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.

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)

So yesterday I caught a disturbing post on filmmaker Angelo Bell’s blog. Here’s the gist:

So I get a call from the volunteer coordinator. It seems my “reputation” proceeds me. She confirms that I am signed up for a volunteer orientation for March 28th. But then she promptly says that she doesn’t think that I am “…the right kind of person we want to have as a volunteer.” (read the rest here.)

Being the kind of person that I am, I picked up the phone and called the Newport Film Festival and asked to speak with the volunteer coordinator. From yesterday’s post:

So I called up the festival myself and asked to speak to the volunteer coordinator. I read her Angelo’s blog post and asked her if it was true. I asked her what it was he had written, and she said that she couldn’t discuss it with me. I told her that wasn’t a very satisfactory answer, but if that’s what she wanted me to go with on my blog, that’s what I’d run.

She said that she was just a “lowly intern” and would have to check with some other people before saying anything more, which I suppose is fair enough. I told her I’d wait until 3PM EDT tomorrow for them to figure out what they wanted to say about what it what it was they read on Angelo’s blog that they were worried about, and I’d be happy to blog their response.

What I didn’t include in yesterday’s post is that the “lowly intern” told me that it wasn’t just what Angelo wrote on his blog, there were also “behaviors that were a concern.” But when I asked what these behaviors were, she said she couldn’t go into it. Hmmmm.

Well the “lowly intern” aka the volunteer coordinator called back today. She said that she had conferred with the excecutive committee and their position is that they don’t discuss personal matters with third parties. I guess that makes this my first dip into the nebulous category of blogger/citizen journalist. 

Meanwhile, the Daily Pilot had caught wind of Angelo’s story, so I thought, “Fine, if Newport won’t talk to me, maybe they’d enjoy a call from a reporter at their hometown paper.” I called up Brianna Bailey at the Pilot and related Angelo’s story as I understood it, my two telephone encounters with the festival, and did my best stab at full disclosure as to why I have a dog in the fight.

So as of 6:00pm EST the response from the Newport Beach Film Festival is no response; Angelo is on the war path; and I’m waiting to see what’s going to happen next.

Of course there are all sorts of ideas buzzing around in my head about the relationship between film festivals and filmmakers, guerilla marketing, the future of journalism and the art and business of making films – erotic and otherwise.

Stay tuned…

About 30 minutes ago read this over on Angelo Bell’s blog:

I just got off the phone with the volunteer coordinator for the Newport Beach Film Festival. The number is 949-387-3489. You know, this is the festival that rejected my film, “Broken Hearts Club,” right? Well. At the time when I was waiting for an answer about the festival I went to the official website and signed up to be a volunteer. I figured, what the hell? Truthfully, I had no intentions of following up to do volunteer work. I’ve done my time volunteering for film festivals and award shows, thank you very much. But then again, one never knows how one might feel in the future, right?

But on with the story…

So I get a call from the volunteer coordinator. It seems my “reputation” proceeds me. She confirms that I am signed up for a volunteer orientation for March 28th. But then she promptly says that she doesn’t think that I am “…the right kind of person we want to have as a volunteer.”

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

If you know me, then you know there is NO way I am letting that slide. I asked her, “What makes you believe that?”

She stutters for a second. Gathers her thoughts and then says, “Well, it because of certain comments we’ve read. I don’t think you represent the kind of person we want interacting with patrons.”

I knew exactly about what she was referring. “Fair enough,” I said. We hung up.

So I called up the festival myself and asked to speak to the volunteer coordinator. I read her Angelo’s blog post and asked her if it was true. I asked her what it was he had written, and she said that she couldn’t discus with me. I told here that wasn’t a very satisfactory answer, but if that’s what she wanted me to go with on my blog, that’s what I’d run.

She said that she was just a “lowly intern” and would have to check with some other people before saying anything more, which I suppose is fair enough. I told her I’d wait until 3PM EDT tomorrow for them to figure out what they wanted to say about what it what it was they read on Angelo’s blog that they were worried about, and I’d be happy to blog their response.

I’ll also hold my own commentary until tomorrow.

From “Why I’m not at SXSW This Year” on blog.ni9e.com

Five weeks ago, in Part 1 of How Film Festivals and Distribution Deals Kills Independent Films I wrote this:

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.

