As a part of the ongoing DIY colloquy that I’ve been having here on the blog, today I’m posting an interview with Courtney Leigh Newman of New York based Dirty Dolls Lingerie.

I met Courtney through her husband Brendan Koerner, writer and host of the ever fascinating Micro Khan blog. Like me, Brendan is a SoCal transplant to NYC, and while chatting on the phone one day I found out his wife Courtney was a lingerie designer and with her partner Erica had started their own company.

Entrepreneurship and sexuality? Tell me more! And before long Courtney and I were gabbing on the phone about the thrills and spills of staking your family’s livelihood on your creative vision.

Anyway, that’s the preamble. Save a couple of prompts, I’ll shut up and let Courtney tell the rest of her story:

TC: Why Dirty Dolls Lingerie was started?

CL: The answer to that question is easy. First off, sheer desperation compelled me to escape my job. I’d reached a point in my career in which I realized that it didn’t matter who I worked for—the fact was, I’d never be happy creating mass-market lingerie in a cubicle. If I continued down the path I was on, what would life be like? I knew that I’d probably be deeply unhappy, and would always wonder whether or not I could have done things my way. So I had to try.

TC: I think a lot of people can identify with that cubicle-fuel quite desperation to escape. What was missing from your work?

CL: I’ve have always had a deep passion for all things vintage, and for all things lingerie. The idea of creating a line which married these two loves truly stirred something inside of me.

TC: How did this go from a cubicle-bound day dream to a reality?

CL: I met my partner Erica at one of my first jobs. She and I became fast friends; I was inspired by her active spirit. I remember taking a sick day from my job to “find myself,” and I came up with this idea that I should open a lingerie/boudoir lifestyle boutique in Harlem. When I ran it by Erica, she was completely onboard from the get-go. Of course, the concept and the idea changed quite a bit during our frequent brainstorming sessions. We realized pretty quickly that there was no way we would be able to get enough cash together to open a storefront in NYC.

TC: I’m always interested in how people get around financial obstacles. What did you do?

CL: We decided to base our business on the home-party/shopping-night model, along with building a spectacular retail webstore. The more we worked out the details on this plan, the more excited I became—I sensed early on that things were really going to happen for us. Still, it took three years of after-hours meetings to finally figure out a way to make the plunge. It was really scary to leave a well-paying job and invest every cent I had ever saved into this dream. But, we’d reached the point where there was no turning back. Dirty Dolls Lingerie would definitely not exist without the positive partnership I’ve managed to create with Erica. Both of us have said time and again that we would never have had the guts to do it alone.

TC: So how does it compare to being an on-staff designer?

CL: When I worked for other people, my tasks were relatively easy by comparison. I had to design, execute and help sell a collection each season. With Dirty Dolls, each step along the way seemed like this monumental challenge. We saved every penny we could in order to buy an insane amount of high-end fabric—just so we could complete our line as we’d envisioned. I remember feeling that as soon as we had this fabric, the rest of the process would be smooth sailing. A few months later, I felt the same way once we’d finally secured a small-business loan to pay for our product. Every time we cleared an obstacle, in fact, I was sure we’d never encounter another—but sure enough we always did.. But I just believed so strongly in the Dirty Dolls dream, I kept on pushing forward..

TC: After many years of this, I’ve come to the saying that, “Every success is merely the chance to work harder and take bigger risks…

CL: We’ve had a lot of lucky breaks along the way. Our very first photoshoot is an excellent case in point. We managed to convince an unbelievably talented and professional photographer, Eric Tu to shoot our gorgeous Dirty Dolls models. We somehow managed to rent The Slipper Room for an afternoon, and we survived a few last-minute changes to our models lineup. We were also fortunate to have some friends show up to help with lighting, hair and makeup. Once our shoot was done, fate brought us in touch with a Detroit-based web designer who goes by the name of “Z”< http://www.i-am-z.com/>–the visual genius behind our site. As so many pieces magically fell into place, I got to feeling as if nothing could stop The Dolls.

