Holy shitstorm Batman!
The online reactions to my post last week about the coming demise of the modern movie house have been intense and 99% damning. Even though the original post addressed each of the basic objections that have been raised over the past few days, I left way too much to the imagination; an ability that far too few of us exercise very much if ever based on the comments I’ve read. No doubt the visceral reaction to the post also has something to do with the basic anxiety and anger that hangs like a threatening storm cloud over much of America and the world at present. For some, any opportunity to strike out and relieve some pain is a good one, especially online where anonymity rules and every yahoo with a keyboard feels empowered to act out without fear or conscience. But that too shall pass. (Through better, smarter implementations of technology.) In the meantime, I’ll ignore the rabble and respond to the essential complaints.
1) Movies were made to be seen on a big screen.
No, they weren’t. The first projections of movies were played to one person at a time through what was essentially a peephole. In fact Edison, the inventor of the earliest movie technology, believed that projecting to groups of viewers at once was not financially viable. He was, of course, proven wrong, but that was the beginning of an evolutionary process that will very soon – within 10 years – see the most dramatic changes and positive improvements in the 120 year history of moving pictures.
What am I talking about? Keep reading. read more…
Google is now denying today’s New York Times story about an evil deal between Google and Verizon that appeared to be looming just over the horizon. The New York Times generally doesn’t just make shit up though, so you have to believe that there’s more than a kernel of truth there – and that the subsequent firestorm of protest by proponents of Net Neutrality is causing Google to rethink. Awesome. That’s what doing, rather than complaining, can accomplish.
Do something right now in the name of Net Neutrality and a free internet. This is a painless but effective, 45 second way to take a stand. Please add your voice to the call for a free internet. If Net Neutrality is compromised even a little, all independent voices will suffer.
Don’t let that happen.
Light this fire for Net Neutrality!
With all the talk about how technology is changing everything in media and entertainment there’s a line that no one seems willing to cross. It’s a line that begins and ends at the movie house. If I had a nickel for every time in the past couple of years I’ve heard some insider say “movie theaters are never going away,” I bet I’d have close to fifty bucks. Hey, I’ve said it myself. It’s one of those knee-jerk things where the words are out of your mouth before you know what’s happened.
Well, I’m ready to cross that line. Movie theaters are going to go away.
I’m guessing none of us were going to movies in the days of the great movie palaces. Even the not-so-great movie palaces make today’s multiplex seem like a rat trap. My heart skips a beat when I think of what it must have felt like in the 20s and 30s stepping off the sidewalk and into one of those dreamscapes. When’s the last time your heart skipped a beat walking into a movie theater. (What happens to your heart when the A Train rumbles underneath your butt at the Angelika in NYC doesn’t count.) The closest I’ve come was maybe twenty or twenty-five years ago when I caught a new print of “Lawrence of Arabia” at the first show of a limited run in a sold out Radio City Music Hall. But that kind of experience is once in a lifetime vs. what folks experienced once or twice a week or more back in the day.
The regulars at the Roxy in New York City and the Paramount in Seattle would have laughed in your face if you told them they had to watch “Little Caesar” or “Wuthering Heights” or “Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs” in a 300 seat auditorium at some 15-screen mall complex. 90% (I’ll be kind) of the screens in America today are cold, boxey, sticky and unwelcoming. There are, of course, a handful of renovated movie palaces still around but they’re little more than curiosities.
The reason folks can’t wrap their brain around the imminent collapse of the modern movie theater is because the transformation of moviegoing from the 30s until now – no less extreme than the changes we’re about to see occur – took 50 or 60 years whereas this new transformation will take less than ten. Technology is moving so quickly now that most of us just can’t see it. But we can feel it. And that makes it seem like a threat so it seems only natural that our gut reaction is either fight or flight. But there’s a third option: glee.
I choose to accept and embrace the idea that theatrical will be entirely irrelevant for studio films within ten years. Especially for blockbusters. With no less speed and much greater impact than 3D, the coming metamorphosis will not only provide a superior and untethered AV experience, it will enhance the communal aspect of ‘moviegoing’ to an almost unimaginable level. Yes. It will. Of course, for independents theatrical is already largely irrelevant and little more than a mind fuck and a money pit. The community will benefit tremendously from the technological scenario just described, but the more immediate need has much less to do with technology than with vision. More on that in a future post. (Pun intended.)
