In his recent (and much-linked to) piece on GreenCine Daily, Jonathan Marlow takes aim at the current climate of change and looks for answers to the dilemma of modern day film distribution. I have some major problems with this piece and I think a response is in order. First, a few of Jonathan's thoughts:

"Since the beginning of the independent 'common era' (circa 1989), the traditional Grail-quest of acquisition-derived-from-festival-screenings was a relative uncertainty. Now, nearly 30 years later, such good fortunes are approaching the level of impossibility.

The festival circuit has instead become an ersatz distribution system unto itself that, for the most part, keeps money away from the makers. The ten or 20 dollars you spend on a ticket (or the $50 to $500 you spend on a pass) rarely finds its way into the hands of the folks behind the camera. For all of those folks that were frustrated by the late-1990s business model of mere exposure-driven outcomes, these same folks generally have little complaint when festivals routinely screw them the same way. If you're going to prostitute yourself and your work, wouldn't you want to at least be treated with a little respect? To stretch the analogy, isn't the distance between 'street-walker' and 'call girl' really a matter perspective?"

Here we go again....

Let me begin by taking exception to Marlow's straw man, one that I have seen being built over and over again on panels and in discussions among filmmakers and programmers over the past few years; Film festivals are not, in fact, an ersatz distribution system for films. I know that with the decrease in screen space and the incredibly competitive marketplace for films among the distribution companies, film festivals have become the only way for many films to be projected in a theater in front of an audience. That said, we've had film festivals around for literally decades; What has changed about film festivals? How have they evolved from being showcases for independent and foreign films to being equated with the institutional pimping of filmmakers? In reality, aside from their wider proliferation, there has been no change. Instead, the business of actual film distribution has changed and audience access to independent and foreign films has changed. Festivals have remained, for the most part, non-profit organizations committed to curating film programs for audiences who want to see hard-to-see films on the big screen, meet the filmmakers and actors, and have an environment where film is taken seriously, presented reverently, in the spirit of a shared cultural event. In addition, there is no collective network of festivals that collaborates to set up a national distribution path for films. Festivals don't cooperate with one another on programming beyond a friendly exchange of information; most of the time, we're competing for films. Each event stands alone and should be weighed on its individual merits, benefits and shortcomings. This is not some form of institutionalized distribution unless the filmmaker decides he or she wants to pretend it is so. In which case, they are wrong. What film festivals share with distributors is that they both screen films in a theater. But does that make them the same thing?

I really take exception to this article (and Marlow's later claim that any one who says otherwise has a vested interest in the exploitation of filmmakers) and the idea that somehow low-ball , "exposure-driven outcome" deals by for-profit distributors are the same as non-profit festivals building word of mouth with one or two screenings of a film for a paying audience. The cost of renting theaters, equipping them with video and film projection, staffing the booth, organizing travel and accommodations for the filmmakers, staffing for programming, marketing and press for the films in both the national and local press? That cost FAR OUTWEIGHS the income generated by single ticket and pass sales at most film festivals. So, with festivals essentially subsidizing film screenings (which generally operate at a loss) with sponsorship dollars, I am not sure how the festival is prostituting the filmmaker. In fact, the whole argument is bullshit. Non-profit arts organizations are not structured as a replacement for traditional for-profit distribution models. Film festivals are not theater operators or exhibitors, take no money from the concession stand, and use the revenue generated by film tickets to help offset the cost of showing the films. We are not distributors, do not share in a national distribution plan, do not exhibit a film more than once or twice, and generally don't turn a profit on ticket sales. I've never met a rich film festival employee in my life.

Marlow goes on to show his love of undistributed films and his empathy for the lack of screen space by equating the quality of a film festival with the relative size of their programs; while films can't find an audience because screens are not available, Marlow argues that film festivals can truly show their quality and commitment to these artists by showing fewer films. I guess he's saving the poor filmmakers from being exploited by the cash-generating festival machine. I think this is one of the most condescending ideas I have ever read; our festival featured over 220 films this year and I was proud to show each title among them. Marlow expands his straw man by arguing that the future of festivals should be to set up revenue-sharing models, moving the festival experience on-line in conjunction with VOD and DVD strategies. I have no beef with festivals that set up post-event revenue packages that include multiple platforms for filmmakers, but to claim that anything else is exploitation, to say that festivals are better for featuring fewer films and then to hold up Telluride, the most venerated of American festivals, as proof that brevity equals quality (despite the fact that Telluride programs films from Cannes and American independent distributors and rarely ever features undistributed American independent films) shows me that, like so many folks who feel free to saddle film festivals with the economic burden of replacing distribution in a movie theater, Marlow doesn't seem to know much about how film festivals work.

