From Here to Awesome, the “discovery and distribution” online film festival initiative spearheaded by Arin Crumley, M Dot Strange and Lance Weiler, has released a video explaining their basic raison d’être. Subtitled “Festivals Don’t Work”, the video gives a brief refresher course on Crumley, Weiler and Strange’s efforts to deliver Four Eyed Monsters, Head Trauma and We Are the Strange directly to their audiences. And yes, Spout (who sponsored Four Eyed Monsters’ YouTube premiere and ended up paying the filmmakers almost $50,000) gets a little shout-out.

Via FILMMAKER Blog.

When I first wrote about A Complete History of My Sexual Failures, based solely on the film’s Sundance catalog synopsis, I pegged it as “like Sherman’s March, but British, and 1/3 as long, and seemingly not at all concerned with vague parallels to 19th century history!” Having seen the film with an extremely enthusiastic press corps, I can confirm that Chris Waitt’s debut feature *is* a little like Sherman’s March, but the ancestral lineage of this undeniable crowd-pleaser is more complicated than I could have guessed. At its best, this heavily constructed slice of auto-videography is a lot like a Nick Broomfield remake of Four Eyed Monsters, except with a budget for car commercial cast-off source cues and an extremely problematic relationship with the kind of fearless personal honesty that Arin Crumley and Susan Buice have turned into a brand.

The hapless 30-something director, with his ever-present stubble, saggy ripped jeans and dishwater moptop, is a dead ringer for Kurt Cobain circa 1994 (I would have pegged this as “retro” affectation, if every other character on screen hadn’t made a derisive comment about the director/star’s lack of grooming acumen and style). Speaking directly to the camera from a home office resembling a teenager’s bedroom, Waitt explains that, as his girlfriend of three weeks has just dumped him, he’s decided to track down as many former flames as possible and interview each, in order to figure out what he’s been doing wrong and hopefully figure out how to find true love/avoid future dumpings.

…Read more

Blogger, Convergence Culture author and MIT professor Henry Jenkins just gave a talk on Web 2.0 and fan communities at a marketing conference called the Forrester Consumer Forum, and our friend Chris Thilk from Movie Marketing Madness blogged it. There’s a lot of great stuff, including a Four Eyed Monsters a shout-out; check out Chris’ complete notes here. My favorite line? “Any network that can be used to share cat pictures can be used to bring down a government.”

Spout’s partnership with Four Eyed Monsters and YouTube has been a grand success, yielding over 37,000 new members for Spout, and over $37,000 for the film’s creators. Now we’ve launched a similar partnership behind a very different film. Harold Buttleman, Daredevil Stuntman is a comedy about a would-be Evel Kneivel, starring John Hawkes (of Me and You and Everyone We Know and the upcoming Wristcutters: A Love Story), Karen Black and Dan “voice of Homer Simpson” Castellaneta. The film toured the festival circuit and won a number of awards in 2003-2004 (before Hawkes became known for Me and You and Deadwood), but like so many self-produced indies, remained undistributed.

Then, earlier this year its director, Francis Stokes, hit it big on YouTube with the series God, Inc, which is kind of like The Office, except instead of selling paper, everyone’s working for god (there’s an Evan Almighty joke in there somewhere, but I can’t find it). Now Stokes has posted his feature on YouTube, and Spout is giving the filmmaker $1 for every person who signs up for a Spout account by visiting www.spout.com/francisstokes. If you’re a Francis fan, you can go to this page and get a widget to put on your own site or Facebook or MySpace profile to track the tally. And, after you watch the movie (make sure to press “pause” after Francis’ intro to let it load), you can go to its discussion page on Spout and let everyone know what you thought.

CinematicalIndie has a lengthy interview with Arin Crumley of Four Eyed Monsters fame, and in an unusual twist, Arin has made a video of his side of the conversation, which Cinematical’s Erik Davis has posted alongside a partial transcription.

Arin and Erik cover a lot of ground–an explanation of how Arin and Susan racked up so much debt, the pros and cons of putting your feature film up on YouTube, the dynamic between Arin and Susan’s business relationship and thier personal relationship–but I was particularly interested in this segment, where Arin talks about the potential role for social networking sites in the distribution/exhibition process. (I swear, I’m not excerpting this just because Arin has a lot of nice things to say about Spout):

If you look at Spout and the way their site works … one of the ways I use is I kind of organize the films I plan to see…Netflix is no good because that’s just if the film is available on DVD, and some are not available yet. So what I do on Spout, there’s a button next to every film, you search that film, you find it, you hit the button that says I want to see this film. So if you project ahead to either their site, or other sites, or who knows who might build this tool…but the concept of being able to store and publicly share your interest in movies–and if you can also be publicly sharing your location, which of course changes from time to time–there could be an intelligent system that knows what people want to see. And because of digital projection, you could really be showing anything on a screen, you’re not limited to what film prints were mailed to you…theoretically, you should be able to have a theatrical jukebox, where anything can be shown there. It’s just a matter of, “Well, what do people want to see?”

Transcribing from YouTube is no fun, and the whole interview is really worth ingesting, so just watch it yourself (or, as Arin suggests, listen while you work–it is, after all, about 49 minutes longer than your average YouTube clip). And if for whatever reason you still haven’t signed up for Spout, go here, start a free account, and Arin and Susan will be able to subtract one more dollar from their mountain of debt.

“I cannot help but want to know the fine print. Are the filmmakers [Susan Buice & Arin Crumley] who they say they are? Are they truly at risk financially? How did they hook up with Spout.com?” - John Bell

A little background on our Four Eyed Monsters, a buck for Susan & Arin promotion.

I met Susan and Arin at the Waterfront Film Festival in 2005. I knew right away they had something special going on and wanted to work with them again. When Arin approached me a couple weeks ago saying they were in the works with YouTube to put Four Eyed Monsters, the feature up for free, we asked ourselves a question, “Is their a way we can grow community around this movie and help fund these filmmakers?”

That’s when we came up with the buck for Susan & Arin idea. That’s the grand-master scheme behind it. Yes, Susan & Arin are truly in debt up to their eyeballs. I talked to Arin today and he admitted they have $148 in the bank and owe money to a lot of people who helped them along the way. Neither of them has worked on anything but this feature film in the past three years and they’ve yet to turn all the social currency they’ve built into monetary currency. But we want to help them do that.

Spout is presenting Four Eyed Monsters in its entirety on YouTube today! Go see the movie, then join the foureyedmonsters group.

And if that’s not nail-biting news, for anybody who joins Spout from spout.com/foureyedmonsters, we will give Arin & Susan $1 for their next film. So, go tell your friends so we can see more movies from these two!

Karina Longworth, (former editor of Cinematical) is joining spout.com. We met shortly after SXSW, where she had noticed us covering the festival. We talked a bit about what we’d like SpoutBlog to be, about how we binge on interviews and blog posts at festivals, then go back to the office where the day to day running of spout.com takes us away from the blog. She shared how her position at AOL was moving away from writing about film (most troubling since we’re all fans of Karina’s writing at Spout). Then, the lights went on. We want to see more great writing about film on SpoutBlog, Karina–one of our favorite film bloggers–wants to write more about film. Badda bing. We hired her.

Starting June 18, Karina will be posting here on SpoutBlog and popping up here and there at spout.com. We’re excited. Also, in the next couple days Spout will be doing something new with Susan Buice and Arin Crumley of Four Eyed Monsters. If you’re a fan of FEM, talk with Karina about it in the foureyedmonsters group on spout.com.

Stay tuned. We’ll announce what we’re up to in this Friday’s FilmCouch podcast.

If you’re interested in this blog, then chances are you know about the film Four Eyed Monsters. Even if you didn’t read about them here, their tsunami wave of popularity still probably reached you. Perhaps tsunami is a dramatic word, but when you consider that with no marketing besides what they could do themselves, they’ve had literally over a hundred thousand young hipsters (or wannabe hipsters like myself) following their video podcasts about the insanely tumultuous life of their film (fallouts with actors, fallouts with family, relationship trouble, and what was Arin doing sleeping in an airport and missing his flight to the premier of his own film? Aaah! It’s all so juicy!).

I met Susan Buice and Arin Crumley, the directors of Four Eyed Monsters, at a filmmaker cocktail party before their movie screened at the Waterfront Film Festival in June of 2005. I was really moved by how ambitious their film is, so I started keeping track of them. Since then they have:

- Been to dozens more festivals
- Posted a “Distributors Most Wanted List” on their website
- Held a screening for said distributors which resulted in no distribution
- Produced a wildly popular video podcast (Launched on iTunes the same day as the video iPod)
- Pioneered DIY distribution by having fans request the film in their city, then set up screenings
- Signed a deal with Withoutabox.com to distribute a DVD (which still hasn’t materialized)
- Hosted their own sold-out screenings in NYC
- Got even more screenings at the IFC Film Center in NYC, with less turnout than was hoped for

Finally, this week they won a $100,000 audience award at the indieWIRE Undiscovered Gem Festival, a traveling festival that hit a dozen cities this year. This award also brings theatrical distribution to theaters in seven other cities and a broadcast of the film on the Sundance Channel.