So when Michael Moore plunks down as much as a million dollars on a project meant to hold on tight to the final, fleeting embers of yesterday’s massive bonfire; and when Mike Baldwin blogs at the Seattle PI plaintively encouraging folks to go en masse to the cineplex in a desperate attempt to stave off theatrical extinction; and when influential Hollywood hot shots make headlines by publicly railing against what will have turned out to be an ephemeral 3D ‘revolution’, I have to giggle. None of this will matter in a few short years and not long afterwords, the idea of spending $50 or $60 plus gas and (possibly) parking to haul the family down to the mall to see a movie (preceded by ten or fifteen minutes of commercials) at a time certain, in a box, on a relatively small screen marred with spitballs – and it might be sold out! – will be laughable. No one will miss it and they’ll wonder how in hell they survived such an antiquated experience for as long as they did.
There are currently about 6,000 theaters in the US containing nearly 40,000 screens. In ten years there will be under 1,000 and in fifteen, under a hundred. And we won’t miss them.
Light a fire for the future!
It’s been nearly eighty years since the repeal of the Volstead Act and the end of prohibition, but you wouldn’t know it by going to the movies. You can purchase and consume all the sugar and cornstarch-laden crap you want at any cinema in America, but we’ve still got to sneak in our booze.
Yesterday’s coverage in Cinematical and elsewhere of this Friday’s launch of the beer-soaked reRun Gastropub Theater in Dumbo (Brooklyn) was an important wake-up call for me; streaming first-run independent films isn’t everything, it’s only almost everything. The reRun isn’t the first alternative venue for marrying the pleasures of cinema and sin, but it’s a damn good one and its timing couldn’t be more in the zeitgeist. And it’s reminded me of one of my own first principles for applying new and emerging technologies to the analog world.
I’m the most vocal proponent I know for yanking virtually all independent films out of bricks and mortar and propelling them into the cloud and out to the masses. I’m also a firm believer that to most effectively and responsibly employ new technology in consumer-targeted marketing, there must be a compelling real-world component. The booze-house cinema is just the thing to help lubricate the transition from screen to stream. I’m going to incorporate said concept into my ongoing advocacy and strategy for 21st century independent film reinvention and I’m going to look forward to identifying the loophole in Seattle/Washington State law – or whatever law applies – and threading the independent needle straight through it.
Congratulations and best of luck reRun and reBar. Please have a pint or two for me on opening night.
Light an inebriated fire!
Ted Leonsis was a guy after my own heart. In the early ’90s, he stunned a bunch of suits at a Boston Globe management retreat when he took the stage and barked, “Digitize or die,” and his obsession for original online programming helped move AOL from powerhouse to behemoth.
Paradoxically, AOL was also the worst thing about the internet for what seemed like ever until it finally gave up on its wildly obnoxious walled garden approach. At AOL, Leonsis was a virtual studio head and he eventually produced a couple of films himself.
Each was a documentary with a social conscience; “Nanking,” based on the book “The Rape of Nanking” about atrocities committed by the Japanese army during WWII, and “Kicking It” about the Homeless World Cup. (Yes, there’s a Homeless World Cup.) He even coined a phrase for his brand of filmmaking: filmanthropy. (I know, yuck.)
So it came as no surprise when Leonsis and a couple of his AOL buddies decided to launch a website dedicated to the online distribution of docs. What is surprising is how little positive influence Snagfilms has had on the general population, on people’s appreciation for documentary or on the regeneration of the independent film community.
According to Snag’s widely covered press release last week, they boast “the web’s largest library of high-quality nonfiction films” clocking in at over 1,500 titles. Yet, whenever I’ve asked a civilian whether they’re aware of Snagfilms, I’m invariably met with a blank stare. Even many independent film insiders I’ve asked don’t know much or anything about Snag. How can that be?
First of all, there’s the AOL factor. The company was founded by Leonsis and former AOL and AOL/Time Warner Chairman Steve Case. Leonsis may have been largely responsible for seeding the web with original programming and an early influencer in making internet users comfortable with consuming entertainment online, but AOL was the most prosaic, oppressive, user-unfriendly destination site ever.
And God help you if you ever wanted to escape their evil clutches. Canceling your AOL subscription was more frustrating and complex than plugging BP’s oil “leak.”
Then there’s the fact that Leonsis and Snagfilms’ CEO Rick Allen are sports guys, not movie guys. They may dabble in film and coin awkward-sounding catchphrases, but Leonsis’ Lincoln Holdings owns all or part of not one, not two, but three professional sports franchises (plus a stadium) and Allen was president and CEO of the hallowed Sporting News. He was also head of National Geographic and an executive at Discovery, so he’s got some documentary cred.
