Both a huge party and something of a petri dish of American independent creativity, SXSW is steadily becoming an invaluable stop on the festival circuit. The Austin festival is also the forerunner of a whole slew of American festivals that are proud to be far from New York and LA, and more importantly, far from Park City. So it’s no surprise that the festival would break even more ground in the decentralization of the independent film experience. This year, SXSW and IFC have teamed to offer five films on-demand via IFC Festival Direct, allowing viewers at home to see festival premieres on the same day the play for Austin audiences.

For a midwesterner such as myself, this is tremendously good news. The elephant in the room when talking about any artwork is always access. Who is it for, and who can actually see it? For many, entering the current discussion surrounding independent film is simply an economic impossibility. SXSW is very friendly toward the average-Joe or Jane attendee, especially compared to many other festivals, but a plane ticket and a pass are still a serious expense. It would be easy for the festival organizers to pay lip service to the idea of creating an event for more than just the elite, and then do nothing about it. Instead, they deserve a tremendous amount of credit for actively attempting to engage people who want to attend the festival, but can’t.

That said, the “festival at home” experience is far from flawless. Despite the fact that I’m pretty close to the ideal candidate for this type of thing, I don’t have the right kind of cable package required to see on-demand movies. I’ve often considered anteing up for better cable just for IFC, but for the most part a high-speed internet connection and Netflix subscription keep me occupied, and they are a big enough chunk of my monthly budget. So while audiences can technically watch these festival films anywhere, there’s still a large barrier to access, and it still comes down to cost. So I spent the weekend calling up friends, interviewing them about what kind of cable they have, then sheepishly asking if I could invite myself over to watch a few movies. Luckily, I have gracious friends.

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6. I predict the death of mumblecore movies by 2011. Independent films will once again boast strong scripts and, as such, will reach a broader audience. This is probably as good a time as any to reiterate to critics who invoke the name of John Cassavetes in their reviews of so-called mumblecore fare: John’s only improvised film was Shadows. Suck it.

Indie film distribution stalwart-turned-director Jeff Lipsky has written a two-part, ten item list of reasons he’s “bullish on the state of indie” film for Ted Hope’s blog Truly Free Film. There’s no denying that Lipsky has seniority in this realm, even if the introduction to the piece, presumably written by Hope, strains credibility by refering toLipsky’s recent Sundance premiere Once More With Feeling as a “hit” (John Anderson’s declaration that the film “would be a natural for cable, if the execution weren’t so distractingly strange” was one of the kinder notices). But much of Lipsky’s numbered so-called optimism comes off as cranky old man-ism.

Whether he’s celebrating setbacks in digital projection via questionable cause-and-effect logic (”Fewer digital screens…will mean fewer bad digital movies”), dismissing “download, PPV, and VOD numbers” as “paltry” without offering examples or comparisons, or making broad generalizations about the production methods of emerging filmmakers, as in the quote above (we’ll presume critics of Andrew Bujalski, Barry Jenkins, and any other “mumblecore”-associated writer/director who works off a screenplay are excused from “sucking it”), the whole post is anti new-technology, anti-experimentation, pro-traditionalism. It’s as if Lipsky’s ultimate reason to be bullish is something along the lines of, “all this shit you crazy kids keep throwing at the wall ain’t sticking, and that makes me feel good personally.”

I think that people are looking at Che not as a film, but as a indie miniseries. It’s four hours long, in two parts, and is all in Spanish. They overlook the fact that it had a very successful screening run, despite it’s massive runtime, and look at it only as a VOD property, or as some sort of artistic folly.

And maybe it is a folly. A more awards friendly strategy would have been to put out only part one in 2008 and part two (if you produced it at all) in 2009. An arthouse Lord of the Rings.

…[But] the new art house is your house and the sooner the business realities of film reflect this, the better off we’ll all be.

Web video pioneer Kent Nichols, who with partner Douglas Sarine is currently writing/directing the remake of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, blogs a refrain that’s been floating around in somewhat less concrete form for awhile: that the Academy’s total snubbing of Che, particularly its failure to nominate Benicio Del Toro for Best Actor, is a sign of bias against (if not a deliberate effort to punish IFC and Soderbergh for) the film’s non-traditional, quick-to-VOD release strategy.

This is one of a number of pieces I read over the weekend which essentially make the point that audiences are moving in one direction, and the Academy is moving in another. The biggest evidence of this trend is the fact that a number of Oscar-nominated films recently pushed into platform release by their indie arm distributors have failed to see the expected post-nomination box office bump, whilst “snubbed” films like Revolutionary Road are doing kind of okay.

…And the Oscar for most sorrowful face goes to… Mickey Rourke! Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler grabbed our heart, slammed it to the mat, and showered it with tears. But does Mickey Rourke’s resurrection have what it takes to beat Sean Penn’s transformation in Milk?

