Today’s guest post is from George Rush, producers rep and attorney. Yesterday George started telling us about how he engineered the sale of Michael Tully’s Sundance At Midnight hit, SEPTIEN. Today’s post concludes the dissection.
I had been to Sundance before with Midnight films and know it can be difficult to get good buzz. Sundance audiences are not reflective of real audiences. It is a mixture of film nerds, rich party people, and earnest do gooders seeking some culture. I’ve found most people want to see the buzzed about stereotypical Sundance films—The Are All Right, Winter’s Bone. These tickets are hard to come by. However, midnight screening tickets are easier to come by and thus people get stuck with them. They come in hoping for some culture and get blood and guts and farts.
I’ve seen packed houses at Midnight screenings pretty empty by the time the lights came up. Because Michael’s film, SEPTIEN, is so different, I felt a good number of the audience and some critics would dismiss it outright because it did not fit their expectation of what a Sundance film should be. It sort of reminds me of a friend of mine who hates Wes Anderson movies because he expects Bill Murray to always play the Bill Murray of Ghostbusters.
Those who stayed, who bought in, would be massively rewarded by SEPTIEN, but there would be some naysayers. So my feeling was Sundance was going to be a wildcard, with champions and detractors.
Recently Jon Brooks at KQED wrote up a very nice piece on Tom Noonan’s WHAT HAPPENED WAS (1994). That film won multiple awards at Sundance but barely go seen. Unfortunately it does not sleep alone in my bed of barely seen almost-masterpieces. As strong as my track record may be, it still holds some flops, misfires, and damn bad luck experiences. It’s great that Tom’s flick may get some of the love it so richly deserves, albeit twenty years after it’s debut.