TC: What about bad luck?

CL: Well, there was no plan for launching our business during the biggest economic nosedive since the Great Depression. And The Dolls have occasionally been bruised by the rough times. As you might imagine, that’s resulted in some moments of sheer terror and stress. The bottom line is that I’m staking my family’s future on the idea that ladies with hard-to-find bra sizes want lingerie inspired by vintage burlesque—sounds so crazy when I type it out! I have an eighteen-month-old son, a mortgage, a start-up business, and lots of debt. Thankfully, I also have a very supportive yet overworked husband who understands how much I want this to work.

TC: I hear you there. When we made our first film everyone said “This is great! But there’s no market for it. It’s distribution proof.” We had just bought a house, and had our first child, and somehow I thought the right thing to do what make more “distribution proof” movies. But every step along the way, my wife said, “Do what you need to do. If it doesn’t work out, I can always get a real job.” Still, sometimes I feel like I must have lost my mind.

CL: I’m still fighting for the Dolls’ cause on a daily basis. I just can’t give up, because I know deep down that we’ll survive the recession—and grow to prosper! Besides, how could I turn my back on this? I’d so miss the buzz of getting those “thank you for creating this bra” reactions from our satisfied customers. Those are hard to come by amidst the cubicles of Fashion Avenue.

Be sure to head over to Dirty Dolls Lingerie and check out Courtney and Erica’s work. And if you like what you see, buy something!

For the next post, I’ll be giving a shout out to one of the great entrepreneur’s of the sex positive movement, Good Vibrations founder Joani Blank.

Joani was one of the first people to recognize  that Marie and Jack: A Hardcore Love Story was something special, and a person who gave me the encouragement to continue when nearly everyone else said it was “distribution proof”. 

Joani’s been living the courage of her convictions, ethically and economically for several decades, and she’s got a new blog up where she is laying it all out; what it actually takes to live your life on your own terms, and what kind of an impact just one person can have if she is willing to do it.

A couple of days ago an update from Jiz Lee popped up on my twitter stream, “Doing favors for HBO” I flashed back on my and Peggy’s not altogether positive experience with the HBO back in the Fall of 2005 and shot back “Remember, they won’t do any favors for you.”

A day later I was on Jiz Lee’s blog reading 15 minutes of Lame? an account of HBO’s visit to Madison Young’s set via text-messages with Lee’s partner Syd Blakovich, and featuring an open letter from Young:

In being a sex positive feminist pornographer I strive to create a positive environment for my crew and talent. I feel like much of that environment and communication was compromised between me and my crew by having a mainstream network in our space and commanding and overriding decisions that should have been left up to me and my crew if they were interested in documenting our sex positive productions and practices. But instead we were all stripped of our power, left feeling exploited, and disempowered by a mainstream entity.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I’m not. If you want to know why I’m not surprised, come back with me to October of 2005. But before we go time-traveling, I want to make sure I’m not misunderstood, I’m not saying that Madison Young and company should have known better. If you haven’t worked with TV people there’s no way in the world you can begin to imagine how slick and ruthless they are.

As a friend of mine put it, “When you go in for the interview for a TV producer’s job, they ask you, “What if, in order to get the story, you had to do something that you knew would ruin a man’s life, destroy his career, cause him to lose his wife and children?” And if you hesitate for even an instant, if you flinch, or twitch, the interview is over, you don’t get the job.”

If that sounds like an exaggeration, maybe it is. But not by much. Now on with story time.

Back October of 2005 we had just two films out, MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY and XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT. We were also sitting on top of the raw footage for seven more of our erotic documentaries, all shot on film, and representing a a huge investment of time, money, and social capital. Comstock Films was not yet self-sustaining, but it was trending in the right direction. We were living on a combination of savings and what comissioned work we were able to take while working full-time to finish DAMON AND HUNTER. Peggy was eight months pregnant with our second child.

HBO first got in touch via e-mail. Polite, interested; they had seen the Time Out New York cover article, and  they were looking at doing an East Coast edition of their Real Sex spin-off Pornucopia. Would we come in and talk?

Now to that point I had never seen Pornucopia, but I’ve always hated HBO’s Real Sex. In fact my hatred of HBO idea of making a “sex documentary” was a lot of the early inspiration for Comstock Films. Add to that the fact that I am, at best, ambivalent about calling the films we make “pornography” and I was more than a little conflicted about this “opportunity.”

Still, it’s HfrickenBO. We had survived Stacy Grenrock-Woods’ snark in Esquire magazine, and the exposure had a noticeable and positive effect on our income. Peggy and I started to weigh up the benefits of all that “great exposure” we might get on HBO vs the possibility that they would contextualize what we do in a way would be completely at odds with the reason we make the films we make.

To that end I got in touch with Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano of SIR Productions, and Jessica Holter of the Punany Poets Society. Both had appeared in HBO Real Sex segments. Both said the exposure had been good for their companies. Jessica cautioned that, “HBO was really pushy. They wanted my cast to do stuff we didn’t want to do. Make sure you know what you want, and don’t be afraid to say no.”

So okay, forwarned is forearmed.

HBO wanted some background information, so I wrote up a narrative of my and Peggy’s life together as husband and wife erotic filmmakers. I sent over DVDs of MARIE AND JACK and XANA AND DAX.  According to Google maps, it’s 116 miles from our house to the HBO offices. We made arrangements for childcare for our older daughter, and we made plans to drive into the city and hear what they had to say.

Suffice to say my anxiety was running high. I know what my sell out price is, it’s $10M. For $10M I will suck a donkey dick at halftime of the Superbowl and I will like it. Then I will take my $10M dollars, get myself a boat that’s big enough to have a tomato garden in pots and me and my family will never be heard from again. I was pretty sure that whatever benefit we might get from “exposure” on HBO, it wasn’t going to add up to $10M. I was also pretty sure they weren’t going to want me to suck a donkey dick on national television. I was worried that what they might want might be worse.

In hindsight, the first red flag came up when we asked them if we could get copies of previous episodes of Pornucopia. “No, that’s not possible.” Hmmm. But as luck would have it, the very episode of Pornucopia that Shar and Jackie were in was on the night before we were supposed to meet with HBO. So at about 11PM the night before, me, Peggy, and her belly settled in to see what this Pornucopia thing is all about.

Shar and Jackie came off fine. They were presented as the alternative to the Chatsworth porn scene; sort of a “meanwhile, 400 miles north” thing. They were interviewed in front of a painted backdrop, because nothing says “serious documentary” like a painted backdrop, with cut-away provided by footage from their own films.

Chi Chi LaRue came off like a big campy queen. Was that what he wanted? I don’t know. But it was the gay-for-pay segment that I was really glad we had a chance to see before we met with HBO.

The gay-for-pay segment was about straight men appearing in gay porn films. They interviewed a cute “all-american” couple where they talked about how it was no big deal, just a job. It was a lot like our interview with Marie and Jack, until they got to the cut-away footage.

There was Ms. Cute, on the set while Mr. Cute was sucking dick and getting fucked in the ass. Shot of Mr. Cute sucking cock (can’t actually show that, of course, because it’s not porn, it’s an HBO documentary,) cut to shot of Ms. Cute looking bored. Shot of Mr. Cute getting fucked, cut to shot of Ms. Cute looking at her watch, they looking away.

But then killer, the shot that I’ll never forget. Mr. Cute has finished his scene. He leaves the set and goes over to Ms. Cute. He moves right up next to her, everything about his body language says this is a “check-in” moment. He goes to kiss her, but right at the last instant she turns away from him, eyes down cast.

That’s the signature HBO touch. There’s always a lesson at the end of every episode of Real Sex. These people might think they’re having fun, these people might think they’re happy, but they’re not. They’re kidding themselves. They’re fools. They are sad, pathetic fools.