Karina gives an update about IFC’s Festival Direct, a way to be among the first to see new indie films even if you can’t spring for a festival pass. Also, an odd run-in with Steven Soderbergh, who may or may not have a bone to pick with our intrepid blogger.

We debate which is the most absurd piece of Che merchandise sent in by listeners, and respond to feedback about usefulness of subjecting terrible, exploitative horror movies to the rigors of film criticism.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro

2:05 - Absurd Che merchandise

9:42 - Listener response regarding horror and film criticism

15:30 - The Wrestler

35:58 - Karina on IFC, Che

filmcouch-106

• A few films were sold in the past 24 hours, but Lone Sherfig’s An Education was not one of them. Reportedly, Fox Searchlight offered around $1 million for the Nick Hornby-scripted coming-of-age drama, yet the film’s co-reps CAA and Endeavor are asking closer to $10 million. As if any title could seriously expect that high an amount during the “subdued” Sundance of ‘09.
• Oh, by the way, here’s another possible reason for slow sales this year that we missed yesterday: too many co-repped films make for confusing negotiations.
• IFC Films held a press conference yesterday to reveal that, for the first time, the distributor will release a film to VOD day-and-date with its world premiere at this Spring’s SXSW. The film will be Joe Swanberg’s Alexander the Last, and it’s one of a bunch of new titles, including the latest from both Phillipe Garrel and Denys Arcand, slated for IFC’s Festival Direct VOD channel. Steven Soderbergh says that these days filmmakers’ have to “let go of the fantasy” of receiving conventional theatrical releases for their work.
• Also from the IFC press conference: Karina asks about whether on demand data will ever be released a la box office figures; Swanberg tells festival directors that its up to them whether or not VOD kills festival runs; Soderbergh calls BluRay “the worst launch of a new format in the history of formats.”
• And in other IFC VOD news, the NY Times got it wrong last week when it reported that IFC’s hoped-for 250,000 VOD viewers for Soderbergh’s Che would be the equivalent of an $18 million box office take. The figure, corrected during a Sundance panel discussion, would be more like $1.8 million.

• Twilight star Kristen Stewart is heating up and gaining lots of cool points by being cast as rocker Joan Jett in Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways, about the all-girl band featuring a young Jett and Lita Ford. Stewart may not look like the best choice for the role (I’d have said Rachel Bilson), but I guess all she really needs is a proper wig. And it probably won’t be too difficult for her to do her own singing in the part.
• It may not be a new film version of The Divine Comedy, as I recently called for, but it’s still interesting to see Hollywood making a movie about Dante Alighieri’s classic literary work by adapting Nick Tosches’ novel In the Hand of Dante. It’s also unfortunate that producer Johnny Depp may be playing Tosches rather than Dante, since everyone prefers Depp in period dress.
• Speaking of Depp in old-time costume, he’d be perfect for the new Phillip Noyce-directed remake of Captain Blood that Warner Bros. is producing. Too bad his slate is very full, and anyway it’s probably fair to give another actor the chance to play a pirate.
• Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight has become the best-selling movie on iTunes this year, and it’s not even available for download yet. I find this interesting less because of all the advance sales, more because of all the people who will be potentially view this IMAX-appropriate film on their iPod.
• More Dark Knight home-viewing madness: the blockbuster will be released to video-on-demand in South Korea two weeks before its DVD release there.

Ever since word broke at Toronto that IFC had picked up Steven Soderbergh’s Che for US distribution, there have been conflicting rumors as to how the company, known for its day-and-date theatrical and VOD releases, would handle a film of this length, scope, and potential Oscar cachet. At yesterday’s NYFF press conference, Soderbergh talked a bit about the “roadshow” concept, through which the entire two-part film will first hit theaters.

He confirmed that in each market the film enters, it’ll screen for just one week, on one screen, with ticket buyers paying a premium (probably $25 each, including full-color printed program) for the experience. “I think that’s the ideal way to see it,” the director said, although he acknowledged that “it’s a lot to ask of an audience, to throw away an entire day.”

A source told me last night that IFC is banking that a lot of people are going to want to throw away their days on Che.

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Our friend Kevin Kelly was at that Mark Cuban panel at the TCA featured in the vague WIRED post mentioned earlier, and he sent along some further context––and quotes!

Apparently, the panel’s essential purpose was to promote Humboldt County, a SXSW vet and now a Magnolia release which will debut on VOD three weeks before hitting theaters in September. Also on the panel was Humboldt co-star Peter Bogdanovich, and talk about an odd pairing. On the one hand, you’ve got mogul Cuban making his cocky techno-evangelist pitch about how business travelers held captive in hotels are dying to charge their corporate cards $12 for the chance to see films like Flawless and Finding Amanda.