Neither their sports history nor captain-of-industry careers make them bad people, of course. In fact, their philanthropic and other extracurricular pursuits indicate the opposite. But the problem, I think, is a collective AOL mentality. Aside from the Leonsis and Case connection, a captain of the ship is Stephanie Sharis former executive of … wait for it … AOL. Again, doesn’t make her a bad person. Plus, like Leonsis and Allen, she’s been a producer on two docs; a short and a feature.
AOL was all about aggregating content and content aggregators’ bread and butter is advertising. Not, of course, advertising or promoting or marketing the product itself, but selling advertising against the product. Thus, when you land on Snag, what’s at the very top of the page right next to the company logo and three times as large? Advertising! Cheesy banner ads flogging everything from car insurance to massage schools plus a few major brands thrown in for good measure. Kinda like going to the movies, but it’s the thing that people hate most about going to a movie theater.
Not a great start or an indication that Snag’s focus is on their 1,500 “high-quality” films.
Then there’s the incredibly distracting video ad placed prominently “above the fold” and flush right. Prime location and awesome for the advertiser; not so much for the user. And if you scroll down below the fold, there’s another nearly as distracting large animated banner button there to greet you. These ads, though, are child’s play compared to the outrageous browsing scheme the company is following for achieving optimal ad exposure.
Any time you click an image in order to go to that film’s detailed information page, you’re forced to either watch or ignore a 15-to-30-second ad that starts up automatically. On a site like Snag, a user typically can hit half a dozen information pages before settling on the film they want to view, and each time an ad immediately autoplays.
I’ve never seen a more anti-consumer, self-destructive ad policy in my life. It’s shameful, but not unexpected given the professional genealogy of the folks in charge. (Even Hulu’s browse function is more user-friendly. There, you can mouse over the title of a show and be presented with a synopsis rather than having to click for the information,thereby launching an ad.)
It’s true that they also stream movies, but because Snag’s is an ad-supported business model, 30-second pre-roll video ads lead into every presentation and additional video ads intrude on the flowabout every eight minutes. I can’t speak for all the films, but in two that I watched in their entirety recently, the ads more often than not popped up in mid-sentence.
Even in viewing “Super Size Me,” the site’s major claim to fame, the very first ad pops in mid-sentence. Imagine being a filmmaker who’s spent a year or three pouring everything you’ve got into making the very best documentary you could, only to have it chopped up on a website cluttered with advertising. Now imagine premiering your film on that site.
There’s also virtually no community building going on. No real discussion. No real conversation. Snag’s version of community is YouTube-inspired commenting and the reposting of tweets.In other words, the absolute least they can do and still pretend to be a place where their users “participate in a community.”
Their technology is pretty hinky, too. For instance, moving to and from full-screen mode can cause agita ranging from missing a few frames to the film entirely restarting itself. There’s no excuse for bad tech implementation two years in and especially not when you’ve been financed to the tune of millions of dollars. We provided a much better user experience at Gigantic Digital on little more than a wing and a prayer.
For now, I guess any site that helps wean people off the withering teet of theatrical distribution is a positive influence. Unfortunately, Snag could be doing so much more and so much better that it was depressing to see the extent of yesterday’s press coverage.
The New York Times driving lots of fresh traffic to Snag’s website is not helpful. It’s not positive. Those new users are being exposed to much the worst of what’s possible, not the best. (I’m not speaking of the quality of the films, here, so save your flames.)
When Leonsis roared “digitize or die” back in the ’90s, it was prescient and exhilarating. Looking back on that statement today, he may as well have shouted “Digitize then die”for all that Snagfilms has accomplished in two years. C’mon,Ted, don’t be a regressive, uninspired film guy like your fellow sports franchise owner Mark Cuban. Be progressive. Be bold.
Light an independent fire for the future, Ted!
Throughout my career as a film distributor and later on as technology became a bigger and more passionate focus for me, Seattle has been a constant. In fact, Seattle became an important testing ground for the first film I released at Miramax and for myself as the company’s new head of distribution and marketing. The film was an obscure Danish coming-of-age film by a no-name director and with no recognizable actors. I was handed the film as my first assignment and told to get it opened and move on. Essentially dump it as quickly as possible. This was at a time when home video was suddenly making independent film companies rich as store after store was opening and all those empty shelves were crying out for product. The studios were making money hand over fist and even the independents got a share. Barriers to entry were low. Open theatrically by a certain date, spend X dollars in advertising and deliver the film for duplication. Miramax was late opening and delivering this particular film and the video company was bitching.
