sold off to Strand.

And Focus, while much of the team is NY-based, the ties to Universal are tight and this is a company that released a $30 million production last year. No... they are not guerillalike.

DC Continues: “The latest generation of New York players are creating a system of their own to get movies seen. They win recognition for hundreds of pictures a year via film festival screens and a Rube Goldberg patchwork of local sites, both commercial and nonprofit, garnering just enough exposure to push the movies into the marketplace, including the increasingly lucrative DVD market.”

DP: Firstly... what the hell is he trying to say?

They put their films into festivals and do small screenings hoping that they can get a theatrical release? Is that new? Is this unique to New York? Is it really “a system of their own?”

Huh?

I’m very happy for Tribeca to be a wonderful, powerful festival. But it’s not South By Southwest yet, much less Sundance or Toronto. It’s also the most highly capitalized start-up film festival ever, with a budget of a reported $88 for every one of the 135 tickets reportedly sold by the festival this year. But Carr seems to have no interest in the relationship between raw funding and the perception of power.

Carr writes: “Last year, 202 movies were filmed at least in part in New York city. And the enactment of a combined city-state tax break of 15 percent has already yielded almost $300 million in new business, according to the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting.”

How much did that 15% cost the city and state? Where is the reporting here? Again, embrace the joy of New York, but do you have to do it with blinders on?

Carr writes: “A peculiar hallmark of New York's cinematic counterculture is the role that the city's intense, sophisticated audience has played in pushing once-fragile films like "Open Water" and "Garden State" into prominence.”

What is he talking about?!?!?!?! Both films were bought in bidding wars at Sundance by companies based in Los Angeles. Open Water was sold as a relative of Jaws. Am I crazy???

In the end, Carr suddenly throws some much needed cold water on his overheated premise. This seems to be a new NYT trend. Hype, spin, ype, reality in the final graphs.

But really... the future of the film business is New York is a great point of discussion. Tribeca, which is mostly smoke and mirrors now, should become a truly important festival. IFP/NY is being challenged, with IFP/LA spinning away from the IFP structure. The Weinsteins are free to do what they want. And mostly, the studio Dependents have spent so much that they have created void that can, theoretically, be filled with films that are niche-y and have the potential of being $5 million - $10 million grossers instead of $500,000 to $2 million grossers.

But ya gotta take off the rose colored glasses... really!