Producer/distributor as hero

[godardian]

I don't know a helluva lot about the power-hierarchies of the Hollywood and/or indie circuits, but I do know this: Any great film hitting the big screen first had to be "green-lighted" by someone willing to take a risk with a lot of money and their own asses on the line.

A little toast to Focus Features (nee USA Films), Sony Pictures Classics, the Good Machine/Killer Films axis, and anyone who ever said "yes" to the likes of 21 Grams, Safe, or Lost in Translation. They work harder for less, and we as an audience get more.

I begrudgingly include Miramax and the Weinsteins last. Their contributions cannot be denied, but I imagine the others I mentioned are a bit more gracious about things.

[TheVoiceOfNick]

I agree... without these indies that take risks, we'd be stuck with an endless array of "summer blockbusters" every season of the year... I mean, I love the work of people like Bruckheimer, but sometimes seeing a movie that doesn't have mass appeal or that tries to move the artform forward gives me more satisfaction.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Vivendi (StudioCanal, Canal+, Fine Line) has been my favorite distributor for a while.

Just look at the lineup of Fine Line Features.

Also Lion's Gate and USA Films

[SoNowThen]

yes, too bad about Cowboy Pictures going under


while we're doing this, can we give a shout out to great dvd companies like Criterion? They give (most of) us a first look at some of the great, perhaps unsung, films of yesteryear, as well as supporting little gems like George Washington.

[Alethia]

yay criterion!

[godardian]

Yes, Criterion. "Everything old is new again" in a big, great way. The whole DVD phenom is, I believe, keeping forgotten movies circulating and seeming fresh to new generations. Maybe it would be ideal to have everyone see everything on the big screen, but DVDs are the next best thing.

And again, you have people at MGM and Facets Video, etc, who are liable to lose money on some of their releases, but they continue to put out surprising things like The Hospital. The indie outfits are noble as ever, but someone in those faceless corporations cares about movies and is making decisions that benefit us!

[cowboykurtis]

Yes, Criterion. "Everything old is new again" in a big, great way.

i dont know if youre familiar with teh scene in all that jazz where they sing "everything old is new again" to roy scheider -- for some reason, without fail, i cry everytime i see it. i shit you not. it the one thing that can make me cry -- its kinjd of scary -- for the most part im an emotioannly barren asshole.

[godardian]

Yes, Criterion. "Everything old is new again" in a big, great way.

i dont know if youre familiar with teh scene in all that jazz where they sing "everything old is new again" to roy scheider -- for some reason, without fail, i cry everytime i see it. i shit you not. it the one thing that can make me cry -- its kinjd of scary -- for the most part im an emotioannly barren asshole.

I remember Scorsese referencing that one in Personal Journey, and now this. I've gotta see it. I know it was just put out on DVD.

[Slick Shoes]

Criterion is the man! Seriously, though, one of the things I think they really nail time and time again is their cover art. Just look at The Marriage of Maria Braun for chrissakes!! Another good one is Diary of a Chambermaid. They are getting these movies seen by people who otherwise would have never given them the time of day.

[MacGuffin]

Producers Seek to Limit Phony Credits

Hollywood producers said Wednesday they want studios to stop giving bogus credits to people as a bargaining chip and say they'll go to court to limit the use of the "produced by" title.

Kathleen Kennedy, president of the Producers Guild of America, refused to specify who in the past has received a phony producer credit, saying she would not "name names" even though the issue is murky for the average moviegoer.

At a Wednesday press conference, Kennedy and others from the guild said they were asking studios to limit the credit and include language specifying the duties necessary to receive it into every would-be producer's contract.

Kennedy, whose credits include "Seabiscuit," "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" and "Back to the Future," said too often a producer credit is given as a kind of compensation, boosting an actor, agent or manager's show-business resume and costing studios little or nothing.

Directors and writers have labor unions that dictate who can and cannot receive a credit, but producers don't have such regulation, she added.

"The studios did not set out to demean the producing credit," she said. "They simply discovered they could use the unregulated producer credit as a form of currency. When counterfeit currency is allowed to proliferate it devalues the whole system of currency."

If a credit is given unfairly, guild lawyers pledged to sue not for money, but to force a studio to remove the credit.