In Part 3 of the rant I banged on about who does get paid:

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 you can imagine how tickled I was when I came across this rant from Evan Roth, who was invited to give a keynote speech at this year’s SXSW Festival:

I know the last thing anyone wants to hear are artists whining about money (trust me I am one of them). But with all the hype surrounding SXSW I thought I would chime in with why I won’t be in Austin this week amongst all of the web 2.0 illuminati twittering and drinking Mexican beers.

A couple of months ago I had a conversation with SXSW that went something like this:

SXSW: Hi, we’d like to invite Graffiti Research Lab to keynote at SXSW!
Me: Great. Thanks for the invitation. Our standard fee is $X.
SXSW: Oh, we only pay for flights and hotel.
Me: Really? Even for a keynote? Giving talks is in part how we pay for rent and food. How about $X/2
SXSW: Nope. Airfare and hotel.
Me: How about you just pay for meals while we’re in Austin so we aren’t losing money?
SXSW: Nope. Airfare and hotel.
Me: Thanks, but no thanks.

I am somewhat more understanding with events that are grassroots and hence under funded, but the Graffiti Research Lab keynote presentation at SXSW (a private company) is sponsored specifically by Microsoft (a giant corporation). Beyond the moral implications of having the largest proprietary software giant funding a talk about free culture and open source, what I would first like to know is where is that money going? I know it’s not going towards fees or food for the presenters. My suspicion is that the people extending the invitation will be paid, the person setting up the audio and video equipment will be paid, and the janitor cleaning up after the talk will be paid. So, is it really that difficult to pay for a handful of meals for the artists while they’re in Austin?

The problem with this as a precedent is that it leaves artists in a position where they will never be able to pay rent. This issue of not paying artists (which I have blogged on in the past) extends well beyond me and well beyond SXSW, and is something that is becoming more common as the world economy continues to crumble. In the end I’m writing this not because I’m greedy and looking to fund my Champagne lifestyle, but because in general it is a system that benefits private for-profit events (e.g., SXSW) and corporate sponsors (e.g., Microsoft) at the expense of artists (e.g., me). In the end I have two messages:
1. Event organizers: If you respect the artists you are inviting, then pay them. You can’t buy bananas with publicity, so don’t try to pedal this as a form of currency (especially since the artists are also bringing you publicity). If you can’t afford to pay artists, then you don’t have enough funding to host the event.
2. Artists: Airfare, hotel, and publicity are not payment for your time. If corporately sponsored events can’t pay artist fess then tell them ‘no’. By accepting gigs like this, we are just as guilty as they are for perpetuating a system that ensures we stay eating Ramen Noodles until the day we die.

In summary: Event organizers, show some love to those you love. Artists, god gave you middle fingers for a reason, don’t be afraid to use them.

Middle finger indeed!

Learning to say “no” is hard.  As I said in my recent Stranger in a Strange Land post:

In the course of making these films, we’ve said “no” to HBO, BBC, CBC, Pulse Distribution, Adam & Eve, Women’s Health, Pacific Media, Tartan Films, ThinkFilms to name a few. In each case we were faced with the same question: Do we give up control of our films, of our brand, our values for the chance of greater recognition, greater reach, greater revenue?

It’s an agonizing question. As an artist I want  my films to be seen as widely as possible. As a businessman I want Comstock Films to thrive so that I can live up to my obligations as a father.

I could have put SXSW on that list, but the “deal” they offered us was so bad, and so easy to say “no” to, it didn’t even occur to me when I was writing up the post. Here’s the story.

About a year and a half ago I was invited to be a part of a panel at the 2008 SXWS festival. Was there an offer of airfare? No. Was there an offer of lodging? No? I was told I would get an all access pass to the festival, except for the musical events. If I wanted to go see the musical acts, I would have to pay for myself. Color me unimpressed with SXSW’s notion of hospitality.

Still, we had a film (ASHLEY & KISHA) on their short-list, so I looked into what it would cost to fly from Treasure Key to TX (we were on our Bahamas trip last Winter.) If ASHLEY & KISHA got a slot at SXSW, I’d leave Peggy and the kids on the boat in the Bahamas, fly to Texas for A&K screening, and while I was there I’d sit on the panel.

Of course I didn’t go, but I didn’t say “no” to SWSW either. At least not then. They said “no” to me; more specifically, they said, “We really liked ASHLEY AND KISHA, but since it’s out on DVD…”

Grrrr. I decided I’d stay in the Bahamas with my family.

Now of course I didn’t submit BILL AND DESIREE for consideration for SXSW 2009. 1) After 8 years, I’ve figured out that film festivals don’t do explicit sex if the sex makes people happy; 2) We made BILL AND DESIREE available on DVD for our paying audience before we made it available to film festivals. So that’s not really saying “no” to SXSW.

What I did say no to was their invitation to put on a panel at SXSW 2009.

See once you’ve been put on their presenter list for one year, you get a mailing (even if you didn’t show up) asking if you want to put on a presentation for the next year. No offer of airfare, hotel, or even bananas. No, if you’re pay your own way to get your ass to Texas, SXSW is perfectly happy to let you donate content to their cultural festival, just the same way their happy to have Microsoft donate money; because that’s SXSW’s business model.

They get corporations like Microsoft to put up the cash, they get bands and filmmakers and software engineers and whoever else is willing to speak for free to donate the programing, and then they charge everyone who isn’t playing or lecturing or showing a film to come and see all the “free” content, and celebrate the indie/DIY/Alternative lifestyle, in which not getting paid for your work is apparently taken as a given.

SXSW is able to get people to give away their time, their music, their films, because SXSW has build up enough of a reptuation the  place to be seen in the indie/DIY/alternative world  that plenty of people  who are willing to pay out of their own pocket to give SXSW the programing that SXSW sells other people tickets to go see! As a businessman I can’t help but take my hat off to them! That is one hell of a business model.

Anyway, this isn’t really a poke at SXSW; and it’s not a poke at the people who go to SXSW, to lecture or to go to the lectures or just to have fun “making the scene.” To tell the truth, it sounds like a lot of fun. But from a business stand point, it just doesn’t pencil out for us.

But I think it’s important for “independent content creators” to see SXSW for what it is — it’s a business. And I think it’s important for us to ask, “Does helping SXSW (or any other business for that matter) get ahead help my business get ahead?”  

Figuring out the answer to that question isn’t always easy, and sometimes it’s down right agonizing. But you can’t figure out the answer if you don’t ask the question.

And I think it’s important when ”independent content creators” do say no to let the world hear about it. One of the problems with being independent is that it can be very isolating. When it seems like everyone else is doing it (donating lectures to SXSW, taking no money distribution deals, etc)  it can be hard to stick to your guns, even when you know you’re doing the right thing; for your business, for your art, for yourself.

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

It’s a big weekend for us over in Amsterdam at Jennifer Lyon Bell’s “Rated-X: Amsterdam Alternative Erotic Film Festival”. Over the next couple of days we’ll have three films screening: Matt and Khym: Better than Ever; Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless; and Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together.

In the last decade, film festivals have sprung up like mushrooms all around the globe, devoted to every genre imaginable. Yet erotic film festivals remain a rarity, with only three or four world wide, most of which do not make it into their third season, mostly for the simple reason that after the first or second year, there simply aren’t enough serious erotic films for a festival director to put together much of a program.

Every couple of years we’re “treated” to the arthouse film directors’ vision of sexuality: bleak, alienating, and joyless; and of course the world is awash in transactionalized, dehumanized pornography. But the dearth of films that depict the normal everyday experience of sex begs the question - why is sex depicted the way it’s depicted in movies? Where’s the joy? Where’s the humanity? Where’s the pleasure?

It’s not a new question.  Film critics, anti-pornography crusaders from the left and from the right, and even filmmakers themselves have all taken their turns trying to answer this simple yet vexing conundrum: If sex is (mostly) so good, why are films about sex (mostly) so bad?

I think these explanations miss the mark because they focus too much on human intentions, and not enough on the legal and economic climate in which movies are made. Even the smallest film is a vast economic undertaking when compared to painting or writing; and you can’t simply make the film you want to make.

To be viable as a creative artist, you have to be viable as a commercial entity. However noble (or ignoble) a filmmaker’s intentions, simply wanting to make a film is not enough. Equipment must be rented, cast and crew must be paid, the lab bill comes due. 

In looking at the legal and economic climate in which erotic movies are made, the  tireless efforts of our namesake Anthony Comstock still cast a long shadow over our culture, and more than 80 years later, Justice August Hand’s unfortunate choice of word about the “intent to arouse” are still being mouthed as if they are an original thought,

But today, I thought it would be worth taking another look at this post from August 7, 2007 about the transition from the Hayes Code to the MPAA’s modern four-tiered rating system. It’s a story about economics, demographics, the sexual revolution, good intentions, bad intentions, and (by my reckoning at least) a pretty good explination why, if you want to drinking and dancing with your wife, there are plenty of perfectly respectable “adults only” joints, but “adults only” in movies means something entirely different.

 How “X-rated” Came to Mean “Porn” and the Death of Movie Making for Grown-ups

The poster for LAST TANGO IN PARIS, including X-rating symbol
(click to enlarge)

Fad23 is absolutely right. The X-rating was a part of the MPAA four-tier system first introduced in 1968.

But unlike G, PG, and R, X was not a trademarked MPAA property. The X rating was conceived of by the MPAA as a rating meaning ‘not suitable for children’ that could be and was self-applied by producers who did not feel their film needed and/or warranted a less restrictive rating.

But there have always been films deemed “not suitable for children,” and long before X or NC-17 there was an “adults only” classification, given to films like DUAL IN THE SUN, BABY DOLL, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, TO EACH HIS OWN and others that, by the standards of the day, were deemed to be inappropriate for children.

But in the 1950’s “foreign films”, made outside the (self imposed) Hayes Code that governed Hollywood production, began to make their way into the US. These films frequently addressed issues of sexuality in a manner that was far more frank than the coded subtexualized language required to address adult themes within the strictures of the code.

Poster for THE LOVERS, the film at the center of Jacobellis v. Ohio.

The 1950s also saw the breakup of the studio system, particularly the vertical integration of production, distribution and exhibition, which considerably loosened control on what theaters could and would screen, and by the 1960s cultural mores had shifted to the point that the old production code was becoming increasingly irrelevant. In response code was revised in 1966, and in 1968 the production code was abandoned in favor G,PG, R and X system (originally G, M, R, X.)

But it’s important to remember that from the start, the X-rating was always intended as a rating that could be self-applied by producers, and unlike G, PG, and R, the MPAA maintained no control over the X rating as a trademarked property. It’s also important to remember that when the system was introduce “X” had no special stigma, any more than the previous rating of Adults Only rating give to DUEL IN THE SUN, et al.

Around the same time, there were court decisions established the legality of both producing films depicting actual sex acts and showing them in theaters. This new legal climate gave rise to the open production and theatrical screening of films featuring depictions of actual sex acts. Because X, which meant “adults only” was a self-applied rating, producers of these films were free to give their films an X-rating with or without the MPAAs approval.

At first this was done to give these sexually explicit films an air of legitimacy, but with no control over who could or could not use the X-rating it quickly became associated with very low-budget products concerned with little more than creating a vehicle for the presentation of explicit sex. It was at during this time that films like MIDNIGHT COWBOY, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and others moved to have their ratings changed from X to R. Sometimes this was done by petitioning the MPAA to re-evaluate the rating, sometimes by simply editing out the “offending material”.

The stigma of the X-rating was further deepened when some producers began using XXX an gimmick to communicate that their films were especially raw or filled with sex, as opposed to merely X-rated, which could and did refer to films (such as MIDNIGHT COWBOY or A CLOCKWORK ORANGE,) that were unsuitable for children, but contained little, if any, explicit sex or nudity.

42nd Street, circa 1975 (click to enlarge)

This was also a time when many urban areas were in decline, and many theaters were turning to sexually explicit movies to draw audiences to theaters that would otherwise have been empty (think Times Square in the 70s.) In response, theater landlords began to write “no x-rated films” into their leases. Also theater chains enforced “no X” policies on their fanchiseese, and many newspapers had “no X” advertising policies.

Now remember, R means a film may be suitable for suitable for children when accompanied by an adult; X meant a film is not suitable for children at all. The concept of an “adults only film”, a concept that had existed from the beginning of commercial cinema, suddenly collapsed. It became impossible to advertise or exhibit a film that that was not suitable for children. For a film to be able to advertise in most newspapers, or play in most theaters, it had to have an R-rating, and that meant the omission of any element–sex, violence, language, drug use–that was not suitable viewing for children.

This collapse was not some grand conspiracy on the part of the MPAA to put an end to films for grown-ups. It was the result of the collision of changes to the MPAA ratings system, court decisions that allowed the production and public exhibition of films featuring depictions of actual sex acts, demographic and social changes that altered theater going habits, and the odd quirk that the MPAA had allowed their X-rating to be “public property”.

As a result, the X-rating was more or less abandoned by all parties. Hollywood producers weren’t going to invest millions of dollars in a film that couldn’t be advertised or screened in legitimate venues, and restricted their “adult” efforts to R-rated films. And producers of sexually explicit film and videos preferred to label their product as XXX, rather than the seemingly milder X. According to their own website, no films were rated X by the MPAA during the entire decade of the 1980s, (and virtually none in the 1970s.)

What that means is that for 20 years, all films produced by the Hollywood establishment that were produced within the confines of what could conceivably be shown to children. Moviemaking for grown-ups died.

Poster for HENRY AND JUNE, 1990, NC-17

In 1990 the MPAA attempted to reestablish a “legitimate” adults-only movie-making space with introduction of the NC-17 rating. Not wanting to repeat their mistake with the X-rating, the NC-17 is a trademarked property that can only be used if you submit your film and advertising to the MPAA process. But it was too little too late.

Not understanding the history of the X rating, and convinced that the MPAA was simply trying to put a new name on porn, most exhibition and advertising venues simply re-wrote their rules to prohibit the exhibition and advertising of NC-17 films. To this day some of America’s largest theater chains will not exhibit NC-17 movies, and many of America’s largest media outlets will not accept adverting for NC-17 movies. A few NC-17 art-house films were made, mostly in the nineties, and in 1995 MGM/UA gambled (and lost) on the NC-17 rating with the laughably bad big budget feature SHOWGIRLS. But in this decade (2000s), only a small handful of films have been rated NC-17, (including our own MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY.)

Now lest I be seen as an apologist for the MPAA, I think they were slow to understand what was happening to the X-rating, slow to take action, (nearly 20 years!) and when they did finally introduce the NC-17 rating, they did “drop the ball”. More over, as far as I can tell, they’ve done precious little since then to correct their mistake.

These days there’s very little movie-making that is truly for grown-ups. Even “serious films” that have no interest in attracting a teen audience have to be made “suitable for children” to avoid the dreaded NC-17, so even “realistic adult dramas” have an odd lack of candor in the way that sex is depicted visually.

The situations are adult, the language may be frank, but the sex and nudity is strangely demure. Sex is always under the covers, or with the lights low, or the camera-angles are cheated just enough to the left or the right to preserve the all important R-rating.

As a result we have a cinematic landscape where every other aspect of the human experience is rendered in vivid detail (with often a special fetishization of violence,) but the simple truth of what people look like naked, or what people look like when they give themselves over to sexual desire remains largely unexplored by filmmakers, and remains largely unseen by audiences.

Production still from MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, 2002, NC-17

“Ashley and Kisha: Finding the Right Fit” to play at the New York City LGBT Community Center

Where: NYC LGBT Community Center, 208 W.13th, New York, NY, 10011
When: January 23, Reception at 6:30PM, Screening at 7:30PM
Cost: $8 in advance, $10 at the door
Additional Information: http://www.gaycenter.org/node/2774

Lesbian Cinema Arts will present a one night only screening of “Ashley and Kisha: Finding the Right Fit”, Friday evening, January 23, at the New York City LGBT Community Center.