Each paragraph of the piece contradicts the previous one, exception taken and then used to bolster a later argument; Is this a strategy? A philosophy? Is the future of independent filmmaking, marketing and audience building really limited to a set top box and DVD? Of course not. What Marlow is really rejecting here is community, and I don't mean virtual spaces and networks, but cities and towns, physical communities across the country that want to share in the art of cinema. There is a presumption of access here, a presumption that people everywhere want to watch films online, want to pay for set top boxes so they can rent films, that seeing films at all is more important than how they are seen. Thankfully, both are important. The reality is that festivals are integral to the development of those audiences, building them by way of grassroots marketing in the real world.

Sure, festivals continue to build on-line community and word of mouth, but local, regional and national audiences for films still matter; the people at the screenings matter. Festivals continue to be showcases for filmmakers to share their work and serve an important purpose for countless communities around the country to explore the state of cinema in a way they otherwise could not. As the frustration grows at the fact that distribution has become more ruthless, as independent distributors gauge the relative success of their films against the numbers that are put up by so-called crossover films that bring in previously unheard of box office, there is a clear tendency for the marketplace to look for other revenue streams. But why punish and bad-mouth festivals and their purpose? Festivals want to grow and develop to meet the needs of filmmakers and audiences, but if festivals are being forced to become a mere subset of the theatrical distribution model, something valuable is lost in the process. Square pegs, round holes and nobody wins.

Some short thoughts on recent obsessions...

-- I have been sitting with a bag of popcorn in hand, watching the instant reactions to the Cannes Film Festival fly around the world at lightning speed. As one who likes to blog about films at film festivals, I understand the phenomenon intimately. For me, writing about movies is a way of thinking about them. Period. I don't pretend to be a critic or an accurate gauge of commercial value or appeal, but I do love to think about film and writing has proven a reliable way to organize my head and get my mind around a movie. So, I have been enjoying most of the feedback about the films at Cannes, including what I think is a pretty interesting comment in the midst of my Desplechin adoration from Ronald Bergan, a writer I admire greatly; To have Bergan take a dump on my irrational exuberance is something I will wear like a badge of honor. I even found Eric Kohn's infamous live-blogging (via SMS) of the Indiana Jones movie to be rather hilarious, if only for the line "Even Lerman digs the chase" which, if you know Lerman, says it all.

It is the speed of criticism at Cannes that seems to have become this year's hot button issue; Speed is the new relevance, the topic du jour that is reshaping the way that people who care about movies talk about them amongst themselves. The lines seem distinctly drawn; the hysterical desire to post first, to get your review up and online before anyone else does, has created, in the age of instant on-line publishing, an environment where people are thinking less about film and offering a raw, ill-considered opinion immediately after a screening. On the other hand, film writing seems to have become a lot more personal, democratic and free, as much about the process of attending a film and a festival as it is about the movies themselves. Hell, if a security guard snubs the wrong blogger at the screening room door, their entire take on the film and festival can be muddied by the gray clouds of personal outrage. Which, as it relates to Cannes, makes for fun reading (if half-assed thinking); this is the home of class warfare amongst badge holders, after all, the place where film goers wear their access on their sleeve and where being turned away from screenings is a rite of passage that leads to discovery.

