In reading the reaction to today’s announcement that Newsweek film critic David Ansen has joined the Los Angeles Film Festival as its Artistic Director (congrats to David, and to my friend and colleague Doug Jones, who received a much-deserved promotion, and to the LAFF for finding their man), a number of lights switched on for me, most of which have been flickering for weeks now. It’s been a tough couple of years for print critics and film criticism in general, and with Ansen’s appointment and the recent wrap of the AFI Fest (programmed by film critic Robert Koehler), it seems like critics are finding refuge among the ranks of professional film programmers like, well, me. Anne Thompson makes a case for the change in her analysis of Ansen’s move when she writes:
“Who better than a critic to make the final picks on the LAFF?...As journalism becomes more and more inhospitable to film critics, film festivals become a viable alternative. Ansen landed at LAFF. And there’s still a position open at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which mounts the New York Film Festival and books the Walter Reade Theatre, for a full-time programmer to replace Kent Jones, who left to work with Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation. Several critics are in contention for that slot, including LA Weekly survivor Scott Foundas. I’d argue for Foundas to keep doing what he does so well. But what future can he reasonably count on…?”
Which, you know, makes the idea of film programming sound a little bit, well, like a bomb shelter; a place to hide out while the world collapses around you and hopefully you can get back to normal once all of the madness dies away. What it doesn’t do, really, is advocate for the reality of film programming, the meaning and importance of the job to a festival, an audience, a community and, probably most importantly, festival colleagues who will be called upon to execute the million details involved in putting on a large event. Which is not to say that David Ansen or Robert Koehler aren’t great programmers, but I think the perception and the reality of the press in addressing this new wave of critics-turned-programmers misses one of the great chasms between the two jobs: No one has begun to describe the dissonance between thinking and acting like a film critic, which entails giving an honest, personal assessment of a film (good or bad), and the constant compromises required by festival programming. In one job, you serve an audience of anonymous readers who seek out your opinion (which you give in a relatively unfettered form, if you’re any good) and in the other, you’re serving both your audience and the industry, the very same filmmakers, actors and distributors you may have taken to task as a critic.
It is interesting that Anne mentions Scott Foundas, an excellent film writer who serves on the NYFF selection committee, as Scott recently talked with Robert Koehler as part of his coverage of the AFI Fest;
“Our first conversations about this [job] really began almost at this time last year,” Koehler adds. “From my end, I just wanted to get much more involved with programming. Not programming film series, which I’ve been doing, or coming up with a juicy little wish list and then phoning it off to the folks who really do the spade work in terms of getting the films. What I wanted to do was blend the conceptual side of it with the spade work.”
Koehler’s appointment was not without its share of raised eyebrows. Writing about the hire last April, Cinematical blogger Peter Martin (himself a former AFI Fest employee) deemed it an “odd move” while quoting at length from a Koehler essay in the Canadian film quarterly Cinema Scope that chided North American festival programmers for their laziness and herd mentality: “The essence of interesting, vital festival programming is an intelligent argument for a certain kind of cinema — this kind, not that kind.” With his new job, Martin surmised, Koehler would get a chance “to put his money where his mouth is.”
Implicit in Martin’s provocation was the bane of every film programmer’s existence: how to challenge an audience without alienating them? How, in Koehler’s case, for a passionate champion of radical and avant-garde filmmaking (his “certain kind of cinema” in a nutshell) to program a festival with movies that Joe the Plumber might also want to see? As Koehler himself puts it, it all comes down to “finding a balance of tendencies, of kinds of films. You certainly want to avoid both a vanilla drift toward the middle on the one hand, and you also want to avoid an ideological purity that veers on the obnoxious on the other.”