I’d just been hired and Bob (Weinstein) handed me a tape of the film to watch back in Dallas where I packed up for my move home to New York. (I’d been working for Paramount Pictures out of their southern division office.) I watched the film and loved it. When I arrived back in New York I made an impassioned plea for opening the film properly and not rushing it out just to satisfy the video deal. “Try it out in Seattle” was the answer. Seattle was and still is a great movie-going city and it was a natural for a test run. There’s a longer story but the crux of it is that we broke the house record (can’t remember which theater) and the film, “Twist and Shout” went on to double the gross of any previously released Miramax film. The director, Bille August, won a foreign language Academy Award with his next title, “Pelle the Conqueror” which we also released.
I returned to Seattle often over the years either opening films or attending the Seattle International Film Festival which has always been among the top 5 or 6 film festivals in North America. In 1996, my brother Scott was recruited away from Barnes & Noble by a then-obscure start-up called Amazon.com which provided plenty of new excuses for me to head northwest. In 1999, after nearly a decade of creeping closer and closer to full-blown geekdom, I actually moved to Seattle to work for another start-up called Singingfish.com which eventually was sold to AOL and served as their multimedia search engine. I left after we sold the company and moved back to New York to work with brothers Scott and Jeff at their recently launched film distribution company Lot 47 which ended its run after a fatal blow delivered by the events and aftermath of 9/11. And now, happily – almost giddily – I’ve made my way back to the place where all roads have always seemed to lead for over 30 years.
And I want to make a difference. I want to give back and I may as well start right now. read more…
I had the pleasure yesterday afternoon of chatting with producer Peggy Rajski over at Boom Noodle on Capitol Hill. (More on Boom later.) Peggy produced a set of John Sayles films in the 80s including my favorite Sayles, Brother From Another Planet. (Baby-faced Fisher Stevens’ magic trick on the A Train is worth the price of admission.) She also produced The Grifters and Jodie Foster’s very excellent Little Man Tate. More recently, she exec produced Towelhead.
Peggy is here in Seattle shooting her latest film, “Grassroots,” directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal and starring Jason Biggs, Cedric the Entertainer and Tom Arnold. In spite of the actors’ pedigrees, the film is described as a buddy movie/coming of age film in the style of James L. Brooks so we’re likely to see actual acting with some depth of feeling and genuine emotion. (Actually, I’m a big fan of the high-strung Arnold who constantly works and frequently manages to land pretty interesting roles. I assume this will be one of those.) “Grassroots” is based on a memoir by former Seattle Stranger writer Phil Campbell who managed fellow ex-Stranger writer Grant Cogswell’s campaign for Seattle City Council in 2001. It’s a story about idealism and activism and people who actually lead rather than follow (which fits right in with my rant from the other day).
The really exciting thing about “Grassroots” (an appropriate title not just for the story but for the production itself) is that it contains all the right ingredients to have a major positive influence on the independent film scene. From my conversation with Peggy, they’re making all the right moves. If they continue along the path they’re on, “Grassroots” might just well become the elusive finance/production/distribution blueprint the community’s been groping for. It’s a pretty big IF, but I’m rooting for them as hard as I can and so should you.
The first thing they did right was maintain the integrity of the story by budgeting appropriately. The movie is called “Grassroots” for a reason. (It’s low budget film.) Next, they didn’t spend forever in development. True, it’s based on a memoir, but there are no rules in development hell. The process moved along relatively briskly and momentum in anything is good. Casting is interesting. I’m going to assume that Gyllenhaal and Rajski have seen proof that Biggs and his co-star Joel Moore have the chops to pull off quirky roles with the necessary gravitas that this flavor of storytelling demands. (I know Tom Arnold can.) So granting that, it’s important that Biggs, Cedric the Entertainer and Arnold all have the juice to make social media pay big dividends. Plus, the production recognizes how important a role social can play here and they’re arming themselves with all of the appropriate in-production tools for both immediate and ongoing implementation. read more…
(Why Italian? Because it’s such an expressive language and I feel especially exuberant about being here. Va bene?)
PLEASE NOTE: This post, initially meant as an innocent return to blogging after the move to Seattle, quickly and unexpectedly turned into the start of a manifesto. It contains neither the word ‘independent’ nor the word ‘film’…
My lust for life began returning in waves almost the moment my flight left JFK. I’m from New York. I’ve lived most of my adult life in Manhattan and there was a long stretch – perhaps two decades – where I would have sworn it was the center of the universe. I’m fairly certain I was wrong then and I’m 100% sure now when I say that New York City is insufferably suffocating and the last place a person – or especially a business – would want to be if their time horizon in life – or in business – extends beyond a few hours from now. (Except, of course, in summer, when escape to the Hamptons (or wherever) becomes so tragically desperate and convulsive that planning ahead can’t be avoided.)