My own opinion? Who cares?! The number of people like me who wake up every day and read about cinema on-line is minuscule and as a free-thinking grown-up who has his own tastes and proclivities, I know I am capable of separating wheat from chaff. Over time, I think any reader comes to each individual website or publication knowing the personality of the writers, knowing what to expect in terms of tone, tastes and opinions. There are entire sites I just won't read, because I know what they will say before they say it. There are writers out there that I consider to be friends who drive me absolutely nuts with their blogs, but I read them anyway, if only to mark the moments when our thinking intersects and to shake my fist at the moments where they make me crazy. Reading opinion is a form of entertainment, pure and simple. Any film critic who takes himself seriously enough to think that what he or she is writing is anything more a single voice in the wind, one of a thousand sources of opinion that flock together and diverge like a cloud of birds over a fallow field, well, I respectfully disagree. Not all opinions are equally expressed, equally well-informed, have equal institutional muscle and brand identity behind them, but they are all a part of the same discussion.

As it relates to hasty reactions, well, I think there are many good writers who can dazzle with focused ideas five minutes after a single screening and there are those who can't. There are those who only seem to care about a film's commercial prospects because they are concerned with the business of film, and those who stand outside the commercial discussion and take each film in turn. There is nothing wrong with speed, per se, only sloppy thinking. For a reader, be they an industry professional or not, the written word only means so much. In the end, you have to see it for yourself. So, it's been great to live through another Cannes from Brooklyn, but I so wish I was there again, to see things for myself, to add my voice to the fray and try to do justice to my own thinking on the films I see. But until I do, I'll enjoy the messy marketplace of ideas from the sidelines and get ready to play catch up this fall.

-- I have also been noticing some serious trends in thinking, most disturbingly (and honestly) relayed via Anthony Kaufman's piece about auteur fatigue. While it may or may not be true that this year's festival program is somehow tethered to the tried and true, is it not the case that this happens every year at Cannes? Each May, the film industry descends on Cannes for the big show, expectations through the roof because of the slate of artists whose films will be debuting at the festival and the excitement of two champagne-soaked weeks on the Côte d'Azur. And each year, the fantasy of the films at Cannes fails to live up to the reality of the movies themselves. How could they possibly be better than our dreams? I wonder what it would be like to be the Dardenne Brothers, to create what has been almost universally praised as a very good film (Lorna's Silence) only to receive as feedback that your film is a lot like, well, the other films that you've made; The Dardenne Brothers have become too much like the Dardenne Brothers.

I don't get it, but I know it's real; there is a constant battle between hope, expectation, the past and the film itself. Nothing stands on its own merit. Instead, things must be not as they are, but as we hope they will be. The movie, full of its own ideas and logic, has been replaced by the story of the movie in our minds. The frames projected on the screen are replaced by a give and take between the film itself and our desire to find something of our own invention. This tug-of-war then expands into a shared critical fantasy. Opinions calcify around the heartbeat of the collective dream of the movie and it becomes something else entirely; the story of itself, the business of making the film, the press conference, the film as a chapter in a career, single film in a festival line-up compared and contrasted against other films that share only a temporal place in a program, the order in which the film is seen, another afternoon in the theater instead of on the golden beaches. The internet hums with news of the film's place in the world, fixing it in time. Eventually, maybe a year later, maybe next week, the movie will show up in a movie theater. A patron will buy a ticket and sit and watch in the collective darkness. What will it be by then?

In other news...

-- Mothertongue, the new Nico Muhly record, is available on iTunes. If you enjoy modern musical composition, grab it. If you're interested in new ideas for the interplay between vocal and instrumental composition, this record is dynamite and state-of-the-art in its diverse use of the human voice. I can't really describe it, so maybe give a listen to the samples and grab it if it strikes your fancy. My fancy? Well and truly struck.

-- As Mr. Michael Tully mentioned, I will be contributing to Hammer To Nail in the coming months. I am so honored to be asked and hope you'll take the time to drop by that site and give a look. My intention, as with all things, is to write about what moves, inspires and excites me about these films. I hope to do them justice.

Oh, the pleasures of being a 21st Century cinephile. I just watched IFC's Cannes Cam coverage of Arnaud Desplechin's red carpet for Un Conte De Noël, and I know the phrase is cliché, but really, only at Cannes. Wow. It is interesting; When this film has its US Theatrical release, I wonder if any of this will even seem possible? The general indifference of US audiences to foreign films being what it is, it feels refreshing to see something like what just happened at Cannes, well, happen at all. If the reviews are any indication, perhaps it can transcend... Enough of my blathering, let's watch worlds collide, shall we?