Funny how, in the indie film world, falls from grace tend to begin before you’ve even hit the top. Yesterday, Lance Hammer’s Ballast was nominated for four Gotham Independent Film Awards — the most of any single film — including Breakthrough Director and Best Picture. Meanwhile, the critical darling is, for maybe the first time since its Sundance premiere, provoking sour responses. Armond White wrote a scathing review of the film attacking it as evidence that “African-American life is imprisoned by the art fallacies of Indie filmmaking, controlled by white liberal condescension” — but he’s Armond White, so that was somewhat expected. Somewhat less expected was this Hollywood Elsewhere post, where Jeff Wells pounces on White’s review like it’s the smoking yellow cake that makes the case that Ballast is overrated.
After quoting liberally from White’s review, Wells offers a snide, unverified bit of gossip as confirmation of the other critic’s thesis, and then essentially wishes the film good riddance:
Hammer is “a rich kid,” a producer friend told me yesterday. It all fits. Today is the final day to see Ballast at Manhattan’s Film Forum.
Because of course, Armond White has never fallen for a rich kid’s vision of another culture before.
All this, as if Ballast is even going to be seen by enough people to cause any sort of danger with its (to my mind non-existant) “white liberal condescension.” The self-distributed drama won’t even have much time to take advantage of any bump in local interest based on the IFP-awarded nods, because after its two week run at FIlm Forum wraps tonight, it’s scheduled to hop to the somewhat less illustrious Cinema Village for just one week before moving on to other cities. I know nothing of Hammer’s personal finances (other than that he worked in the art department on a handful of Hollywood blockbusters, whatever kind of personal fortune that’s good for), but it seems like smearing a self-distributed indie on the verge of a roll-out, even if that roll-out *is* trustfund funded (and from what I’ve heard, it’s not exactly that simple), is pure bad form.
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth