Back in 2006 I sent Outfest a screener of DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER. They said no thanks.

In 2007 I sent Outfest a screener of ASHLEY AND KISHA: FINDING THE RIGHT FIT. Again they said no thanks.

And that’s the last I ever heard from Outfest. Until last week, when Outfest sent me this:

Thank you to the 40 filmmakers who have already joined Outfest as a part of the 100 Filmmakers Campaign! We have already raised almost $5,000 toward supporting Outfest’s work protecting, showcasing and nurturing GLBT films and filmmakers…

Our goal is to get 100 filmmakers to join Outfest at any membership level. We are asking writers, directors and producers who have had a film in Outfest or Fusion to become a Member before Outfest 2009.

So I called Outfest and basically said, “WFT? I sent you two really nice movies. Movies that have been very well received in other festivals (general and LGBT). Movies that you turned down. Movies that helped us raise nearly $2,000 for NoOnProp8.com. Movies that you didn’t do thing one to help. And now you’re holding out your hat to me? Are you serious?”

Outfest’s response? A week later they sent this:

I am so proud of all of Outfest’s programs and you, the incredible artists who make our programs shine. For many of you, Outfest has been a launching pad for your career and has helped you to grow as artists. I am asking you to become an Outfest member as part of the 100 Filmmakers Campaign and support the very valuable work that Outfest does.

Our goal is to get 100 filmmakers to join Outfest at any membership level. We are asking writers, directors and producers who have had a film in Outfest or Fusion to become a Member by June 15, 2009. We have a special offer for those who join by June 1st. We will enter your name in a raffle to win 2 seats at an intimate dinner in Los Angeles on June 4th with Academy Award Winners Dustin Lance Black, Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks.

I can think of hundreds of reasons to be a Member of this organization. But for now, here are four:

1. Outfest: The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival - Our flagship festival is always a non-stop, 11-day celebration you don’t want to miss! (Outfest 2009 takes place July 9-19 – save the date!)
2. Fusion: The Los Angeles LGBT People of Color Film Festival - An experience like no other – a 2-day festival and conference celebrating the rich diversity of our community
3. The Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation - The only program that protects and saves the now vast but threatened canon of LGBT films
4. Access LA - Forges connections between new talent and established industry professionals with programs that include Industry Link and the Outfest Screenwriting Lab.

It’s #4 that really jumps off the screen at me. “Give us some money and we’ll give you access.” Oh yes, access, I want some of that please. If only I had access. That’s what’s standing between me and my dreams of indie film glory!

Or I could just save the $100 bucks (and another $25 submission fee) and put it towards replication for BRETT AND MELANIE: BOI MEETS GIRL.

Most of this last week has been spent trying to get the metadata for our titles sorted out at Amazon and the other big entertainment databases.  There’s still a lot of work to do, but at the moment things appear to be trending in the right direction.

It’s not the sort of work you think of when you hear “independent filmmaker”, but as I’ve said before, if you’re not an independent distributor, you’re not really an independent filmmaker, you’re just a work-for-hire contractor.

In no particular order:

Yes, I have thoughts about the AmazonFail thing. We track the way Amazon uses meta-data as closely as we can, and have seen some interesting shifts since the beginning of the year around sexuality. I am not unsympathetic to Amazon’s dilemma. If I ran a supermarket, I wouldn’t want incontinence supplies showing up in the produce section. But what Amazon did was incredibly stupid; and points out huge vulnerabilities, both to the ability of dissenting voices to maintain their visibility in a database driven marketplace, and to mega-merchants whose businesses are database-drive. As the commercial marketplace for ideas becomes less and less distinguishable from what is commonly referred to as “Web 2.0″ these pitfalls will only become easier to fall into — for marginal ideas and merchants both.

We are on the eve of our once a year B2B event, and Peggy has produced some sales materials that I think finally bridges the gap between the educational and therapeutic value I know these films have, and my instinct to recoil from the “educational” fig-leaf. No doubt some of my new-found openness to this marketing approach comes from seeing the writing on the wall (see the above bullet point) but also recent events have reminded me that many people are more than a little traumatized about sex, and that the gentle, yet unabashed eroticism of our films can make these films a source of comfort to people who are in genuine anguish.

Our boat goes back in the water later this month, which I expect will be a source of comfort to me. I don’t know what it is about being on the water, but even on a boat while it sits on it’s mooring, the angst of various travails that seem so dire here at the kitchen table is substantially diminished. I believe there is a Ruskin quote, “If there is magic in this world, it is found in water.”

Speaking of Amazon, BILL AND DESIREE is up to 14 five-star views, and just got this very, very nice write-up from Dina at ThisMarriageThing.com:

“I’m a bit disappointed with myself. Over the years, I’ve been my own DIY project, trying to broaden my views, be less judgmental and enjoy my life more. It’s aggravating to think that I could be ageist. But I guess I am…

“Consequently, I put off reviewing that adult film I mentioned. Tony Comstock, an award-winning director, was kind enough to send me his latest erotic documentary that chronicles Bill and Desiree as they explore love later in life. It sat on my desk until DH asked me to put it away for fear our teenager would see it. Yep, there it stayed until yesterday when I watched the whole thing and was amazed…”

“If you think all adult films are trash, you’re in for a treat when you watch one of Tony’s documentaries. He has a deep respect for love, connection and his subjects, which absolutely shows in his films. We get a chance to meet Bill and Desiree first before witnessing their lovemaking. That really helped me connect with them as people. We see that they are seekers interested in enhancing their own lives and the lives of others. In fact, Desiree even says, “who wants to be filmed making love. No one. But if no one does it how will we learn?” No creepy factor there.

