Karina on SpoutBlog

Under discussion:

The Limey  (1999)

Natural Causes  (2008)

Cook County  (2008)

The Eternal City  (2008)

Finally, Lillian, and Dan  (2008)

On Friday evening, I moderated a panel at the Denver Film Festival called DIY FIlmmaking in an Indie Apocalypse. I pitched the panel to the festival in the hopes that by talking to actual filmmakers who have recently made moderately successful films (mostly) independent of the system that the “sky is falling” fatalism insists is broken, we could start to expand this dialogue beyond doomcasting and push towards options and solutions. I’m not sure we repaired the ever-expanding crack in the firmament in one night, but certainly the six filmmakers who took the stage offered a new perspective on the supposed crisis.

You can listen to a recording of the full panel here, but if you don’t have 73 minutes to spare, after the jump I’ve isolated what I think were five major themes of the evening. Here’s more info on the filmmakers and their films:

David Pomes, director of Cook County.

Jason Goodman, director and co-star of The Eternal City.

Mike Gibisser, director/cinematographer of Finally, Lillian and Dan.

Alex Cannon, Paul Cannon and Michael Lerman, co-directors of Natural Causes.

Darren Dean, producer and co-writer of Prince of Broadway.

Issue 1: If you never crack the door open, it can’t hit you on the way out

The system may be broken, but that’s not necessarily an obstacle or a disappointment to filmmakers who were never part of that system in the first place. “I don’t think the sky is falling, I think the ceiling has been lowered,” said Darren Dean. “I’ve kind of stumbled into this, I wasn’t part of this world before, but [now] I’m going to festivals and meeting incredible people.”

Not only that, but Alex Cannon sees a bright side. “If anything, we’re at an economic advantage. As much as we’re all losing our jobs, it gives us time to write. As much as things are expensive to make, to make a movie today is infinitely less expensive than many years ago.”

Several panaleists stressed that the hard times are inevitable in an industry that’s predictably cyclical. “We’re not making Yugos or an 80s hair band,” said Dean. “We will not outlive our usefulness.” Michael Lerman agreed. “This is something that happens: things collapse and new companies are brought up.”

Issue 2: The 90s never happened, but the future isn’t here yet.

Remember that part in The Limey, where Peter Fonda says that the whole mythology of “The Sixties” was, in reality, a much smaller, shorter phenomenon?  “It was just ‘66 and early ‘67,” he says. “That’s all there was.” It seems like the mythology of 90s independent film is due for a similar re-evalution. The filmmakers on the panel had mixed feelings regarding the legacy of the previous decade, and how to move forward.

“I think the old way was a little too good to be true, where people were making films and selling them for millions of dollars,” said David Pomes. “I don’t think the sky is falling. I really just think things are changing, and people need to adapt. I think it’s almost think a new beginning.” Paul Cannon concurred. “There’s never been money for filmmakers.”

Jason Goodman agreed that what’s left of the 90s model is becoming extinct for non-dependent filmmakers, but warned that distribution and consumption structures have not yet caught up with the technological revolution that has incited a surge in production. “I think the major problem right now is a technological problem. I think the sky is falling, in the perspective of the old guard. The people who are still in control and now they really don’t know how to control the amount of films being made, because technology is allowing more films to be made. And technology is going to have to figure out how to sift through all these films and get [them] to their audience. Which will happen, but people are scared. It’s a sea change. The audience will be able to find the quality they want, without seeing it through the eyes of a major studio and their arbitrary rules. I think it’s great. I think it’s fantastic. I just wish we could get to this point, and we weren’t in this moment right now.”

Though everyone on the panel seemed hopeful that new technology would eventually make indie film consumption easier, a number of filmmakers noted a bit of ambivalence over destroying the old exhibition models completely. “There is a certain nostalgia for the old model,” said Mike Gibisser. “There’s something to be said for shooting on film as opposed to digital, to be said for seeing a film in a theatrical setting as opposed to on YouTube. So there’s a resistance to just giving in to the new model as well, which is causing a problem, but I also think there’s a certain amount of worth to that resistance.”