First of all, I love Koehler for understanding and articulating the idea of “spade work”, because for me, that’s right on. But maybe it is the privilege of criticism, the ability to look at work from an idealistic distance, that makes the second part of his statement ring as, let’s just say, diplomatic. I’ll say what he can’t say; When you’re dealing with a sponsor driven, non-profit event, you can’t show all the movies you love and you have to show a few you don’t like. Unlike the process of developing a critical corpus and a theoretical vision for “a certain type of film”, the job of festival programming is not about having great taste (which, by the way, everyone thinks they have). It is about, as Koehler rightly states, “finding a balance” between a complex set of interests that do not exist in the critical world.*
For most of us in the world of film programming, life is a series of qualifiers; we like to think that by assembling a program from the available, relevant films in our festival window that will agree to play the festival, we’ve worked hard to bring the very best that we can to our audiences, given the unique circumstances of each event. There are a few out there who, because of their size and status in the festival marketplace, have the unique privilege of saying no far more often than they hear it from others. Depending on the demands of the festival mission (i.e. whether or not you’re going to play the “premieres” game—it is duly noted that AFI dumped their premiere status requirements this year, as I did too in my first year in charge of a film program), most of us in the film festival world are, let’s be honest, not in a position where high profile, high quality projects are beating down the door to be a part of our event. So, when your festival is looking to hire someone to take over the film program, finding a professional with name recognition and a long history of quality relationships in the world of film PR makes a LOT of sense. I totally get it.
But, in welcoming my critic friends into the community of programmers, I offer a little bit of hard-won wisdom; film programming is a harbor for constant disappointment. We’re told “no” constantly, we have to tell other people “no” all the time, we do our best in negotiating all sorts of tricky problems between a multitude of interests. Now, obviously, people as gifted as David Ansen and Robert Koehler are amazing film scholars and have proven through their criticism and programming work, time and again, that they are excellent at what they do. I have no doubts that their work will be superior to my own in every way. But I do find it curious that so many festival directors seem to be looking to the world of criticism to find their programmers, and more importantly, that an honest discussion about what that means for programmers and critics alike hasn’t really started. So, maybe we can start now? Honest opinions welcome.
* By the way, Robert Koehler also has a huge advantage that most programmers can only dream about; he’s going to pack the house every time because his festival gives away all of their tickets for free. Which begets a note on the recent press regarding AFI’s free film tickets: They were paid for. By Audi. Who then gave them away. Putting that model out there as the next big idea in film festival management is a little bit like hitting the Mega Millions and then advocating that the lottery is the best new model for obtaining personal wealth. AFI was great in their acknowledgement of this incredibly special, generous sponsorship, but the press needs a reminder; let’s not trend “insanely good fortune” as being a reasonable approach to the business.
Just a quick note of welcome to Anne Thompson, whose must-RSS blog Thompson On Hollywood moves to the indieWIRE blogging community on Monday. I am sure that anyone reading this blog is also a longtime reader of Anne’s work, and I have to say, as a part-time writer whose own blog is little more than an opportunity to opine now and then on the films and issues that move me, it is more than a little bit intimidating to have a full-time journalist using the indieWIRE blog platform to break news. That said, with the recent integration of on and off-site blogs into a single indieWIRE blog feed, I have come to think of everyone as being part of the same community anyway (whether or not they agree is a totally different story). Regardless, it is nice to see indieWIRE and Anne are able to get a deal done to bring her excellent, hard work to the site; the partnership makes perfect sense and I look forward to seeing indieWIRE even more tuned into the work of the Los Angeles filmmaking community. The film world keeps getting smaller and more accessible and this can be nothing but a good thing for those who are passionate about the day to day workings of the community. Welcome Anne!
If you haven’t heard, and how could you not hear by now, Comic-Con International is raging in San Diego this week. Hollywood has arrived in force to launch its new slate of fantasy films to an audience of true believers. So, perhaps, instead of letting this event pass without mention—what could I possibly add to the news being generated moment by moment over 3,000 miles away—you’ll permit me a couple of words to properly acknowledge my age and the nature of my cultural condition.
I am 38 years old and, I am suddenly convinced, absolutely, 100% culturally irrelevant in modern day America.
I have never read a volume of the Harry Potter series, nor have I been moved to pick up one of the Twilight novels; I assumed they were written for people roughly 25 years younger than I. I did go to see the first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, on opening night in 2001 and, while I was mildly entertained by the man who spilled a giant tray full of chicken nuggets, popcorn and two enormous red slushees all over the woman (presumably his wife) berating him for arriving late (and for this I will forever love you, Regal Ewalk cinemas), I have never really understood the obsession surrounding the Potter films.
For me, an outsider with a mild curiosity about the literary phenomenon, the film was insular and self-referential, the narrative reduced to shorthand, a series of checked boxes that (I assume) made sure to cover all of the narrative highlights with a wink and a nod to the converted. It was like watching an oil change when you (like me) know nothing about cars; someone waves a long stick in your face and asks if it looks alright to you and you say “yes” because you don’t want to appear to be an ill-informed asshole.
There was nothing wrong with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that wasn’t wrong with a million other movies that didn’t connect with me, but this movie seemed to come with an obligation; You had to be in on the story before arriving and you had to love every minute of it!. While I did enjoy the audience’s squeals of delight at the recognition of their favorite characters and situations, I was sufficiently bored by the movie’s lack of magic and wonder to not bother reading any of the books or see another Harry Potter film. I have tried, over the intervening years, to catch some of the Harry Potter movies as they rake in the cash on cable and network television, but I’ve only managed grab a few minutes here and there (A troll in a bathroom? Gary Oldman in jail? Ralph Fiennes impersonating the Emperor from Return Of The Jedi?), and I’ve never found anything to inspire or convert me to an awareness of this story’s greatness.
I know Harry Potter is not featuring at Comic-Con (that is so 2007), but you get my point; I’m old.
This past June, on a trip back home to see my family, I sat down on the floor of my father’s living room and, at the insistence of my stepmother, watched the first 40 minutes of Twilight before falling asleep (I never fall asleep watching a movie). Once again, I just found little to inspire me and this time, my own expectations were high; I am very much an admirer of Catherine Hardwicke’s films and have long considered Kristen Stewart to be the finest actress of her generation (she’s blown me away ever since we had the film Speak at the Nantucket Film Festival all the way back in 2004). As a romance and a vampire film, I found Twilight deeply conservative; which aspects of this story set the imaginations of young readers on fire? Where was the lust, the rebellion? Perhaps in a world flooded with sexual images and a constant barrage of meaningless chatter, the unconsummated sexual urges of two inarticulate young people pass for sexy. Whatever floats your boat.
Just Do It.
And so, as Comic-Con International rages on this week, I am filled with the awareness that my concerns and interests have fallen on hard times in popular culture. I know that it happens to everyone, the dreaded moment when you look around you and suddenly, you’re, well, old. Try as I may to get interested in the ideas and stories that dominate popular culture, it’s clear to me that, at 38 years, I have aged beyond the demographic that matters. And while I have never been wild about most popular entertainment, my generation had Star Wars, MTV and a seeming promise to itself to never grow up. At 38, almost all of my school mates from 20-30 years ago are on Facebook, almost all of them still engaged in popular and youth cultur on some level. We are the generation that gave birth to the internet, to punk rock and hardcore, to rap music. Even still, now more than ever before, modern culture, specifically entertainment aimed at a younger demographic, things with which I I used to try and keep up, well, it all seems more distant and more foreign, remote, detached from my own tastes and concerns.
I would never want to come across like an old man pissing on the excitement of young people; I couldn’t be happier than when I see a kid with a Harry Potter book open in front of her, oblivious to the world around her. Clearly, these stories were never meant for me. At the same time, it is an interesting feeling to be on the outside looking in, wondering if it is time or my own experience that has pulled me away from the things that seem to be capturing so many imaginations.
But then, just as feel a pang of regret, I am reminded of what it was like these past few weeks to watch the world venerating Michael Jackson as some sort of creative genius, the same man whose music and commercialism stood for everything I loathed in my own teenage years. At that time, the majority of commercial, Regan-era youth culture felt as if it was openly hostile to my conception of the world; it was hard not to take every shitty pop song and crappy, feel-good teen comedy (no, not the good ones) as a personal affront. How could you live during the Cold War under the national delusion that was Ronald Regan and not feel that the whole world was a big hoax? Today, Bush-era flag waving nonsense aside, it just doesn’t burn for me like it once did.
And while I am now inclined to take everything (and film in particular) on a case-by-case basis, to take the time to make up my own mind, it might be that once again the world is going crazy in praise of, well, shit. I’ll probably never know, because I no longer have any interest in placing my own rather irrelevant sensibility up against the ever-changing tide of youth worship; I’d rather celebrate what I love than rail against popular tastes, like some sort of Clint Eastwood on a dilapidated front porch. All of which is to say, as Comic-Con continues to thrive, trailers are debated, projects unveiled, and the kids line up to make eyes at Robert Pattinson*, I am happy to be on the sidelines, knowing what all the fuss is about and, for once, not minding that it has nothing to do with me.
* True story, my wife is just finishing her work on Remember Me, the new Robert Pattinson project. As I understand it, he is like a prisoner, with screaming girls and photographers hounding every step he takes. The production has been dogged by constant screaming and the sound of camera motors buzzing every time he steps into plain sight despite the fact that he is working on what appears to be a very heavy drama. I have to say, I don’t envy him at all, poor fella.
The coverage of this year’s Cannes Film Festival has me thinking about the festival in my sleep; I’m plotting, scheming and dreaming of going next year (but don’t I say that every year?) Eugene Hernandez, a true champion of independent and international cinema, recently wrote a resonant defense of Cannes in indieWIRE that deserves more attention. Eugene writes:
“What I’ve always loved about this fest is that people take cinema so seriously here. Movies ignite debates and stir arguments. Where else but in Cannes would moviegoers booing a film by a Danish art film director stir international media attention. Granted, Antichrist stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, but the immediate attention drawn by the contentious debut over the new Lars Von Trier film reiterated to me why Cannes matters. It matters because cinema still matters.“
“It is a very specific, very limited view. One or two films at the fest will have an impact beyond the cineaste community in this country. And more often than not, those films go to Cannes with a distributor or with the bidding war set up ahead of time…I don’t want Cannes to go away. Bless it, it serves its purpose brilliantly. But does it matter?”
I don’t think it should come as any surprise that I fervently agree with Eugene’s point of view on this issue; Cannes matters to me, so much so that I spend a portion of every day reading about the films, tracking the sales and watching snippets of press conference footage. Each year, Cannes is like a holiday for people like me, a slow-building fortnight of media hype and analysis featuring blow-by-blow details of the business of film coupled with the critical judgment passed upon filmmakers whose work sets the agenda for international art house cinema.
What is most interesting to me is that at this most-business oriented of film festivals, a place where the film market dominates the landscape (if not the headlines), Cannes maintains the highest level of artistic credibility by rejecting commercial concerns in its competition, which remains the heart and soul of the event. So while the city of Cannes is slathered in posters, billboards and standees announcing all sorts of cinematic dross from around the world, the festival does a brilliant job of training all eyes (and camera lenses) on the red carpet that ascends the steps of the Palais. If ever there were a perfect example of the literalism of “cinematic royalty”, the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, where every screening feels like a coronation, is it.
It is the aristocratic seriousness with which Cannes treats the art of film that makes the festival work; I half-expect to read a story about some king dozing off in the third act and ruining the commercial chances of one film or another. You laugh at the concept of Cannes, you feel excluded by its seemingly arbitrary hierarchies and arcane rules as you stand on the outside looking in, but like any great piece of showmanship, more than anything, you want to run away and join this particular circus. Unfortunately, for folks like me, passion only gets you so far; there are only so many seats in the Palais and only so many people who can afford to travel halfway around the world, donning the black ties and designer gowns required to occupy them.
Good Luck Getting In: The Palais Des Festivals In Cannes (Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage)
It is this anti-democratic strain in the festival that also proves David Poland’s argument to be important. Not specifically because he nails the underlying problem, which is not about the critical reaction to the films that play, but because he correctly identifies that there is a problem with the business for these films in America (and around the world). As I see it, the problem is not the movies themselves or audiences raised on Hollywood pap; in this country, auteur cinema suffers because the business of foreign film, the way in which the world sells these movies to American audiences, too often rejects the democratic, populist need in the American personality in favor of replicating the aristocratic tenor of business at the Palais.
As one of my colleagues correctly identified in a recent conversation, it is the dirty little secret of the international film sales business that the United States is a marginal business at best, a loss leader and waste of precious time at worst. The fate of foreign film in America, in other words, is left in hands of companies who really don’t understand the country outside of four or five metropolitan areas and who don’t have the time or resources to devote to the limited benefits of building a grassroots campaign in America for an undistributed film. It is almost forgivable, but ends up being frustrating; since these folks do not want to create a landscape where they end up competing against the models and strategies of their film-buying clients, if your film doesn’t have a sale, it doesn’t play outside of two or three major festivals in America. Period.
This is an issue for co-productions and national cinema funds; they are run with the same strategic precision that American studios use to keep films out of the hands of audiences until the seller is good and ready. The difference? While audiences can’t wait to see a film like Star Trek, very few people are beating down the door for the latest from European and Asian auteurs. This is how the “good and ready” becomes “never.” And filmmakers are generally powerless in this process; when did you last hear of an international director forsaking a crummy distribution deal in favor of self-distribution in the USA? It is unheard of.
That said, the business of distributing these films in the USA has, despite my early reservations and deep concerns, entered a new era, one where their availability has transcended any previous time in movie history. I am a complete convert to IFC and Magnolia’s day-and-date VOD model, not only because it provides unprecedented access to these films, but also because it isn’t so popular that it has replaced the theatrical experience. And as far challenging, art-house fare goes, is there anyone better than Sony Classics at the patient theatrical rollout?
Looking at the Cannes competition, IFC grabbed von Trier’s Antichrist (with the promise not to cut the film) and Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric, Sony acquired Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon—these films are not the next box office sensations (or maybe they will be, but expectations are realistic, I assume). Instead, we are fortunate to have a few, rare companies left who care about these films and are working to find a way to get them seen by as many people as possible. The model works, as far as I can tell, because it has democratized the movies, responding to audience demand for convenience and choice; these companies have learned to stop treating these films like rarified, precious objects and to get them in front of people, to try anything possible to build demand.
Which is the heart of the problem; there is a tremendous supply of foreign product and very little demand among domestic audiences. If I were a foreign sales company, the first step I would take would be to do whatever is necessary to get audiences to give a damn, to build demand and diverse outlets for my product. While it could be argued that this job falls squarely on domestic distributors, it is clearly the case that they are only part of the solution. Why do film festival screenings around the country sell out? Because audiences are still hungry for the thrill of the event, the special feeling of being first, of being part of something happening.
Cinema has lost its status as an event; the movie theater rarely feels like a special place these days. In Cannes, it is wonderful to be a part of the spectacle, to see seriousness celebrated and venerated, but black-tie formality doesn’t help the day-to-day struggle in the USA to build audiences. Serious films need, rather, to take themselves less seriously, to deign to market themselves. I am certainly not opposed to cinematic seriousness, but I also believe that America will only embrace seriousness when it is made accessible. I don’t mean dumbing things down, I mean making seriousness more democratic, more open. There have always been tough films; why do they thrive in some times and not others?