“What most fascinated me was watching them navigate some of the ‘technical difficulties’ that can happen with mature couples. They weren’t embarrassed by the need for toys; it was part of the fun. Things took longer; so what, more fun to be had. Each truly seemed more invested in the other’s pleasure than his or her own. That really jived well with my notion that sex really is about our minds and hearts, not bodies. My heart will never be too old to love my DH.”

I’ve been invited by Marc Randazza to make a guest post over at The Legal Satyricon, and had been thinking I might expand on some of the idea hinted at in last week’s post “What Do Feminism and Pornography Have in Common with Walter Murch?” I’ve slowly hedging my way to debuting my Pornography Is Not a Genre, It’s a Business Model concept, but in candor, I haven’t been encouraged by the reception my trial balloons have received. Across the social and policical spectrum, people just don’t seem to be very interested in the way that economics drives the marketplace of ideas; or maybe I’m being too oblique/opaque; or maybe the things that interest me aren’t all that interesting (until there’s an AmazonFail style blow-up.)

We found the source of all our Sydney Australia visitors from the last week. 

“Sadly, the most healthy, realistic and genuine depictions of sex are still expensive and hard to come by. I don’t want to mention any of the names of the user-generated porn sites because they don’t deserve the publicity. But there is one film company which does deserve a mention and that is Comstock Films, which produces graphic sex films that are so wholesome they even have the seal of approval from Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine.

“These erotic documentaries present the stories of real, loving couples discussing their relationships, interspersed with graphic footage of them having sex, like an X-rated version of When Harry Met Sally.

When the Melbourne Underground Film Festival sought to play one of these films, Ashley And Kisha: Finding The Right Fit, at their festival in 2007, they were refused permission by the Office of Film and Literature Classification because it was too explicit. The technological revolution has given us access to an unlimited quantity of low-quality porn. If only there was a cultural revolution that gave us access to quality as well as quantity.”

Many thanks to Lisa Pryor of the Sydney Morning Herald and to Luke at the Pleasure Chest for the heads-up!

I am working on a sort of a Part 2 of “Learning to Say No to SXSW” tentatively entitled “Learning to Say No to AVN.”

And lastly a tease for the next installment of An Entrepreneur’s Biography, where in were learn how a young Tony Comstock turned a $225 investment in a motor-drive for his Nikon FM into about $4,000 in increased revenue in his whitewater photography business. It’s a tale of gear-lust and accidental marketing you won’t want to miss!

As information comes in, I am still cogitating on my “bigger picture” thoughts about this weird business of the Newport Beach Film Festival calling up Angelo Bell and telling him he’s “not the right kind of person.” But with each bit of new information, the shape shifts and it won’t gel yet. But I want to get a few things down and see what other filmmakers and film lovers have to say about them:

1) Angelo has a pretty long track record of service to the indie film community. In addition to his own movies, he’s helped other filmmakers complete their own by lending his time, equipment, and support. He’s spoken to young filmmakers at local community colleges on several occasions, offering an insider’s look at both the hard realities and joys of the DIY lifestyle.

2) Angelo also has a pretty long track record of being a “good soldier” in the festival scene. He’s been a volunteer at the Independent Spirit Awards five times; he volunteers with Film Independent in LA; and the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival. You don’t get invited back five times if you’ve got an attitude problem.

3) Why did Newport Beach Film Festival’s volunteer coordinator call Angelo? Why not just send him e-mail saying, “Too many volunteers this years, but thanks.” And having initiated the personal contact with Angelo, why did the festival mention his blog? Again, why not just play it off as too many volunteers or something else non-confrontational? Did they mean to send a message, or are they just clumsy?

4) I’ve been combing the Newport Beach Film Festival website trying to find out what films they’ve screened previously, but so far no luck. I guess once they’re finished with you, as far as the Newport Beach Film Festival is concerned, you’re yesterday’s news. No point in paying for server space to keep a listing of past festivals online. 

5) I did find this on their Filmmaker FAQ page (no way to link because of the flash site)

Q: Can I submit my film if it has already played on YouTube or Google video? A: Prior to the Festival dates, we prefer filmmakers to post only their film trailers online rather than their entire film. 

—-

Out of everything, this last might be the most damning detail. I’ve written before about film festivals’ “virginity fetish”, and how damaging it is to filmmakers, but this takes the cake. The whole point of a film festival ought to be to give people who love films a chance to gather in a cinema and watch a film together. If a film has already been a runaway hit online, that’s all the more reason to give people a chance to experience it in the communal setting of a theater.

As the details fill in, the picture I see is of a festival that, for all it’s pronouncements about supporting independent film and independent filmmakers, is (at best) clumsy and out of touch with the reality of the business. From eschewing films that have played online, to their own unlinkable website with its absent (or at least hard to find) archive of past festival schedules, to its strangely heavy-handed treatment of Angelo Bell, the Newport Beach Film Festival comes across like an organization that has lost touch with its mission and  has lost its meaning beyond its own self-aggrandizing hype.

And in that respect, the Newport Beach Film Festival is a pretty good proxy for the entire film festival/indie film game.

(See also: How Film Festivals and Distribution Deals Kill Independent Films)

 Over at MovieMaker.com Jeffrey Goodman, director of  the indie feature THE LAST LULLABY has been chronicling his adventures in gearing up to do his own theatric release of his film. And for the last few weeks I’ve been having a blog-comments conversation with him about the ins and outs self-distribution. Today I told Jeff about the kitchen table fulfillment operation (and other half-assed shit) that Peggy and I did to get Comstock Films off the ground:

When we were starting out we did our own warehousing (out of our garage) and fulfillment (off our kitchen table). Trips to the post office every other day. Again, it doesn’t fit the picture, but if you believe in your work you do what you have to do; plus it gives you a really intimate feeling about who your audience is. Before Peggy got things sorted, I was actually handwriting addresses for every order. On one hand that’s maybe not the best use of my time, but on the other hand, when you do it that way, you never forget who you’re making your movies for.

Jeff’s response made milk come out of my nose!

This is all fantastic stuff.  Tremendously useful.  And one of those times when I look in the mirror and say, “Yeah, you think you’re indy?  You’re a lazy sell-out next to Tony.”

I think of the the things that trips people up is that success (such as it is) doesn’t look like what we get shown as success on TV. Success on TV is sort of like that apartment on FRIENDS; so when we get a taste of real success (food, shelter, a little security, and making work we’re proud of) it doesn’t quite seem to measure up.

We say, “I don’t want that. I want the apartment on FRIENDS. I don’t want to carry a box of DVDs around in the trunk of my car and hawk them for $20 a piece at every festival, lecture, church grouop and AA meeting that will show my film. I wanna sit on a beach in St. Barts with Angelina Jolie while my royalties are direct depostited into my bank account.”

Well me too, brother, me too. We all want that, and God knows we all deserve it too. But that’s not the reality of this gig. The reality is a little closer to the ground than the dreams we were sold; and it’s a little more ragged around the edges than we thought it would be.

So then why do we do it? We do it because every once in a while you get a note like this one that came in yesterday from Ashley L:

No inquiry here. I just want you to keep making these films. These are the best “porns” I’ve ever seen. Your movies are one of the only things that turn me on these days, thanks to anti-depressant side-effects. Somehow they cut through the anti-libido static. Don’t stop making erotic movies showing couples who love each other AND like to fuck. THANK YOU!!!

So thank you Jeffrey and Ashley both. Just when I get to the point where I think I’m going to quit, you help me realize that if I could quit, I would have done it a long time ago.

There wasn’t enough room in for the full title in the header, so for the benefit of clarity, here it is in all its verbose glory:

How Film Festivals and Distribution Deals Kill Independent Films, Part 3
A Room Full of Strangers: Film Festivals that actually help independent filmmakers and what that means in a post-DVD world

In Part 1 I made the general case for why the dream come true fairy tale story of festival glory leading to a lucrative distribution deal is really more of a nightmare; a system that can’t help but be gamed in favor of everyone except filmmakers. 

In Part 2, A Tale of Two Indies I got into specifics. I compared financial trajectories of two indie films; one of them an indie doc that Time Magazine called “one of the 10 best films of 2006″, and the other our virtually unknown ASHLEY AND KISHA. Both films came out on DVD in June of 2007. But by June of 2008, the festival award winner, the film that got great reviews in the NYT (and many other places) and a “ligit” DVD distribution deal hadn’t sold that many more copies than ASHLEY AND KISHA, and hadn’t returned anything to its producer. By contrast, a year later ASHLEY AND KISHA was still selling briskly and still generating returns for its producers (that’s me and Peggy.)

In this installment I’m going to talk about film festivals that actually help filmmakers; what makes them different, and how that difference is an asset to an independent film producer and distributor. I’ll say it again, independent producer and distributor. If you’re not an independent distributor, then you’re not an independent filmmaker. If the previous two installments in this long-winded rant haven’t convinced you of that, you can quit reading and follow your bliss.

Still here? Okay then! Let’s get on with it.

As I said in yesterday’s post, a few hours after posting Part 2, I got an almost providential e-mail from a small Slovenian film festival. Here’s what happened.

The inquiry came through our DVD shop form mail. In polite, even deferential language the note gave a brief explanation of the festival’s history and mission and then asked if we would be interested in allowing our films to be screened. Apologies were made that because they were a small alternative festival with no sponsors they would not be able to fly us in, but they were prepared to either buy screening copies or borrow them and pay for shipping both ways. And oh yes, they also offered a modest screening fee.

Compare this to the usual process for a second-level festival in the US: Fill out e-form on WithOutABox.com, including the $25, $35, $50 fee. Send DVD screener. Wait until five weeks before the festival and then receive a form-letter explaining that there were 2,000 or 4,000 or 10,000 entries this year, and many worthy films were not included. (Or in our case, you might get a slightly more personal note explaining they “really liked your film, but since it’s already out on DVD…”)

Participating in this whole process might make sense if there was a pot of gold at end of the rainbow, but there isn’t. Getting into the “festival circuit” could well put you and your film on the road to financial ruin. Yeah, I know, that sounds like sour grapes; and with all the hype around Sundance, Tribeca, Berlin, whatever, it’s hard to accept that there isn’t any money in it. But fortunately for our fragile filmmakers’ psyches we don’t have to accept that there’s no money in it. We just have to understand where the money is going.