Right there at that instant I knew that Peggy, and me, and Comstock Films and the people in our films were not going to be on HBO. The pressure’s off. We’ll drive in and take this meeting as a drill, like going to a job interview for position you don’t want at a company you don’t want to work for.

—

When we get there everything is very nice. The producer’s assistant comes down and meets us in the parking garage. She starts gushing about how much she liked MARIE AND JACK and XANA AND DAX, “They’re so different. They’re not like porn, they’re like real movies!”

We go upstairs where we meet the producer. I’ve google-stalked her and know she’s got a trust fund supporting her ambitions to work in “the media”, not uncommon in New York. She’s typy, fit the mold a media shark, which sets my guard up, but Peggy and I already know where we stand. She leads us into the director’s office. I’ve google-stalked him too, so I know he used to be a network news magazine producer/director, but never quite made it to Nightline or 60 minutes. He likes our work too, or at least he says he does. I tell him thanks, but we’re really excited about the upcoming, shot-on-film productions. I make a point of telling him how my wife shot a film camera for the first time on DAMON AND HUNTER because I know being this cavalier about burning film stock will set a certain tone. (Thanks Bob!)

Just as we’re settling in to our chairs, the producer whips out a PD150, “Can I just get some footage of you guys? To show the brass?” The phrasing is of a question the person asking thinks she already knows the answer to, but she’s wrong.

“Um, gee, I wish you had asked us about this earlier so we would have time to talk it over.”

“Oh it’s not going to be used for anything.”  Yeah, sure, right. You’ve got another Mr. and Ms. Cute couple, she’s 8 months prego, and they make porn. Cut to close up of Peggy’s bulging belly.

“Maybe if you had let us know you were going to need some footage to show the brass, we could have talked it over. But since we have to make up our minds right here on the spot, I’m afraid the answer is no.”

“It’s going to be really hard to sell them on your segment without footage.”

“I’d like to think that our films speak for themselves. But if they don’t, I guess it’s up to you to figure out how to get your bosses to buy in.”

Of course at that point the meeting is over. We’re not three minutes in and it’s over, and a little awkward. So I start camera-wanking with the director.

“Well we’re pretty low-budget so we shoot a pair of Super16 modified ACLs, record the audio wild on a video camera on a master shot, then match-back visually for audio sync,” this is actually a pretty clever hack for shooting sync sound, he’s leaning forward.

“Then we telecine frame-for-frame at 30fps and then bring it back to 24fps in cinetools to match the 24p video we shoot for in the interviews. It saves 25% on telecine and there’s no interlace.” This is a very very clever hack and a little over his head.

“But don’t you have to add pull down when you go back out to tape?”

“No, we never go back out to tape. DVDs support 24P playback. Pulldown is added at the settop level. Fewer frames, no interlace, higher data per frame rate, better compression quality.”

From there conversation shifts to the student/teacher ratio at our older daughter’s school, and life on the East End.

“It’s like having your kid in a private academy.”

“Yeah, pretty much, but with more socioeconomic diversity.”

I’m half fronting, and enjoying the look of bewilderment on his face, but it’s half real too. Maybe he’s getting the best foot forward version of our life, but nothing I’m telling him is a lie. Another five minutes and that’s enough for excusing ourselves not to be awkward. We never heard from HBO again.

–

HBO wasn’t our last opportunity for “great publicity” and it wasn’t the last time we said “no thanks” either. The CBC has their own version of Real Sex, (I forget what it’s called) and they wanted me to put together a whole shoot, at my own expense, so they could came videotape my “process”.

“I’d be delighted to be interviewed for your show, and I can make footage from our films available at your standard rates for stock footage. But you won’t be able to videotape us filming a couple. I run a closed set. You’re presence would be disruptive.”

“It wouldn’t have to a real shoot. Just something to get some footage of you doing what you do; looking through the camera, calling shots.”

“That’s not how I work. If you’d like to give me $25,000 to co-produce a segment for your show, we can talk. But I can’t produce a fake segment at my own expense for your benefit.”