Pomes is also reluctant to give up the theatrical experience. “A lot of people think it’s a waste to do a theatrical release, and you’ll probably lose money doing it, but I still think there’s something to gain from it. We’ve had [DVD] offers, but I’m not sure who’s gonna rent it. Despite what people say about the cost of theatrical release…for a film like ours, there’s really nothing pushing it except for maybe some good press that we can get from a theatrical release.” Later in the panel, the subject of Ballast came up — specifically, its failure to catch on with audiences despite a distribution plan hand-tailored by its director. “[Ballast] got more free press than anything I’ve seen in my life,” argued Pomes. “If you’re in the industry, that’s all you heard about for weeks, is Ballast. Granted, at the movie theater they might not have done great…they’re not going to have millions people come see their movie, it’s not that kind of movie. But in terms of ancillary sales, it’s gotta help.”

Ultimately, the most compelling reason to hold on to the theatrical experience may have little to do with filmmaking. Says Alex Cannon, “It’s a lot harder to get dates to come back to your house to watch a movie than it is to go to a theater.”

Issue 3: Sustainability

During the Q & A session, critic Joe Leydon referenced a conversation he had with a friend, regarding the very small number of filmmakers who are still working truly independently at the age of 50. “How much longer do you think you can keep doing this?” he asked the panel. “How long can you keep asking for favors from friends, maxing out credit cards — how many movies do you think you have in you?

For the most part, this question seemed to tap into a common anxiety among the panelists. Said Paul Cannon, “As much as you’re worried about getting your movie out there, you’re also worried about getting funding for your next film, because you maxed out all your credit cards and you called in all your favors and you can’t do it again. Not for a number of years.”

“I’m done. I can’t do it again — at least, not by myself,” said Mike Gibisser. He went on to argue for a recalibration of expectations, and the definition of success. “It seems like the system is changing, and needs to do so necessarily. I have a more modest expectation of what I want the budget to be, and the festival circuit is an alternate distribution system. And that’s exciting to me, and if I could find money out of going through the system, to make the next modest film that would be great. But as the tale was told to me by another filmmaker, you might as well not approach someone who’s thinking about funding the movie with a budget of $20,000, because they’re going to say, “Well, clearly, you can’t afford a star, it’s gonna look grainy and awful, so no thanks.” So unless you produce a budget that’s over $50k or $100k, you come up against this wall. Maybe with different distribution technologies the system is already heading in this direction — i don’t know, because I’m so outside it–but I think that is the change that would help the DIY/independent filmmaker, is being more accepting of that more modest desire, as opposed to getting bought at Sundance.”

Several of the panelists suggested that even if they put everything they had into this first feature, ideally it will function as a calling card, and thus lead to new opportunities and other project. “If you’re fortunate enough to have made a good film and people take notice of it, you will make new friends,” said Darren Dean. “Your circle grows. If we don’t find enough friends, for me this is probably the last project. But I don’t see that happening.”

The consensus seemed to be that doing it the hardscrabble, DIY way is not something they’d go through again if given the choice. “As filmmakers, you want less compromise in all aspects,” said Jason goodman. “I don’t want to do the same thing over again. I want to go up a step.”

Issue 4: Managing Rejection

An audience member who said that his own film had been rejected from all 12 festivals he’d heard back from (including Denver) out of 50 applications asked the panelists for advice. Sort of. “How much of [festival acceptance] do you think is your film, and how much of it is based on someone you know?” The panelists shared their own stories of rejection and acceptance.

Lerman: 12 out of 50 is really, really early.

Pomes: I’ve been rejected so many times. The film festival system is, I think, flawed. Denver called me and said, “We’d like to see your film.” Every festival we got into was something like that, with the exception of the festival we premiered at, SXSW.

Gibisser: We spent a long time submitting, we spent six months submitting, and we were met with rejections. You also have to pay attention ot — and I was completely naive about this at the time — but festivals have personalities. We actually didn’t get our first festival invite for more than a year. it was a year and five months after the film was finished. But we played four festivals in the past few months.