What? New York is where the opportunities are? OK, but opportunities to what end?
I don’t want to get all apocalyptic, but take a look around. (Wait, you live in Manhattan. Head to Riverside or East End Avenue or Battery Park, then take a look around.) We’re still in the early stages of what’s likely to be hundred years war with radical Islam and other extremists. Global warming or not, we’re experiencing significant climate change that’s almost certainly the cause of severe environmental shifts that are likely to impact us more frequently and with more consequential effect as the millennium rolls out. We’re living longer yet more unhealthfully, a one-two punch that’s going to keep us on the ropes financially and severely undermine our collective quality of life well into the foreseeable future. Regardless of the actual numbers, the rate of extinction of plant and animal species is higher today than it’s ever been and is certain to increase over the coming decades. Unnatural disasters, whether technological (BP) or gothic (genocide), seem just as easy for us to ignore today (or at least as easy) as ever, in spite of the internet. White collar criminals are little more at risk post the financial meltdown as pre. Political parties worldwide (but especially here) are as polarized and unrepentantly unethical as ever. Corporations are relentlessly patenting human genes and quietly but vigorously infesting the food supply with genetically modified substances and force-feeding farmers world-wide genetically modified – and patented, of course – seed. And then there’s the continent of floating filth and debris in the north pacific.
So again, opportunities to what end? read more…
Saying goodbye – again – to New York City.
It wasn’t the Times Square bomber or the just-passed increase to New York’s cigarette tax, making it the highest in the nation. (I quit smoking cigarettes decades ago.) Or the specter of 3 new area casinos (I love me my hold ‘em and blackjack – too close for comfort) courtesy of this week’s wildly ironic recognition by the federal government of the Shinnecock Nation’s legitimacy. It’s not the summer heat and humidity or the winter’s unpredictability. It’s not the screaming sirens or incessant, high-pitched, back-up warning chirps or the mindless leaning on car horns by cab drivers. It’s not the scandalous, self-absorbed, self-serving, do-nothing state legislature whose felonious antics have managed to make even Governor Patterson look competent. It’s not Michael Bloomberg’s nearly $100 million dollar campaign to steal a third term as mayor. (By the way Mike, now that you’ve bought yourself a third term, why not contribute a few billion of your $18 billion dollar net worth to help pull your beloved New York City out of it’s financial crisis? After all, you nearly doubled your net worth while mayor. C’mon Mike, man-up.) It’s not that every last bit of personality has been squeezed out of Times Square or that the cost of mass transit rises commensurate with service cuts. Or that most New Yorkers are rarely within eye-shot of the moon or a sunset. Or the fact that most dog owners would rather leave behind streams of urine across the sidewalk than curb their mutts. Or that Bernie Madoff’s sons still walk among us when they actually belong underneath their father’s prison bunk. Or that the Staten Island ferry keeps crashing into its dock.
Or maybe it’s all these things and more. In any case, I’ll be a bit distracted this week into next with packing and moving so the blog is likely to suffer. I’ll try to post a bit here and there but I have to stay focused. Must stay focused. (It might help to turn off The View, Mark.)
Back in full blog mode soon.
Lighting my own fire.
Over the past several years, as old media has crumbled around us and new media has struggled to find its footing, critics were the first to be sacrificed. Film critics in particular. One after another, long-established, well credentialed critics from newspapers and magazines were put out to pasture. It was a no-brainer. Replace full-time, relatively well paid staffers with wire reviews from AP or other services. Or simply don’t review the ‘smaller’ films.
To some degree, the death of local film critics has contributed to the decline of interest in theatrically released independent films. “If the media doesn’t care, why should I?” It also doesn’t help the case for independently released American films that their ad budgets have declined dramatically since the 90s not to mention the creativity gap that I wrote about recently.
A handful of woebegone critics have landed on their feet. David Ansen, for instance, Newsweek’s main film critic for decades, was hired as Artistic Director for the recently renamed LA Film Festival. Some have chosen to retire and others are simply fading away. (Peter Brunette, long-time film critic, author and lecturer, died just this morning while covering the Taormina Film Festival in Italy. Incredibly, none of the major media outlets has had the foresight or imagination to remake media criticism. A few new media entrepreneurs have a taken a stab, but none have the leverage or reach to really make a go of it. read more…