Then there’s old Pete, still an active theatrical patron himself (“Sex in the City was amazing because it was all women. I was the only guy in the theater, and the women loved it, and I loved that the women loved it”), but conscious that it’s an experience that’s diminishing for a reason (in part because trailers are “unbelievably violent, fast, crazy, noisy garbage.”) And he acknowledges that even if, for him,  nothing’s going “to replace the experience of seeing a movie on the big screen with an audience,” alternate philosophies of distribution “seems to be working in terms of getting people to see the films.”

I wish I had been there. Excerpts from Kevin’s transcription of the even follow after the jump.

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Consider this WIRED story more than loosely related to yesterday’s back-and-forth on theatrical distribution, and maybe sort of possibly related to today’s rampant speculation on Che. At the Television Critics Association conference yesterday, vertically integrated movie mogul Mark Cuban announced that he’s going to start selling Magnolia’s theatrical releases on HDNET’s On Demand cable service––BEFORE they debut in theaters.

I *think* the news nugget here is that this reverse day-and-date roll out wil now apply to ALL Magnolia releases, because otherwise, it’s not really news at all––Cuban’s companies have experimented with this tactic before, and box office grosses would suggest that it didn’t work so well for Redacted. Unless it’s the Cuban-as-cowboy quotes––such as “Landmark is the only national theater chain that will support HDNet’s Ultra Sneak Previews” and “I don’t care what the MPAA does.” But then, that’s not really news, either.

• Earlier this week, Jonathan Marlow published a rant on GreenCine Daily, titled They didn’t build their sales model for you. Much of the piece is given over to a description of the dire state of distribution affairs for truly independent filmmakers. Marlow, who acquires films for GreenCine’s DVD-by-mail main site, essentially argues that filmmakers should put less weight on dreams of theatrical distribution and concentrate on the many new media options. I didn’t comment on this story earlier because, well, my reaction was pretty much the same as Agnes Varnum’s: “It reads to me as a good summary of where things have been for last couple of years in film sales, so my question is what’s the news? Do people really not know this information?”
• Tom Hall also weighs in on the Marlow piece, from a festival programmer’s perspective: “Let me begin by taking exception to Marlow’s straw man, one that I have seen being built over and over again on panels and in discussions among filmmakers and programmers over the past few years; Film festivals are not, in fact, an ersatz distribution system for films.”
• If you live in New York and/or read the blogs of people who do, chances are you’re aware of The Emily Gould Fiasco. Funnily enough, Juan and Victor Piñeiro, brothers as well as director and producer of Second Skin, have bared witness to several smaller-scale Emily Gould fiascos over the past decade and a half.
• Finally, Paul Scheer explains why, although no one will admit to wanting it, Beverly Hills Cop 4 will make back twice its budget in its first weekend: “I’m like an abused sequel wife, I keep going back to theaters time and time again to get mercilessly kicked in the cinematic balls for having faith that a sequel can actually be good as it’s predecessors.”

HOPE is missing

Add to My Profile | More VideosLance Weiler of Head Trauma fame has launched a new web series on MySpace called Hope is Missing. Loosely intended as a companion to Head Trauma, which is being released on VOD on October 23, the series is a true cross-platform event unfolding over MySpace, Twitter, and even real life. Two episodes are live so far; I’ve been having fun sorting through the comments, watching the users go from taking it at face value that these are “real” clips about a real missing girl, to questioning that assumption, to making the connection to Head Trauma. The first episode is above, and the whole series can be found here.

I think it’s time to revisit this morning’s news on IFC’s future as a distributor, for as the day has progressed, there’s been some interesting discussion. Here’s a sampling of what the kids are saying on the webz.

Both the indieWIRE and the Variety pieces took IFC’s version of the story at pretty much face value. A common refrain in today’s reaction pieces has been, “Just because they’ve got the movies on the cable boxes, doesn’t mean anyone’s buying them. Have you seen download data? I haven’t. Someone should really get some.” Or, as Brian Newman puts it,

Excuse me, but “available” to 40 million subscribers is a worthless figure. IFC keeps spinning, as if their life depended on it (hint hint) … All this means is that four cable systems wanted to offer VOD, and IFC needed to suck up to them all in order to remain being carried on these services. IFC needs the cable operators more than they need IFC, and while a kid renting a film in Des Moines via VOD is great for Des Moines, its not ground breaking news. If Frankel was so happy with the numbers, perhaps he would have shared a few of them with us!

In response to that, Sujewa Ekanayake dug up this article, which contains a breakdown of box office grosses for a number of 2006/2007 IFC FirstTake releases. The article displays the figures to demonstrate that VOD is hurting theater business, and they’re certainly low enough to impress — of 15 films, only four grossed over $100,000, and most made less than $50,000.