[MacGuffin]

B-movie ploy for A-team
Art house player Focus Features hopes to finance more movies like 'The Pianist' by making lucrative popcorn fare. Source: Los Angeles Times

In Hollywood there is no shortage of strange bedfellows. But could it be that the same people who brought you "The Pianist" and "Lost in Translation" are behind a B-level horror movie about a homicidal redheaded doll?

Indeed, come Nov. 12, "Seed of Chucky" will be playing in a theater near you, courtesy of Rogue Pictures, the genre label Focus Features launched earlier this year. Just as Miramax has Dimension, Focus — a unit of Vivendi Universal — now has its own low-budget, high-box-office popcorn movies to compensate for riskier, lower-grossing art house fare.
 
But to Focus co-president James Schamus, "Seed of Chucky," the fifth installment of the horror comedy that began with "Child's Play," is not just any horror flick.

"The 'Seed' has some gender identification issues," said Schamus, who is also a film theory professor at Columbia University. "The 'Seed' is a countercultural voice and offers a smart critique of dominant mores."

Schamus and co-president David Linde are in many ways out of place in Hollywood. In fact, they are not in Hollywood. Based in New York, they have a nerdy, even intellectual reputation in an industry known for its flamboyant characters.

"People are always surprised when they don't find us getting pedicures or debating French film theory," Schamus said. But he insists they are salesmen like everyone else in the business.

"You have to have a taste for salesmanship," he said. "You have to convince people that they should put their money down to see this film."

And this year — their biggest ever — they have had to do a lot of convincing. Now that they are branching out with more releases and a genre label, some in the industry wonder how long they can sustain their batting average.

Only three years into Focus' existence, the company has received 17 Oscar nominations and four wins, including best actor for Adrien Brody in "The Pianist" and original screenplay for Sofia Coppola for "Lost in Translation."

These sophisticated crowd pleasers also reaped very strong revenues, both grossing $120 million worldwide. Focus' movies have grossed an average of more than $18 million — extraordinary for art house fare. This spring, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" brought in more than $53 million worldwide.

Their latest films, "Vanity Fair," "Shaun of the Dead" and "The Motorcycle Diaries," have performed solidly at the box office and received good reviews.

So far, they have had two domestic duds: "Sylvia" with Gwyneth Paltrow, which received lukewarm reviews and grossed only $1 million; and the Heath Ledger/Orlando Bloom drama "Ned Kelly," a movie Focus did not produce but distributed domestically for a fee. That film grossed less than $90,000 in the U.S. and a little more than $6 million internationally.

The company recently finished production on its most expensive feature ever, the intercontinental spy thriller "The Constant Gardener," which is directed by Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles ("City of God") and was shot in London, Kenya, Sudan, Berlin and Winnipeg, Canada. The movie, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, cost north of $30 million.

Next year will also see the release of the new movie by Ang Lee, Schamus' longtime collaborator. "Brokeback Mountain," a romantic drama based on a story by Annie Proulx, stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Ledger as intimate friends working the Wyoming range.

Under Rogue Pictures, they will have "Assault on Precinct 13," a remake of the John Carpenter action film due out Jan. 21, and "Unleashed," the Jet Li-Morgan Freeman gangster movie scheduled for April 8.

While Focus' growth is a sign of success, some point to Miramax as a cautionary example of a studio that grew beyond its means, going from producing $15-million films to ones with bloated budgets of more than $80 million. Linde is keenly aware of the pitfalls and says he's determined to stick to the niche he's carving out with more moderately budgeted films.

Focus is one of about six specialized studios currently distributing and producing "independent" films. But it is unique in its reliance on the international market for financing and product. The company retains worldwide distribution rights to over 75% of the films it releases in North America. It also acquires titles separately for the overseas market, typically earning 120% to 300% of its domestic return from overseas box office.

The executives' personal style is also unique. If Harvey and Bob Weinstein are known as the blustering street vendors of the independent world, Schamus and Linde are generally described as gentlemanly by competitors, fair by buyers and people you "want to do business with" by producers. While they are well regarded, they also live by a competitive mantra learned from Harvey Weinstein: "If you want something, get it."

"People deal with Harvey because they have to," said producer Saul Zaentz, who had a notoriously unhappy experience with Miramax on his film "The English Patient." "They deal with these guys because they want to."

A pair's credentials

When Universal Pictures Chairwoman Stacey Snider began looking for someone to run the studio's specialized division, she realized it was a short list. "I was looking for a person who was entrepreneurial, independent-spirited, film loving and not part of the system, but also with enough experience to run a business."

Schamus, who is a screenwriter in addition to being a producer, and Linde had worked with Universal on Ang Lee's "Ride With the Devil." Their company, Good Machine International, had also handled the foreign sales for some Universal films. Snider was impressed: "I got to see their left brains and their right brains work."

And to her surprise it turned out to be an easy sell. "They loved Good Machine, but it's also hard not having the resources," she said. "Here they would have the resources." Focus would operate autonomously from Universal, and be given a budget for productions and development of movies by its parent company. Universal, in turn, would use Focus as a source of revenue and to find new talent. (The two men oversee a staff of more than 100 based out of New York, Los Angeles and London.)

Some who had known them for years were leery. The pair had been a major force in the New York independent film community through Good Machine, which Schamus founded with producer Ted Hope in 1991. They'd built a reputation for developing colorful films with directors such as Todd Solondz ("Happiness"), Nicole Holofcener ("Walking and Talking") and Lee ("Eat Drink Man Woman," and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), and many wondered if becoming a subsidiary of a studio would change them.

But those fears were quelled when Focus was formally launched at the 2001 Cannes film festival and the new company snared "The Pianist."

After months of wooing Roman Polanski's producer, Robert Benmussa, Linde and Focus' vice president of publicity, Adriene Bowles, met with the director at the Carlton on the morning of a bidding frenzy.

After some discussion, the director gave them the film, confident that they could handle such a personal project.

There were rumblings about Focus having had an inside deal. Some scoffed at Schamus and Linde for paying $5 million on a slow-paced Holocaust drama. The film garnered seven Academy Award nominations and won in three categories.

Last year was just as momentous. Cannes rejected Coppola's "Lost in Translation" for competition. Rebounding, the Focus team launched the film from the Venice, Berlin and Toronto film festivals.

In the end, this quirky movie became an international hit and earned Coppola two Oscar nominations, including for best director — an honor never before bestowed on an American woman.

'Diary' details

Fresh from the Sundance Film Festival early this year, director Walter Salles was invited to Focus' New York offices on a wintry afternoon. For the next three hours Focus executives — seated around the table and via telephone from Los Angeles — joined Salles and his producers, including Robert Redford, in hammering out the marketing and publicity details for "The Motorcycle Diaries."

Salles had hoped he would be asked for his opinion. The collaboration surprised him.

"It's a company that is headed by true filmmakers. They have a creative relationship with people they work with," said Salles via telephone from London, where he was promoting the film. "And that is getting more and more rare today."

Often, Schamus, Linde and their staffs can be found debating movies like college film students. Schamus was nurtured on classic foreign films. As he grew up in the San Fernando Valley, film was his ticket to see the world. Last year, he earned his doctorate in English from UC Berkeley.

Linde, tall and athletically built, speaks German and a little French and Italian, and he spent part of his youth in Germany, his father's homeland. He views the world as one giant harvest, ripe with interesting filmmakers. He learned the ropes at Miramax and was the founding executive of that company's international division. He met Schamus when negotiating a deal for Lee's "The Wedding Banquet."

This year at Cannes, Focus hosted a luncheon to thank foreign filmmakers, distributors and exhibitors for their support. Linde is known among some as "the quiet American."

"All of the American dealers are very aggressive and violent," said Valerio De Paolis, president of BIM Distribuzione in Rome. "But [Linde and Schamus] don't laugh. They don't tease you. They are conservative and want their money, but they are also respectful."

To Focus, different languages and cultures are not barriers but opportunities.

"They are not foreign filmmakers to us," said Schamus. "Our marketplace is the world marketplace. It is not as if you cross some kind of Rubicon when you enter Hollywood and never emerge. These filmmakers want to go back and forth between many different kinds of movies…. They want to go back and speak the language that is not the Hollywood language…. We can facilitate that kind of movement."

[Ghostboy]

I've sung his praises before, but after seeing both I Heart Huckabees and Team America this weekend, I think Scott Rudin deserves another shout-out.

[MacGuffin]

Producer Christine Vachon Stays Independent

Christine Vachon has produced such eclectic and acclaimed independent films as "Kids," "Boys Don't Cry," "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and "Far From Heaven."

But she wields the kind of power and has earned the kind of respect that marked the producing giants of Hollywood's golden era.

"Right now we live in an era where the auteur the idea of the director as star, the writer as star is very, very big. And that's warranted, but I think the producer has fallen by the wayside a bit. What Christine represents is a reminder that the producer has a very, very dominant voice," said Matt Dentler, producer of the South by Southwest film festival, which featured a discussion with Vachon and a retrospective of some of her movies. "I think she's part of that tradition, but it's from the perspective of the independent film world, material that can be very subversive and very, very provocative."

Magnolia Pictures President Eamonn Bowles, who worked with Vachon on two such films "Go Fish" (1994) and "Kids" (1995) described her as having been "at the vanguard of independent cinema."

"She's one of the rare people who's done a lot and had success in the Hollywood system without really betraying her core principles," Bowles said. "She's fierce, she's really incredibly intense about films and it's paid off magnificently for her."

Vachon's response to such high praise?

"I'm not really self-reflective and I'm really in the moment," she joked.

But she added later: "That's certainly not an allusion, a comparison, that bothers me. When people come up to me and say, `Wow, you really inspired me to get my film made,' or `I had your book with me every step of the way,' it feels great, of course it does."

The 43-year-old started out just like them, loving movies from a young age. Growing up in New York, she would go by herself to see everything from "The Bad News Bears" to "The 400 Blows." While studying at Brown University, she said the idea of working in film was "very sexy."

"But it didn't occur to us that there was anything to do besides be a film director, you know, and why would you want to do anything else?" she said. "When I started working on the movies, I started to realize that there was somebody who was holding this whole thing together."

Some of the earliest films she produced Todd Haynes' "Poison" (1991) and Tom Kalin's "Swoon" (1992) featured gay characters and daring themes. In time, she and the Manhattan-based Killer Films, which she co-founded nearly 10 years ago, have become known for bringing female filmmakers and movies with strong roles for women to the fore.

"Boys Don't Cry" (1999) earned Hilary Swank her first best-actress Oscar. "Far From Heaven" (2002) was nominated for four Academy Awards, including best actress for Julianne Moore. Now Vachon is in the middle of shooting "The Notorious Bettie Page," which Mary Harron is directing.

But she says she chooses projects based on what interests her, and not necessarily with a sense of social responsibility.

"As a gay filmmaker, I was told, `You should be making positive images about gay people, not "Swoon" and "I Shot Andy Warhol."' ... I have to resist that," she said. "I'm not a preacher, I'm a producer. I'm making movies that I want to make because I think they're interesting and have some commercial viability."

Vachon also resists purists' definitions of what makes an independent film at a time when seemingly every major studio has a branch that releases art-house fare. To her, the idea of independence is an aesthetic phenomenon, a singularity of vision.

"If that is economically the way these companies choose to diversify their tentpoles from their art-house movies, I think it's fine," she said. "I just feel like this whole notion of what's really independent whether it's Miramax or Warner Independent or Fox Searchlight or Paramount Classics it's just a way of separating the `Spider-Mans' from the `Sideways.'"

Regardless of the source of the money or the size of the company that ultimately releases the film, some of the same issues and obstacles arise, Vachon said she's found.

"It's all just about how big your train set is, you know what I mean? But it's the same. How do you keep the actors happy? How do you get as much done as you want?

"We are very overambitious always on movies," she added, which is part of why her company is called Killer. "Our eyes are always way bigger then our stomachs."

[Jeremy Blackman]

Can somebody name some independent film studios (besides Lions Gate) that are independently owned?

[Kal]

Magnolia Pictures is part of 2929 (Mark Cuban), but its considered to be independently owned. Is not the "Indie of any of the Majors".

ThinkFilm I believe is independetly owned too...

NewMarket was until very recently...