The news organizations covering the festivals are making money; magazines, TV shows, newspapers. Everyone working for them is getting paid. The PR people, the folks – the people charged with turning the screening of a bunch of no-name films in with unknown actors into a media event – they’re getting paid. The folks printing up all the posters, palmcards are getting paid. The venues are getting paid. A few people higher-ups at the film festival are getting paid. The restaurants and hotels are getting paid, and a bunch of people I can’t think of right now.

So yes, a lot of money is changing hands. The problem is: 1) somehow in the middle of all that commerce none of that money makes its way back into filmmakers’ pockets, and ; 2) all that time doing the “festival circuit” is draining the filmmakers war chest and cannibalizing the film’s audience.

So then what did we tell this virtually unknown Slovenian film festival?

Why we told them yes, of course! And we didn’t just tell them yes, we told them we wanted to support their festival and that we’d be happy to send the films they wanted at our own expense; and that their offer of a screening fee was very gracious, but that we’d rather they put the money towards printing their (very beautiful) poster. (see above)

So now maybe you’re thinking,  if festivals are so bad for indie filmmakers, why did you 1) say yes to having your film shown, and; 2) turn down their money?

A big part of the answer to that can be found in last month’s screening of ASHLEY AND KISHA at the NYC LGBT Center. What’s worth noting about that screening was that a huge percentage of the women (my editor Michael and I were the only men in attendance) who came out to the screening had already seen the movie on DVD; and of the women who had already seen the film on DVD, a  lot of them even already owned the DVD, which means they could watch ASHLEY AND KISHA at home any time they wanted. Those that didn’t already own the DVD were paying $10/person to sit on a folding metal chair to watch the film being projected on a pulldown screen in a boomy concrete room. If you came as a couple, add subways or cab fair and you could buy the DVD from us and come out ahead.

Except it’s not the same thing.

Watching at home is great. Peggy and I are huge fans of the whole DVD thing. We have a 42″ LCD TV, and even when were were on our boat last year, we took along about 100 DVDs and watched one or two of them on Peggy’s laptop most nights. But watching a DVD at home, by yourself or curled up with your lover is not the same experience as watching a film in room full of strangers.

It’s not the same thing, and people are willing to go out of their way to have the experience. Put the right film in front of the right audience and they will sit on folding metal chairs for the chance to be a part of an audience that’s going to get all the in jokes and the asides, that’s going to sigh and tear up at the more subtle passages. It’s not church, but it might be the closest thing we have in secular society, the communal experience of audience cohesion under the thrall of a film that moves them.

But what does that mean for the independent filmmaker?

Well first it helps you set a standard for yourself. YouTube’s proven just how hard it is to monetize even legions of online viewers. Every other day one video or another goes “viral” without putting a penny in the producer’s pocket. The festival circuit? We’ve covered that ground. No gold at the end of that rainbow, not for the filmmaker at least. But if you can make a film that can draw a paying audience, a film that can pack the house, even when they could stay home and watch it on DVD, you just might be on to something.

The second is that festivals like the one being put on by these lovely folks in Slovenia are going to help you better understand who wants to see your film and how you’re going to reach them. Festivals like this will help get you in the mindset of putting your audience first. Not praise from other filmmakers, not festival programmers, not distributors; none of these people are interested in giving you a dime. But if you can make ordinary people feel like watching your movie was time well spent, they’ll be happy to give you their money.

What that means is you need to find film festivals and other curated cinematic events that see their mission as serving an audience. You’re not going to see that in most of the festival hype. They’ll go on about how they really care about filmmakers (they don’t); or how they get x many industry buyers; or whatever. All that stuff is bullshit. You don’t want it, you don’t need it, it’s not going to help you make money off your movie.

The festivals that will help you are festivals that are focused on making their audiences happy because that’s what your focus as a filmmaker needs to be. You need to make films that makes audiences happy.

What will help you make money off your movie is: 1) movie that people want to pay (you) to see; 2) finding the people who want to see your movie. An example:

About  year and a half ago I met David Bennencourt, director of the doc YOU MUST BE THIS TALL: THE STORY OF ROCKY POINT PARK on the semi-private professional documentary forum The D-Word. Rocky Point Park was an amusement park in Rhode Island that almost everyone in the region above a certain age had fond and nostalgic memories for. David had pulled together archival footage and interviews in a straight-forward historical documentary style, and and on the forum he was telling amazing stories about the successes he was having marketing his film. He was actually walking in off the street to regional Barnes & Noble stores and selling DVDs by the hundred-count box load.

He was able to do this because once he finished YOU MUST BE THIS TALL he screened it to every church, civic group, school, to any place and to anyone he could think of within driving distance of the now torn down Rocky Point Amusement park. And guess what? People loved it! He got all kinds of local press coverage; newspapers and magazines. He got TV coverage, with clips of the film and shots of people standing in line to see it. He even picked up a few film festivals along the way, including the prestigious Rhode Island International (how could they resist?). But it wasn’t the film festivals that helped sell DVDs. It was making a film that people (all caps now) WANTED TO PAY HIM MONEY TO SEE.