And that was the last time we heard from the CBC

After our films appeared in a very nice Women’s Health article by Jamye Waxman, another WH writer wanted me to by their “expert” for a sex-choreography article they wanted to run that was to be called “Slick Transitions”. It was supposed to be advice for couples on how to move smoothly from one sex position to another; and somehow the idea was that because the editing in my films is smooth, I could be an expert on how to go from woman-on-top to mish without popping out.

Absurd. But in the name of “good publicity” I gave it a go.

I wrote  clear, lucid, affirming advice on the importance of NOT WORRYING ABOUT STUPID SHIT LIKE THIS WHEN YOU’RE MAKING LOVE, and then gave examples from our films of how couples move from position to position, sometimes staying coupled, but also enjoying the opportunity to become “re-coupled” if a position change required. Woman’s Health was especially hung up on some sort of shower choreography. I told them I’ve never witnessed anyone in making love in the shower and that my advice based on my own experience was “Be careful! And don’t use the water knobs and handles. They won’t take it!”

The writer loved what I gave her, but when the copy came back from the editors, all my variously lovely advice about not getting hung up on it was gone, all my references to couples in our films actually managing a “slick transition” was going, replace by some sort of  Arthur-Murry-meets-Sex-in-the-City bedroom dancestep advice. The shower advice was “Press your bodies together, now step forward until you’re both under the spray.” Peggy and I worked it for 15 minutes and could not figure out what the fuck they were talking about. Best we could come up with was standing doggy, but goddamn that’s a big shower if one of you isn’t under the shower spray already in standing doggy, let alone having room to move anywhere.

I wrote back to the writer, “I can’t have my name on this. It’s not what I wrote, and I’d never give anyone advice like this.”  A couple days later I got e-mail from the editor, subject “Case Closed”

Hi Tony,

As the editor on the Slick Transitions piece authored by Liza Monroy, I wanted to deliver the news that we’ve opted to run with an alternate source for the Slick Transitions piece. With this and all stories, we confirm the accuracy of information with more than one source per article. I’ve been told that you expressed several concerns with various attributions and tips - and thus, given your reservations and our timeline, we’ve chosen to use another expert for the piece.

Best,
Kristina

Yes, more than one source, cause that’s what you were taught to do in J-school. Back then you thought you were going to be working at the New York Times, but instead you’re running phony bedroom choreography advice were you don’t even take the advice of your (so-called) expert. My response:

Hello Kristina,

I’m not sure what happened between the discussions and e-mails I had with Liza and the final copy, but there must have been some crossed wires. A couple of the “tips” were exactly the opposite of my suggestions, while others addressed ideas that Liza and I never discussed. Whatever the case, I’m relieved you were able to find a secondary source, especially on such short notice! Now let just hope nobody slips in the shower and sues!

Sorry for the mix up!

Yours,
TC

I don’t know if the article ever ran. I don’t know who their “other expert” was. I do know we never heard from Women’s Health again.

–

Did I make the right decisions in these and other instances? I don’t know. In 2005, when we said “no” to HBO, we were in a tough spot, barely scraping by. By 2007 when we said “no” to Women’s Health, things were going pretty well. Now we’re somewhere in between. “Good exposure” is an important part of how we let people know what we do. No easy answers in life.

But I do know this. I think the films Peggy and I have been able to make are special. And I think that the people who open their lives up so we can make our films are special too. And as the Chief Cook & Bottle Washer here at Comstock Films, part of my job is to be a steward of that specialness; to push it out into the world, of course, but also to guard it and keep it safe. To not let it be debased or exploited.

I also know that if you do work in the public eye, this sort of thing will come up over and over again, and figuring out what to do is never easy.

Near the end of last year sex writer and educator Violet Blue called out my penis/clitoris Google Safe Search discovery in her San Francisco Chronicle column as one of the Top Five Under-reported Sex Stories of the Year, but the Chronicle wouldn’t link to my post, only to Susie Brights post about my post. But then a few weeks later Violet called me out in her Twittersexuality Chronicle column as a “porn personality”, complete with a link to my Twitter account.