Goodman: Don’t get bitter. We’re nobodies. This is just luck. I’m so fortunate just to be here.

Issue 5: The Romance of Hammer Time

In other words, there’s something to be said for keeping your process so DIY that it stays personal. Michael Lerman: “The market is so saturated, that so many of the theatrical releases are failing. While I would have loved if our film was sold theatrically, we did have a more gratifying experience than [some filmmakers who sold their films theatrically], because our film is so personal, and we’ve been able to go to so many places and talk about it.” And even in the case of small films that have been sold recently and have found an audience, a personalized rollout seems to be the way to go. Lerman says, “Even the distribution solutions that ARE working are different kind of models that are built specifically for a film.”

“MC Hammer used to sell tapes out of the back of his car,” reminded Alex Cannon. “There’s something very romantic about communicating directly with your audience.”

Under discussion:

The Times of Harvey Milk  (1983)

Psycho  (1998)

Finding Forrester  (2000)

Gus Van Sant’s best-known films (which are not the same as his best films) have historically involved a certain grappling with What Hollywood Does. Hollywood saves a poor-but-smart kid from his environment (and himself) with the help of a bearded, platitude-spouting Robin Williams. Hollywood saves a poor-but-smart kid from his environment (and himself) with the help of a bearded, laughable slang-spouting Sean Connery. Hollywood flatters its flavors of the month by shoe-horning them into paint-by-numbers remakes of aged cinematic game changers. Etc. Anyone cognizant of Van Sant’s turn-of-the-century Hollywood period shouldn’t be surprised by his willing ability to play it straight.

To say that Van Sant continues to “play it straight” with Milk isn’t meant as a pun regarding sexuality, exactly, but said pun wouldn’t be entirely off the mark. If his Hollywood trilogy was what Van Sant needed to get from his early meditations on the emotional lives of low-lifes to his much-vaunted Death Trilogy, then that most recent career phase may be what Van Sant needed to work through in order to merge the first two modes of his career. Milk takes the defining moments of a subculture once perceived by the mainstream as deviant, and runs it through the mill of What Hollywood Does, thereby sanitizing its hero for feel-good mainstream martyrhood. Van Sant’s laundering of an outsider hero through the very inside mechanism of the Hollywood biopic has been variously described as heroic and distasteful. As of press time, I think it’s somewhere in between.

If you’ve seen the superior documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, you know the story: in his early 40s, a newly-out Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) moved from the East Coast to San Francisco and opened up a camera shop on Castro Street, in what would grow to become the mecca of gay San Francisco. In the early 70s, though, the gay community was still subject to the bigotry (and physical intimidation and attacks) of some straight neighbors and virtually all of the SFPD. As an activist fighting for better treatment of his community, Harvey Milk actively reached out to other groups–blacks, Hispanics, even Teamsters–to form coalitions against the powers that were. After losing a number of local elections but gaining in popularity and notoriety with each one, Milk won a seat on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors alongside future senator Diane Feinstein, and Dan White, a conservative former firefighter from a neighboring Irish-Catholic district. After a serious of personal and political conflicts with Milk, White submitted his resignation to the Board, and then showed up at City Hall the next day and shot Milk and mayor George Moscone. White’s lawyer successfully argued that his client had been mentally incapacitated at the time of the killings due to an unusual consumption of sugar the previous evening.

As in Good Will Hunting, here Van Sant does find a few spots to wedge in the haunting, contemplative beauty that governs his best films, but evocative imagery is not Milk’s primary concern. Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black mold Milk out of historical fact and on the frame of disappointingly conventional biopic tropes, including an unnecessary and somewhat illogical framing device and a heavy dependence on thematic foreshadowing.

Surprisingly, some of these tropes are employed with such grandness that they could potentially be read as something a step above Biopic 101; they could almost be read as clear-eyed camp. For instance, though Van Sant never gets into the alleged Twinkie binge nor White’s trial for Milk’s assassination and the riots that ensued, he does show Milk and lovers and friends bonding over sugary treats at several key points in the narrative, most notably in a birthday cake-in-bed scene after the (unseen) first coupling of Milk and his long-time lover Scott (a brooding, James Franco — so humorless as to be unrecognizable as an Apatow Player). At some level, this functions as not-so-veiled comment on the merit of the so-called “Twinkie Defense“; on the other, there’s something so incredibly heavy-handed about the image of Harvey Milk with whipped cream on his nose joking that he won’t live to the age of 50. It’s almost something out of Hold Me While I’m Naked-era George Kuchar — a dip into What Hollywood Does that somehow seems to simultaneously swipe at it.

But not all of Milk’s nods to Hollywood expectations are as stylized; in fact, in its dealing with Milk’s own sexuality, the film is frustratingly restrained. Penn, though exemplary when embodying Milk in political mode (the film’s various scenes of rallies, protests and vigils are as rousing as this sort of thing gets), often comes off as cartoonish when the topic of sex comes up. Black’s script reduces its protagonist to a doddering, even stodgy old man in the midst of the 70s bacchanal. Often seen doting on young proteges but rarely flirting, when Milk does take lovers, their presence in the film is so awkwardly shoehorned in that when one of the live-in variety is disposed of suddenly, the hyper-speed with which Milk moves on seems so troublingly unrealistic that one wonders why the character was ever introduced in the first place. For a film about the fight for the right to sexual freedom, Milk is shockingly sexless.

As baked into the script, this makes a certain kind of sense. Penn’s Milk encourages gays and lesbians all across the state to come out of the closet, based on the rationale that if bigots knew they were trying to restrict the rights of friendly, harmless faces in the community, said bigots would feel bad and back down. But Milk himself is concerned with managing an image of gayness in his personal life that’s based on reminding the straight world of his identity solely through words (no movie character has ever verbally announced his sexual preference so many times in a single film), and not appearance or actions. Just as he, after a powerful gay publishing tycoon warned that he was “too old to be a hippie,” traded in his faded denim twin sets and ragged pony tail for a three-piece suit and clean shave, Milk warns his boyfriends and friends to stay out of bathhouses and to not use canvassing as an excuse for cruising.  The character doesn’t see the irony in this — for him, it’s simply an effort to make sure their movement maintains credibility as a serious struggle for civil and human rights and is not reduced by outsiders to a fight for the right to get laid — but as a mirror to Milk’s mainstream ambitions, that irony is unavoidable. It’s a film about the politics of sex, in which the political process itself not only takes precedence over but seems to stand in for the complexities of real life sexuality.

There’s an argument to be made that this is the only way to make a film about this man, set in that place and time, that could be palatable to a mainstream audience, to the point where maybe it could even make a point about a certain present-day political fight better than any number of ill-conceived boycotts. I’m not sure I buy that argument, although if in the end the film’s accidental timing helps to speed along the current fight for equal rights, that’s a good thing. But if such real-world issues weren’t on the table –– if the film wasn’t being asked to do triple-duty as biopic, Oscar contender and teaching tool –– I wonder: if it was going to require such homogenization, is the life and death of Harvey Milk something that should have been tailored for mainstream consumption in the first place?

Under discussion:

Cleo from 5 to 7  (1962)

Juliet of the Spirits  (1965)

Sans Soleil  (1982)

Sweetie  (1989)

Ratcatcher  (1998)

Fat Girl  (2001)

The Criterion Collecton has opened up an online streaming shop, where twenty films can currently be watched online for $5. Your five dollars gives you the right to watch the film as many tines as you like for a week, and for a full year after that they’ll apply a $5 credit to the purchase of that DVD from their online store. Titles available now include Juliet of the Spirits, Cleo From 5 to 7, and Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil.

Also — and this may be old news, but it’s new to me — Criterion is curating a “festival” of free films every month in partnership with The Auteurs. This month’s festival focuses on “Cruel Stories of Youth,” and includes such films as Sweetie, Ratcatcher, and Fat Girl. More here.

Via Fimoculous