“American filmmaker and sex on screen pioneer Tony Comstock may have invented the best little documentary formula ever: take a couple who are in a committed, loving relationship, and film them in conversation about it, and also the physical conversation they have with each other during sex. What could be more illuminating, educational, erotic, instructive, profound, fascinating, – take your pick. Ashley & Kisha is one of the sweetest love stories you’re ever likely to see committed to film. Tony Comstock has once again put his perfect documentary formula to good use - true love and real sex - on screen; what’s not to like?!” –– Megan Spencer, Film Critic

“Ashley and Kisha” is the fifth in director Tony Comstock’s award-winning “Real People, Real Life, Real Sex” documentary series. Comstock’s approach to sex, cinema, and love is both disarmingly charming, winning over audiences where ever his films play, and surprisingly controversial, drawing the ire of censors who seem to be mesmerized by the glistening body parts, while remaining stubbornly resistant to the films’ overarching theme of the nourishing power and beauty of sexual love.

“Ashley and Kisha” was to have had its world premiere at the 2007 Melbourne Underground Film Festival, in Melbourne Australia, but the screening was cancelled when the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification refused to grant MUFF a festival exemption, and ordered police dispatched to the festival to prevent the film from being shown. A private screening for festival judges resulted in “Ashley and Kisha” being named Best Foreign Film, and Tony Comstock being named Best Foreign Director.

After the Australian controversy, “Ashley and Kisha” finally had it’s world premiere at the 2007 Long Beach International LGBT Film Festival in Long Beach, CA, where the film was enthusiastically received by an overflow crowd. From there it travelled to the 2007 Out on Film Atlanta LGBT Film Festival where it again played to a full house. Most recently “Ashley and Kisha” played as a double feature with “Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together” at the 2008 Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival, but this New York date marks the first time director Tony Comstock will be present for a screening.

“Each time this film has played, and each time I heard how much people enjoyed it, it’s broken my heart a little bit that I couldn’t be there, ” says Comstock. “I’m thrilled that “Ashley and Kisha” is finally coming to my home town, and I wouldn’t miss it for anything!”

–

Audience Enthusiasm for “Ashley and Kisha”:

“I first read about this movie in my local gay and lesbian newspaper. I was trully impressed once I finally saw the actual movie. It’s beautiful, touching and real. The two ladies were very real and open to a fault. I thought the love scene was erotic and you could feel the love the couple shared. My hats off to the producers.” — S.G. Staten Island

“This certainly isn’t for anyone shy about physical affection, or for people put off by affection between women. Although lovely and erotic, it isn’t really about sex, either. It’s about what bonds couples together. Even I, as a straight male, could see echoes of my own relationship in theirs. I’m grateful to these two charming women for sharing their closeness. ” — WiredWeird, Amazon.com Top 100 Reviewer

“These two women are in love and it shows…the sex scene is passionate and real, and the interview segment with them is a joy to watch.” — A.H. NYC

“This movie is so adorable. I’ve had it for about 4 weeks and I just can’t stop watching it. I’m pretty good about controlling my emotions but I have to admit the first time I watched it the tears started flowing. Their love for one another seems so genuine. I thought it was going to be just another one of those fake porns but it was a true love story. This movie is a must see!” — D. Moulden-Kamau, Maryland

“It’s a film about the ache of longing to be with someone very particular, the exquisite tension of the chase, the thrill of seduction, and the disarming sweetness of romance. It’s a film about losing your heart, falling in love and in lust, and the joyous belly swooping pleasure of finding the right fit with someone who loves and desires you for who and what you are.” — L.C. Melbourne, Australia

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Tony Comstock has been a filmmaker for more than 15 years; produced films on three continents; screened and won awards on four. Topics addressed in his films have included: faith, human rights, disaster relief, and social justice. Most recently he has devoted his energy an to ongoing documentary series subtitled “Real people, Real life, Real sex.” The series addressses issues of sexuality, sexual imagery, censorship, alternative distribution and promotion, and love.

The reception for these films has ranged from winning awards at international film festivals (US, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Israel) and inclusion in the teaching materials at public health organizations (Kinsey Institute, Planned Parenthood, GMHC, SFSI) to seizure by customs authorities (Germany) and having police sent to theaters to prevent their screenings (Australia).

His latest film “Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless” (2008) celebrates erotic love in the second half of life, and will have its US Premiere in at the Martha Stewart Center for Living at the Mt. Sinai Medical Center in a special screening for faculty and clinicians.