A big winner out of Filmmaker Mag‘s 2009 list of 25 New Faces of Indie Film is CineVegas. Three of the twenty-five filmmakers premiered their pic at this year’s event—Frankie Latina (“Modus Operandi”), Jeff Mizushima (“Etienne!”—pictured above), and Asiel Norton (“Redland”).
I’d even add a 26th from the CineVegas lineup—Kyle Patrick Alvarez, whose assured drama, “Easier with Practice,” (below) won the fest’s top award. Check out Cinematical’s review.
“Let me irrigate your barren earth with fresh cream.”
Austin’s Fantastic Fest will open with Jared Hess‘s new Fox Searchlight comedy “Gentlemen Broncos”
Benjamin (Michael Angarano), home-schooled by his eccentric mother (Jennifer Coolidge), is a lovable loner whose passion for writing leads him on an offbeat and hilarious journey as his story first gets ripped off by the legendary fantasy novelist, Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement) and then is adapted into a disastrous movie by the small town’s most prolific homespun filmmaker.
I have always marveled at how Anthony Kaufman was able to maintain a freelance life.
Tony and I met at film school years ago. We are in each others’ short films, either in front of or behind the camera. When school ended we both went on to journalism. One of my proudest career moments is bringing Tony into an eager start-up I was working with called indieWIRE.
While I went on to make a living as a screenwriter, Tony kept at film journalism. I’ve watched Tony’s writing become sharper, essential, and wonderfully opinionated as the years passed. With regular gigs in Variety, Village Voice, HR, Filmmaker Mag, etc., I consider him one of the more important voices in indie film journalism.
I’m finally starting to feel the economic crunch—personally. Over the last year, I’ve written about the crashes of ThinkFilm and New Yorker Films, tracked the demise of VHS, the collapse of indie film financing and followed the obsolescence of movie critics. Now, I, too, am seeing my occupation slip away from me with every passing week. Major publications have admitted to me that they “ran out of money”; others don’t have the room or budget for feature stories anymore; and fair compensation has dropped to the insulting “blog rate”—$35 to $50 for what would have been $100 to $200 for an equivalent amount of work a couple years ago. This shit is real.
I know precisely how he feels. When the writers’ strike hit, I got a staff job at Variety. The steady paycheck and health insurance for myself and family was crucial. When I was laid-off, I relied on a few freelance jobs to keep the income coming in, as did many other former Variety staffers. But the pay started to rapidly shrink.
Recently I covered a film festival for a major indie film publication. Along with a fest wrap-up, the editors wanted daily blog posts of pictures and captions for their site. After four days of posts and another few writing the wrap-up for print, my grand take was 100 bucks.
When I mentioned that’s what I got paid 10 years ago for half the work, the editors apologized. It’s all they had to give. I believe them.
The freelance life is a scary one. Luckily, I’ve been able to transition back into screenwriting. This blog suffers for it, unfortunately, but it’s a move of necessity. But where will the other writers go? How will they cobble together enough scratch to weather this?
I’ll continue occasionally posting on this blog. But as many of you have noticed, it’ll be few and far between. I hope you’ll check back every once in a while. But before you come here, go to Tony’s blog. See what he’s writing now. He has much more interesting things to say anyway. He deserves the click-though votes. And he should keep writing.
There is certainly more to this story, but both AFI and the Dallas Film Society jointly announced “completion of their initial three-year agreement.”
The release goes on to say “The DALLAS Film Society is planning its 2010 international film festival and expects to announce details over the coming weeks.”
The AFI Dallas Film Festival came out of the gate strong three years ago. With a massive budget for a first time event, they had always intended to compete directly with the big fests. The “jointness” of this release indicates a mutual separation, though at the end of the day, I would imagine DFS didn’t want to shell out the licensing fee to AFI.
Did AFI contribute to the fest’s launch by increasing the profile? Probably. Is it satisfied being just a platform to launch events? A quickie branding opportunity that can be dropped later? Probably not. Might be time to rethink those fees.
“I was 25 and broke and working as a PA on movies. I had a giant mouse infestation in my apartment. All my friends were married, had health insurance, 401K plans. There I was with 200 bucks in my bank account while I was cleaning up dead mice in a New York walk-up on 25th Street.
But my brother said, ‘But you’re pursuing your dream and you’re not going to be here forever.’
And he was right. And a lot of my friends who took a job that they really didn’t want are unhappy. They ask me ‘What’s it like making movies? You must be really happy.’ You got to be willing to eat shit in your twenties to get to where you want to be. And I’ll tell you, it’s fucking worth it.”
Tony and I met at film school years ago. We are in each others’ short films, either in front of or behind the camera. When school ended we both went on to journalism. One of my proudest career moments is bringing Tony into an eager start-up I was working with called indieWIRE. 
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