It is incredibly shortsighted to abandon the grassroots networks available in America, but foreign film in this country has a real PR problem; we have built the business to resemble the Palais, a long, inaccessible red carpet for the few. Only in the US, there are no flashbulbs and no throngs beating down the doors to get in. This must seem troubling after the triumphalism of most international film festivals; perhaps they expect audience demand as a birthright? But if Hollywood is kicking your ass, why not take your show on the road and get down and dirty with the people?
While there are changes afoot, the most important one of all is the change of mindset toward the US market, an understanding that we are a nation of immigrants looking for roots, for a way to discover the world. Foreign film needs to be sold to the public as a part of our culture, of who we are as a nation among nations. There are those who still think that the art of selling ends at the bottom of a distribution contract, but without a quick and whole-hearted acceptance of the democratic impulse of American moviegoers, demand will remain flat. Any meaningful embrace is mutual. These films can find an audience. But can the business?
This past January, I wrote about a press conference announcing the launch of the SXSW/ IFC partnership, a deal that saw IFC release four films on Video On Demand (VOD) simultaneous with their screenings at the SXSW Film Festival. At the time, I was deeply skeptical of the strategy and said as much right here on this blog:
…On the surface of things, playing (a film already on VOD in my festival’s market) might make sense. But there are new, competing interests at play. The energy generated by a live event for an unknown film with little marketing that will be a relative “risk” for film-goers unfamiliar with the movie is complicated by the economics of a VOD purchase; the film is $7 on VOD and as many people as you can fit into your house are able to watch the movie for a single purchase. Weigh that against the $9 per individual ticket a festival needs to charge in order to pay for the costs of showing the film. From an economic standpoint, VOD provides an incentive to stay home and watch. Can the festival “event” outweigh the incentive of staying home? That answer is easy when the world comes to a place like SXSW to party and take in the live music along with the interactive and film events. But at a smaller, regional festival like mine, I really don’t know what my audience would do.
Well, in the months since the announcement was made, Holly Herrick and I spoke with the team at IFC Films and decided to give it a try; instead of theorizing about how this might work and how it might impact us, we programmed Three Blind Mice, which I saw and loved at Toronto, and which was launched on IFC VOD the same day it screened at SXSW. The film was available for over two weeks on Comcast VOD in the Sarasota market before our festival screenings. No talent from the film attended our festival; the movie was simply screened twice as part of our narrative feature program.
Mattew Newton’s Three Blind Mice
Two things happened as a result; our audiences really liked the movie. More importantly, the film sold well and played to near-capacity audiences both times it screened. What was most interesting to me is that we had been handing out IFC’s Festival Direct marketing materials at our box office during the intervening weeks, and that piece even stated the availability of the film on Comcast VOD. No difference; attendance for and appreciation of Three Blind Mice was as good or better than every other film in the festival.
I’m no scientist (*ha*), but it seems to me we can draw some conclusions about our festival and this strategy from these two simple screenings. First, it seems that there are platform-dedicated audiences in our community, some prefer theaters, some VOD, and IFC’s central argument with Festival Direct, that the allure of the “live event”—that is, a film festival—can and will draw people into screenings, is correct. The other possible conclusion is that awareness and market penetration for VOD, particularly among older audiences, is not yet ready to challenge the energy and local marketing blitz the festival puts on. Whatever the case, it is fair to say that our Three Blind Mice experiment was a success; I wouldn’t hesitate to employ this strategy again at any of the festivals at which I work.
All of which is to say that I was wrong about the VOD/festival relationship, my assumptions did not turn out to be true, and I am happy to say so. I know not every market and every film will be able to make this work, but that is the case with any film, regardless of platform. I have to thank IFC Films for working with us on this, for allowing us to give it a try and to our audiences for unwittingly setting me straight. Now that we’ve tried it, I feel excited to try again, to see if we can’t work with interested parties to do more in the future to help these films find an audience. In the meantime, I’ve never been so glad to be wrong.
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