I’m really happy for Susan and Arin. When I first met them a year and a half ago, they said they wanted theatrical distribution. They wanted audiences to see the film in the “black box” of theaters, the place they felt it was meant to be shown. Now, through a lot of hard work and dedication, they got it. They really did it.

But I worry that they might be overlooking a much greater accomplishment. How many people have downloaded the podcast now? 150,000? 200,000? How many people will show up to see FEM with its distribution prize? Maybe a few thousand in each city? It’s been over four months since they released Episode 8 (and my tongue is still dangling from Susan’s oh-so-transgressive kiss!).

Susan and Arin, we loved you with no theatrical release. We loved the intimacy with which you bared your souls. We relished in the innovation with which two “amateurs” told their story. And we watched it all online, like a cinematic revolution was marching down the street outside our homes.

In kicking and screaming your way into a traditional distribution deal–the theatrical release of FEM–you inadvertently blazed a trail for truly alternative, truly grassroots distribution. The trail you blazed is leading to building a global audience without theater, home video, or TV distribution. A world where filmmakers don’t need the King to touch their shoulder with the sword of their marketing dollars and industry connections.

I worry now that you could come dangerously close to losing the audience you\’ve built on video podcasts by putting all your energy toward a less loyal audience going to theaters. Most of us don’t live near a theater where FEM will play. I’m happy you got what you always wanted, but there’s a selfish side of me that wants Episode 9. It’s the same side that’s more blown away with what you accomplished with your video podcasts than the grand prize you won this week.

Will you eventually give up on the pretty and popular–but fickle–girl (the theater) in favor of the wonderful, sensible girl who\’s been by you all along? (Me. The guy who just called himself a girl.)

This year, Park City, among other things, is abuzz with what the Internet will do to make films accessible that weren’t accessible before. For instance, in the Queer Lounge at Sundance, withoutabox.com announced some basic community tools on their website (blogs, ratings, calendar building) and said they’ll be distributing Arin Crumley and Susan Buice’s film, Four Eyed Monsters, and Jacques Thelemaque’s film, The Dogwalker. Although any details as to how that distribution will work have been inconclusive and murky, it’s enough to generate some attention from people desperate for audiences to have access to more films.

Karina Longworth over at Cinematical interviewed Geoffrey Gilmore, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, earlier this week. His hopes for the Internet and distribution are tempered.

"What are the gates people have to go through? Everyone embraces the fact that there are no gates. Well, that’s terrific on one level, theoretically, but what does it mean? It means there’s a lot of junk out there."

Gilmore says regardless of accessibility, films still have a marketing problem. People need to be able to find out what’s special about the film. So how does the audience find out about its distinctive quality? At Spout we’ve often used the phrase, "Infinite accessibility creates the problem of infinite choice." When confronted by the problem of making a choice from infinite options, we either fall back on what we know is safe or we make no choice at all. Which is why we need gatekeepers.

Geoffrey Gilmore is a gatekeeper. He’s the ultimate decision-maker for what’s programmed at Sundance. In the interview earlier this week, he came across as a benevolent gatekeeper: He judges films on what they set out to do and whether or not they did it well. If a film is shot on digital video he asks, "Is the film better because it’s shot on DV?" Other gatekeepers are not so benevolent. Hollywood studios are gatekeepers allowing through only movies that stand to put money in their pockets, regardless of quality. Withoutabox.com is another kind of gatekeeper. Somebody over there is deciding what will be distributed and what won’t. The 35 year-old film geek who runs the local video shop is a gatekeeper. All of these people decide somewhere along the way whether or not a certain film will reach you.

Gatekeepers are people who put the film on your radar. Whether through a national advertising campaign, a film festival, or a simple recommendation, they are the connecting point. The beautiful thing about a gatekeeper, like Geoffrey Gilmore or the video shop guy, is they don’t just grant the films they love permission to pass through their gates. They become champions for those films. At Spout, we’re not opening the floodgates for infinite accessibility. We’re providing a platform for gatekeepers of all walks to come and champion the films they love to their widest possible audience. When audiences have an infinite number of films to choose from, we think they’ll want access to gatekeepers more than they’ll want access to films.