Last I heard David was taking his profits and rolling them into his next film.

Now you’d think that the D-worders would have been fascinated and inspired by David’s success. He made a documentary film, on his own terms, on a subject close to his heart. No investors to charm, no grants to write, no distributors to fuck him over. But they weren’t. They had all sorts of excuses for why David’s success was exceptional; all sorts of reason for why David’s approach wouldn’t work for the kinds of movies that they wanted to make; all sort of reasons why they had to play the funding game, and the festival game, and the distribution game. David quit posting. I don’t know if he was discouraged, disgusted, or just too busy selling DVDs to care, but he quit posting.

(Not too long after David quit posting I pointed out to some of the D-word heavies that they had treated David pretty condescendingly; and that even the D-worders who played the grant/festival/distributor game perfectly didn’t end up with much money in their pocket, or even financing for their next project; and spent an awful lot of time complaining that the system was broken. That wasn’t well received either, so I moved on too.)

The “problem” with David’s approach is that it seems both too easy and too hard. Too easy because he selected a subject with an obvious market; too hard because his approach required a big down payment in money and shoe leather both. People are threatened by that kind of success because it sort suggests that they’re stupid and lazy and afraid to put their money with their mouth is. Nobody, most especially not people who see themselves as “independent” appreciates that!

But what makes David’s approach work is the same thing that made Bruce Brown’s approach work, or our approach for that matter. Bruce, David, me; we all took down every obstacle between us and the one gatekeeper that matters the most – the person with a $20 bill in their pocket, trying to decide whether or not to trade it for a copy of one of our movies. It’s worked for our films, and it can work for anyone who makes a film about something they’re passionate about, and makes that film well enough that people want to watch it.

This is where the rubber hits the road. Not in at an assistant festival programer’s desk, where he’s got a stack of 200 DVD-R screener, fast-forwarding through one after one, looking for a reason to hit eject and move on to the next one. Not in a distributor’s office where they “bottle” and market movies the same way that Coca Cola bottle and markets bubbly brown liquid.

What makes independent film different and special is that it’s a way of doing business that connects filmmakers and the films they make directly to the audience that want to see them. It’s not about Cinderella success stories or all the other  Hollywood hype on the festival circuit. And whether the subject matter is surfing, or regional nostalgia, or love and sex, the common denominator is the unmediated connection between artist and audience.

Part four of this already long and threatening to get longer rant is tentatively titled “The Great Internet Swindle”, and will look at what the internet can and cannot do to help independent filmmakers promote and sell their films. Recommended reading before the next installment is “Against Search”, by Christophe Pettus.  Christophe has been a computer programmer since forever, an internet merchant since 1993, and for the last few years, an independent DVD producer and distributor. This passage in particular is key:

Remember how people told us that the Internet would completely disintermediate everything, and it would be a direct artist-to-consumer paradise? They lied.

Now go read the rest!

In yesterday’s post, I made the general case for how the indie film model — the festival circuit to get a distribution deal/theatrical run as a promotional event for DVD sales — hurts independent filmmakers. And by hurt I mean it’s a system that by its very nature puts filmmakers at a disadvantage in negotiations, and puts less money in filmmakers pockets, making it harder for them to pay their bills, let alone make more movies. 

Today, specifics. 

A TALE OF TWO INDIES

“It was the best of time, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it ws the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everythying before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, their period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being recieved, for good or for eveil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

In 2006 a colleague released a low budget documentary onto the “festival circuit.” It wasn’t shot with a cellphone in a favela, but it was made almost entirely out of found and handicam-acquired footage, so his shooting costs were low. But he’s not an editor, so shaping his footage into a film cost him some money, and I’m pretty sure he paid his composer as well.

This fellow had a good track record in the doco world, lots of connections and contacts. But as he likes to say, “Knowing people just means you get to hear ‘no’ faster.” But in the case of this movie, he didn’t hear “no” nearly as much as most of us do. He heard “yes” from the right people in the right places. And he should have. He had a damn good film.

The film was about as well-received as one could hope for, playing some of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. On the strength of the festival run, the film was able to attract investors to finance a limited theatrical run. The theatrical run is key because without a theatrical run you can’t get reviews from mainstream film critics (NYT, Time, etc.) or Oscar consideration. In terms of press, the theatrical run was a success as well – called “one of the ten best of 2006″; and the film was on the shortlist for consideration for nomination for an Academy award.

But financially the film was anything but a success. Even with reviews a filmmaker doesn’t dare dream of, the theatrical run lost money. Even as one of “the ten best films of 2006″, the advance for the DVD rights was about $35K, and didn’t go into the filmmaker’s pocket. Well actually it did go into his pocket, and then right back out again to pay back the people who invested in the theatrical run.

The film came out on DVD in June of 2007, months after all the good press. And of course by that time, a lot of the film’s potential audience had already seen it; either on the “festival circuit” or in its theatrical run, so not one dollar from that ended up in the filmmaker’s pocket. Whether any of the people who’d seen the film in the theater also bought the DVD is hard to know, but if they did, none of that money made it back into the filmmaker’s pocket either. By the Summer of 2008 the film had sold about 6,000 units on DVD (a pretty respectable number for an indie doc) but had still not earned out its advance.

After all that work and all that success – making the film, touring the film, promoting the film, a theatrical run with great reviews and DVD distribution deal – the filmmaker had made nothing.

As it happens, our film ASHLEY AND KISHA: FINDING THE RIGHT FIT also came out on DVD in June of 2007.

ASHLEY AND KISHA was a hybrid production shot on Super16 film and 24p video. Everyone who worked on the production was paid union minimum or better. The editor didn’t get paid because (for better or worse) the editor was yours truly. There were no DVD authoring costs because over the years that’s something I’ve learned how to do too (it’s not that hard.) All the packaging and marketing artwork was produced by Peggy, because over the years that’s something that she’s taught herself to do. I’m lining all these things out to give an idea of what it  took in terms of creative resources and money to get each of these films to DVD. I think it’s a fair guess that A&K cost more to produce (crew, subjects, equipment, filmstock and processing,) and the other film cost more in post (editor, composer, DVD authoring and package design.) 

The DVD release of ASHLEY AND KISHA didn’t have any festival buzz or critical acclaim behind it, but it did have a string of modestly successful, well-branded productions preceding it. People knew the name “Comstock Films” and had a certain level of expectation for a Tony Comstock-directed film. Over the years we had leveraged that branding and expectation into an in-house distribution system, just the way we had taught ourselves to shoot, edit, author and package our films. We even had “investors” of a sort; the first copies of ASHLEY AND KISHA didn’t go out to festival programers, distributors, or buyers. They went out to the 500 or so people who had pre-ordered the film, and paid in advance in exchange for a discounted price (and netting themselves a nice ROI!)

A year later, ASHLEY AND KISHA had played a few festivals and garnered a few honors, which is always gratifying, but most importantly people were buying the DVD. Before the year was over, the first pressing was sold out and demand was still strong. We sent off a reprint order, and Peggy updated the insert artwork to include our festival laurels. Before this year is over we’ll do another pressing and Peggy will update the artwork again.

Our distribution model doesn’t have the same “out the door pop”  as traditional DVD distribution, but we also don’t have ultra-discounted copies of our DVDs showing up at places like DeepDiscount.com the day of release either. And because we make money on every copy that somebody buys, we have ongoing incentive to continue to promote our films. Long after a traditional distributor would have lost interest and moved on, we’re still we’re still banging the gong for ASHLEY AND KISHA. Hell, we’re still banging the gong for MARIE AND JACK; which is somewhere in its fifth or sixth pressing.

Now I can hear what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking that our movies have explicit sex in them and that’s the difference. It’s not. If it were, then films like SHORTBUS or 9 SONGS or DESTRICTED would be big hits. Obviously they’re not. Michael Winterbottom hasn’t seen any reason to further explore explicit sex. Within a year of HEDWIG John Cameron Mitchell was already talking about “The Sex Film Project” but more than two years after SHORTBUS there’s no news of his next project. And DESTRICTED, well what can one say about DESTRICTED, except to be thankful that promises of it merely being the beginning have gone unfulfilled.

And despite everything you’re heard about the “adult industry” being a multi-jizzilion dollar business where the studio heads are Roll Royce-driving jizzilionaires, the simple truth is that pornography is a very low volume, low margin business. Most adult DVDs only sell a few hundred copies. Even Vivid, the 800 pound gorilla of the adult industry, typically sells only 5,000 -10,000 DVDs per title.

So there it is. A tale of two indies. A tale of two approaches for getting films out into the world so people can see them (aka distribution.) The traditional approach, playing the festival game and touring your film nets more recognition but not very much money. The DIY distribution approach flies below the radar, but puts more money in your pocket. Which one is right for you and your film depends an awful lot on what you want to get out of being a filmmaker.

But when considering that question, it’s worth thinking about the case of Bruce Brown, director of one of the greatest indie film success stories there ever was, “The Endless Summer.”

Bruce Brown started shooting surf films back in the early sixties. He’d spend half the year making a film, and the other half of the year four-walling it. (Four-walling is when the filmmaker rents the venue, does his own publicity and promotion, and pockets all the sales. 100% of the risk, 100% of the reward.)

Then he’d take the money he made from the previous film, and put it into his next film. After five years of this he felt like if he could take two years to make a film that could really raise his game; and he had built up enough of a reputation and war chest that he had the time and money to do it.  

The result was “The Endless Summer”, which was an instant hit on the surf-film circuit. But the story doesn’t end there.

When distributors told Brown that his film would “never play 10 minutes from the coast”, he had the gumption and the money to four-wall it in Witchita, Kansas, a venue as far away from the ocean as he could find. And it was a hit.

When distributors told Brown that Wichita was a fluke, he had the gumption and the money to take the film to New York City and four-wall it there. It played to sold-out audiences for a year.

When distributors finally noticed all money that “The Endless Summer” was making in New York, and tried to low-ball Brown, he said, “Thanks but no thanks. We make more than that in a single week.”

When distributors told Brown, “We have a better idea for how to market your film to a general audience. More girls, less surfing.” Brown told them they were wrong and walked away.

Of course there was no Academy Award nomination for “The Endless Summer”. The Academy is and always has been rather notorious for being blind to films made outside the system. Brown had to make another film, “On Any Sunday” to get his Oscar nomination; which I’m sure he was happy to have, but doubt that he needed to pay his bills.

Next up, Part 3, A Room Full of Strangers: Film Festivals that actually help independent filmmakers and what that means in a post-DVD world

Back in 2001 when I shot MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY I was, to put it mildly, rather naive about the indie film game. Silly me, I thought in a world where a serious approach to sex on screen was defined by aggressively sex-negative films from directors like Gaspar Noé and Catherine Breillat, the guileless earnestness and sincere eroticism of MARIE AND JACK would be a welcome breath of fresh air. I thought that film festivals were about putting provocative new works in front of cinephilic audiences,  and that a film that made audiences feel good about seeing true love in all its glory was about as provocative an idea as a filmmaker could have about sex and cinema. 

Silly me. I hadn’t yet learned about the “intent to arouse” doctrine. I didn’t yet know that in Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival, sales of a film like MARIE AND JACK are prohibited by law. I didn’t know about these sorts of things and how they still affect the way that people — including festival programmers — think about what they can and should put in their festivals. After 18 months of sending off screeners to every festival I could think of, I had more or less struck out. Not even a no-name festival in my hometown was interested in screening MARIE AND JACK. (Yes, I know, there are laurel leaves on the box cover. The very few venues we played were very different festivals with a very different mandate and mission. More on the value of these sort of festivals in a post DVD world in the next entry.)

But as ignorant as I was about the social and legal climate that dictated our collective understanding of what it meant to be “serious” about sex and cinema, I was even more ignorant of the business of independent cinema; by business I mean quite plainly box office grosses, DVD units, and how much money ends up back in the pocket of a film’s producers. 

The fairy tale narrative goes something like this:

Scrappy gang of young artists put together a film on a shoe-string budget. Invariably a key to their success is a just-now available to consumers product (high limit credit cards, “prosumer” video cameras, desktop video editing, etc.) Said shoe-string budget film goes on to be the darling of the film festival circuit. From there it’s a distribution deal for the film, and a three picture deal for the film’s director. The film pulls in about $16M at the box office. Not a big deal by Hollywood standards, but a stunning 50:1 ROI. Another rags-to-riches, hard work and derring-do success story! 

Thank God my ignorance saved me and my films from such success. Here’s how it really works. 

Naive young artist makes film. If she’s smart, she uses whatever the shiny new prosumers gizmo is in her production. This is important because if she uses (for example) the new Sony HDV camera and makes something that isn’t crap, Sony will give her a lot of free publicity. The shiny new gizmo could be FinalCutPro, MagicBullet, or a Panasonic HDX 200. The important thing is that it’s not the shiny new gizmo that everyone already has. There’s no marketing value for Sony in cheering a film shot on last year’s model. Next stop, the film festivals. 

When you stop and think about it, film festivals are some kind of amazing. They get their films for free. They get a lot of volunteer labor. They get sponsors and underwriters. In some countries they even get government funding. Ticket prices are often higher than regular films at for-profit theaters. Overwhelmingly they are non-profit and get special tax treatment.

Yet in spite of all these advantages, film festivals can’t seem to find a way to pay filmmakers for showing their films. Oh maybe there’s money to fly  you in, maybe even a hotel to stay in, maybe even a token screening fee. But mostly “doing the festival circuit” is a big financial drain. If your film is a “success” on the festival circuit, hundreds, even thousands of people will see your film, and you won’t see a dime.

So why do filmmakers participate in a system that is gamed against them? It’s all in the hopes of getting a coveted a “distribution deal,” with all the fame and fortune that goes with it.

Fame? Maybe a little (anyone remember Daniel Myric and Eduardo Sánchez?) Fortune? Most certainly not. Here’s how it works:

By the time you get to the end of the “festival circuit” you are dead broke. Maybe you shot your film on a cell phone in a favela in Brazil, but the airline tickets and hotel rooms and meals for the circuit take cash money. Plus if you’re “out on the circuit” you’re not working. Unless you’re a trust-fund baby, you arrive at negotiations with distributors in the weakest possible position.

So there you are. In spite of a well-received festival run, you’re in debt and a large portion of the cinephile audience has already seen your film. Of course your film isn’t available on DVD, because film festivals don’t play films that are already available on DVD, so people who read about your festival success, (the best press your film is ever going to get,) can’t give you their money. Things are bad. But they’re about to get worse. You’re about to get offered a $50K advance for your film. 

Of course that’s if you took the grand jury prize at Sundance. If your film wasn’t quite so successful, you’ll get offered less. But just wait till you hear the terms.

“Advance” has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? It sounds like it’s the beginning of the money; something to tide you over until the royalties start rolling in. Maybe you’ll use it to take a long and well-deserved vacation to St. Barts and by the time you get home, your first statement  will be waiting for you; and more importantly your first check. But that’s not the way it’s going to work.

Your film is about to become the bubbly brown liquid in a giant marketing and hype machine. As essential as it is, that magical combination of water, sugar, and carbonation is a financially trivial part of what makes Coke Coke. Your film is about to get the same treatment. Here’s why.