But Newman says he’s “still not buying it” as evidence that FirstTake is making money, either in homes or in theaters. And even if IFC is breaking even, chances are filmmakers aren’t. “Net to producer - I don’t know, but rumor has it that IFC pays 50/50 after expenses. And after expenses can mean a lot of things.”

I maintain that IFC’s VOD distribution (of which, unlike Newman, I am a regular paying customer) is extremely good for the audience, and I think it must help films that would otherwise maybe play on two screens in New York and LA (if that) finder a wider audience. But to me the question is, what’s the end product? Already, I think most indie filmmakers on this level think of theatrical exhibition as an advertisement for a future DVD release. If we can safely say that no one’s getting rich off of VOD, is it at least functioning as a decent commercial for DVD sales? Or is it just eating into those potential profits, as this story suggests?

• Giving credence to rumors that have been floating around for many weeks, IFC confirmed yesterday that they’re planning to move away from distributing moderate-budget festival acquisitions in order to concentrate more attention on their IFC FirstTake program. This can only be good news for VOD-loving indie film fans. FirstTake has brought some of the year’s best films to cable boxes, including Day Night Day Night, Lars Von Trier’s The Boss of it All, and current selection This is England; they already have plans to distribute highly-anticipated (by me, at least) festival holdovers such as Hannah Takes the Stairs and Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. Can you imagine what they could do if they tried harder?
• Fox has struck a deal with what appears to be some kind of unofficial union called the Writing Partners, designed to lure top screenwriters to the studio by promising that the scribes will earn money off the gross if the movies get made.  This seems to be more thinly-veiled strike hysteria: Fox is worried that the crunch to get pictures in the can over the next twelve months will result in a dearth of quality, so they’re doing whatever it takes to get confirmed hit makers (Mr and Mrs Smith scribe Simon Kinberg and Little Miss Sunshine Oscar winner Michael Arndt are among the Partners) on board while they can.
• Len Wiseman, fresh off of resurrecting the Die Hard franchise, is in talks to steer a remake of Escape From New York. Gerard Butler (better known as “that guy from 300“) is apparently lined up to play the Kurt Russell role.

Blockbuster supporters (and stockholders) who got all excited about yesterday’s announcement that the video chain has purchased movie download site Movielink might want to wait before opening that bottle of champers. In a blog post titled “Video Downloads … Suck,” Om Malik*** points to a study by Parks Associates, which was (apparently coincidentally) released yesterday. Only 16 percent of those surveyed said they were happy with the selection of movies and TV shows available for download online, and only 13 percent agreed that those videos are sold for a reasonable price. “In other words,” says Malik, “The majority think downloads are too expensive and they suck.”

With all the “downloads are gonna save the industry” talk that seems to be going around, this would seem to be a study worth paying attention to, but I do wonder about the demographics of those surveyed. And the terms used in the press release also seem dangerously vague. Parks acknowleges that they’re lumping together products obtained from both legal, paid services like iTunes, and illegal P2P networks, which is already problematic, but it would seem that the term “video downloads” would be subject to even further confusion. Are we talking about studio movies, or “user-generated” videos, or both? What about streaming? What about YouTube? What about porn?

The findings of the Parks study certainly seem to stand in contrast to those expressed by Chuck Tryon, in his recent article in Flow. Tryon describes the experience of using Netflix’s Watch Now streaming service as a positive one, not least because it allows him to escape the “bright red envelope collecting dust” syndrome common to so many Netflix users. As Tryon puts it,

The Watch Now option feeds the desire for immediacy or spontaneity associated with trips to the video store. Audiences are not forced to wait the 2-3 days for that little red envelope to show up in the mail…Instead, as I’ve watched online, I’ve found myself watching movies more frequently than at any time in the recent past, while being more willing to take chances on certain movies, based in part on the perception that I’m making a relatively spontaneous decision, one that won’t result in a movie sitting on my shelf for several weeks at a time.

Tryon notes that one potential downside of the Watch Now system is that you’re stuck watching a movie on a computer, which tends to transform the idea of renting a video from a potentially communal to an almost necessarily solitary experience. But with Netflix rumored to have a set-top box in the works, that problem may be temporary. I’ve long been of the opinion that once we get to a point where there’s a more feasible way to connect files from the computer to the TV, downloading will explode. But then again, that theoretically should have been accomplished by the AppleTV, and in my three months as an AppleTV owner, I’ve yet to find a film for sale on the internet that I both want to watch, and can watch through all the Apple DRM.

If I took part in that survey, I’d have to concur that the current selection of movies available for download is not ideal–but if the Apple Store were to stock the movies I want to see, I’d be downloading left and right.

***Full disclosure: I write a weekly column for Om Malik’s NewTeeVee.