Category: Let’s Make Better Films
Don’t settle. There’s always more to do.
If there are only six good stories — or is it twelve? twenty-three? forty-two? — how many good lines are there? Clearly Aaron Sorkin thinks there is a limited supply. Write something good once, might as well write it again, right?
It’s been out and around for awhile but I still find “Sorkinisms — A Supercut” kind of remarkable.
By Julien Favre
With the world economy on the brink, the current environment has rarely been so tough for independent filmmakers. To get our films made and, even more so, to see them sold and/or distributed, is getting incredibly challenging. Foreign sales estimates for low budget independent films are a tenth of what they used to be pre-2008, and let’s not be fooled by the numbers. We will be happy if we sell at all, even for symbolic numbers. From a filmmaker’s perspective, we have entered a dichotomous world: a shrinking pool of independent films do well; most don’t make any significant business. It is now as if there is only room for one indie hit per year. If you are not that film that everybody wants, you barely exist and your business footprint will be close to zero.
Now, you can look at this situation in two different ways. One way is to
I watch a lot of films. I think I watch about 250 a year. I also watch a lot of films that never come out, that most audiences never get access to.
I learn a great deal from the “noble failures”, the films that have ambition but just miss the mark fully in execution. I honestly like these films and find pleasure in watching them, but I also know that most people like their entertainment and culture to be in a more perfectly realized state — even if most of us don’t have the resources to bring our work to that state. I think most people’s taste is shaped by their training; we learn to like what we get — unfortunately.
Yet I also think there are some things that
The Holstee Manifesto:
This is your life. Do what you love, and do it often. If you don’t like something, change it. If you don’t like your job, quit. (continued)
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Hat Tip BrainPickings.org again
Wow. When you love cinema and know how privileged you are to spend your life and labor creating work you love, how can you not give your all to your films? Even still, when you’ve worked hard, compromised your fees, dealt with errors and mistakes, problem people and people problems, you don’t always know it was worth it. Nothing tells you that it was like a good review in your hometown paper, particularly when your home is New York City.
I am thrilled with the love that has been bestowed upon our film DARK HORSE. We open today, at The Angelika in NYC. One screen. Hopefully we will play for months. Hopefully this review will fill the seats. Wow. Wow. Wow.
It’s nice when something you’ve worked years on, sacrificed a chunk of your fee on, that you’ve chosen to distribute, goes off and gets one of BEST REVIEWS EVER from AO Scott & the NY F’n Times!
http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/movies/todd-solondzs-dark-horse-stars-jordan-gelber.html#
“Mr. Solondz brilliantly — triumphantly — turns this impression on its head, transforming what might have been an exercise in easy satirical cruelty into a tremendously moving argument for the necessity of compassion.”
Make no mistake: The Entertainment Economy can no longer be predicated on scarcity or control — as it has been for the last 110 years. We need to rebuild it around concept of super-abundance & access.
“YouTubers Upload 72 Hours of Video Every Minute” That’s up from 48 hours a year ago. At what age do we reach Saturation Point? I already have: I have identified every film I would like to see — if I am able to maintain my maximum rate of consumption — to carry me 5 years past my life expectancy. The very nature of technology indicates that in less than ten years, a twenty year old cinephile will have done the same. I expect that to happen much sooner though. Audiences will have no “need” for the new. We have so many cute animals and children doing silly things after all. Who really needs an ambitious and relevant cinema? So why do anything to preserve it (let alone advance it)? Let’s just bury our heads and try to hold onto what is left of our jobs. Right?
I am glad there are those that know otherwise.