Big budget Hollywood movies run on about a 3:2 production to marketing ratio; the figure I’ve read is that the average Hollywood film has a production budget of about $60M and a marketing budget of about $40M. But for independent films, the marketing ratio puts makes the film a much smaller part of the financial equation. Harvey Weinstein once said that even if he got a film for free, he’d still have to spend $20M on marketing, and “break-out” indie films (films that might make $10m-$20 at the box office) routinely have marketing and promotion budgets that are 10 or 20 or even 50 times greater than their production budgets. So much for the ROI on a half-million dollar picture. And so much for those royalty checks.

Read the hype and you’d think that the film is a big hit. In fact all the “profit” has disappeared into advertising, press agents, photocopies, and a zillion other expenses (if you think $4 for an aspirin on a hospital bill is outrageous, just wait till you see a distributor’s expense report!) Once the distributor is finished tallying up the score, the theatrical run will turn out to be a loser; a bunch of hype in the hopes of broadcast and DVD sales. And guess what, before a single royalty check is cut, the TV and DVD sales have to fill in the financial crater left by the theatrical run. The filmmaker with the “breakout” hit is never going to see another dime.

And that “three picture deal”? That’s not a guarantee of financing for your next three films. That’s an option for the distributor to get first right of refusal, at a price they set, on your next three projects.

Next. Part 2: A Tale of Two Indie Films

A couple years ago we entered into a non-exclusive distribution arrangement with a fairly well-know company that specializes in placing sexually explicit films in mainstream markets. This is the blurb they wrote for Matt and Khym: Better than Ever:

“This adult instructional guide helps married couples rejuvenate their sex lives through the erotic experiences of real-life couple Matt and Khym, who explain and then demonstrate explicit techniques for becoming better lovers.”

I was horrified.

If watching “Matt and Khym” helps rejuvenate a couple’s sex life, I think that’s great. But the above description runs against everything these movies stand for; the dissembling “educational” language; the promises that somehow the secrets to a better sex life (and a better marriage) have been magically encoded in the DVD; the idea that medicalized, educational sexuality is okay, but sexuality for the sake of its own beauty is not.

We severed our ties with the distributor and set about the months long work of tracking down and eliminating this description where ever we could find it.

But if you know where to look you can still find it. Not anywhere people actually shop for our films, but it’s still out there.

And it still bothers me.

“Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being the helpless prey of impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, and crowning injury inflicts upon him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.” – Paul Valéry

“Impotent rage.”

That would more or less sum up my mood this morning. We can talk all we want about “independent production” and “new digital distribution models”, the simple fact remains: when you move a physical product through a physical distribution pipeline it’s a lot harder for the powers that be to fuck with you than when all they have to do is screen your work against a list of banned keywords and off-limit domain names.

Erotic writers are still be able to get there stories onto the mainstream bookstore shelves under the rubric of “erotica”, but what do you think is going to happen when the text is digital – and searchable. What do you think is going happen when Paypal starts backtracking search results the way Google is doing right now? And how about when image recognition software comes of age? Flick of a digital switch, and *poof*, we will disappear.

For years we have battled to make a place for our work at the “grown-up table”, but today I despair. Today, despite all our successes, our victories seem small and fragile. Today I question the wisdom of pouring still more time, money and hope into such a lopsided battle.

But it’s not all bad news. This morning (via Google alerts, of course) there are some people saying some very nice things about our films. I’m especially tickled to see Hot Movies for Her making Em & Lo aware of our work. I’ve been trying to get there attention for years without any success, but the Porn Librarian came through!

From the Porn Librarian on Em & Lo’s Daily Bedpost:

Em & Lo: What would you recommend for women, gay or straight, who just don’t like porn (the lighting, gynecological detail, fake boobs, bad acting), but wish they did, or wish they could get into it with their partners, or wish they could accentuate their fantasy lives with it, with something?

Porn Librarian: I would start by looking at something from Comstock Films. Tony Comstock creates these really interesting sex documentaries that star real life couples. There are lengthy interviews, so you really get to know about them before getting to the dirty part.

And a new friend, Dr. Strokes at the Swarthmore Daily Gazette:

Comstock Films are so perfect for couples even Oprah recommended them and so hot that they’re, well, molten. These are documentary-style films of real couples who tell you how they fell in love and then invite you to look in on their bedroom. Right now they have a gay feature, a lesbian feature, and two straight films (one featuring an awesome interracial couple), but once you’ve watched those and realized you can’t get enough, don’t despair! They’re coming out with more soon, including an older straight couple, which rocks. I can’t recommend this company enough.

As for the future, well I’m not quite ready to quit yet. But I do feel increasingly pinched between two possibilities:

1) Reconsidering the offers we’ve received from the biggies of the “adult entertainment” world, which would embed our films in a more established and less vulnerable distribution chain. Of course that would mean higher production quantity, which in turn would mean lower production values and diminished emotional and physical safety for the people I film. Not an especially attractive option.

2) Backing away from my commitment to explore sexuality as frankly and honestly and cinematically as I can. There are good films, and a good living to be made without showing cunts and cocks and jizz. Google rankings/listing for my non-erotic documentaries are stable, and none of those films have ever been banned.

Not even the one with the man getting his head cut off with a machete.