I didn’t tell Violet I wasn’t so thrilled with the Twitter thing, but I did let her know that I was more than a little upset about the failure of the Chronicle to link to my Google SafeSearch post, and that fighting back might make for a useful PR opportunity for me and Peggy, and I sent her an advance copy of the letter I had loaded up and was ready to fire off to the Chronicle’s publisher. At Violet’s request, and in deference to her long record of supporting our work, I didn’t send the letter. But I’m still not sure I did the right thing.

I do know that I haven’t heard from Violet since she asked me not to send the letter. Not even an acknowledgement of my e-mail telling her I would not send the letter. Is she angry? Hurt? Scared? Or just not interested in what we’re doing anymore? It’s hard to know.

I’m sorry for the people on Madison Young’s set who felt powerless and exploited. I don’t mean I feel pity, I mean I feel bad. Reading Jiz Lee’s post I get a lump in my throat and an ache in my chest. But a lot can happen in the editing room, and editors are a different breed of cat from producers. The best thing for now is to hope that the footage finds its way to someone who has a soul.

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.

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)

An typically overcast morning a few blocks from where I had my paper route in 1978

As mentioned in the prologue, my first job was a paper route. The year was 1978. I was 12 years old. 

Newspapers are clever. Paperboys don’t work for the newspaper, they work for themselves. They are self-employed. They are small businessmen. They are entrepreneurs. 

The newspaper you throw? You buy them from the paper. The bags you put them when it rains? You buy them from the paper. The satchel to carry them in? You buy it from the paper. The oversized handlebar basket? You buy it from the paper. The paper is published 365 days a year. There are no sick days, no vacation days. If you want a day off you have to find your own substitute.

My alarm would go off at 4:30 in the morning, but I only needed an alarm for the first few weeks. The papers would be waiting in front of my house, or if it was raining, tucked into the garage. The route covered about 20 blocks near my house. I worked it in a figure eight with a couple of spurs.

Mondays the paper was light and I could be finished by 6:00. Thursdays were almost too fat to throw. Sunday’s paper was double Thursday’s or worse; sometimes I wouldn’t finish the route until 7:30 or 8:00.

At the end of each month you go house to house on your route, collecting subscription fees. I still remember the numbers.

I had about 75 subscribers. The subscription was $4.50. Some people would give you a five and tell you keep the change. There was a police officer who lived in an apartment building on La Jolla Blvd. I still remember him because he always gave me $6. I don’t remember anything about the people who would write out a check for $4.50 and call it good, except that there were more than a few of them.

When I got my paper route I got my first checking account too. You had to have a checking account because you need to pay the newspaper for the papers, bags, rubber bands, and whatever else you bought from them each month to throw your route, and they don’t take cash. With only 28 days, February was a fat month; a rainy December was lean. The paper would credit you 1/2 cent for folding circulars into the paper, but it slowed the fold and wasn’t worth the extra 40 cents. Double circular days were slower still.

I threw the route for a year; 12 month to the day. Depending on the number of days in the month, circulars, and rain days, I’d make about $75/month; or about $900 for the year. It seemed like a lot back then. I bought fishing gear for myself; and for the first time, presents with my own money for my family at Christmas and birthdays.

I don’t know that I learned anything except that if you want to make money you need to do something that either not many people want to do, or not many people can do. That might help you understand why my hackles go up when I hear some new piece of miracle gear being pitched with the line “now anyone can…” If anyone can, and everyone wants to, no one gets paid.

I had another paper route when I was 14, but by then the $75/month didn’t seem worth it. I only lasted about 4 months. Next stop in the Entrepreneur’s Biography: The Blackberry Wagon.

 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.

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

Late to the party, I am, but that’s never stopped me from making an ass of myself; apparently in addition to the housing bubble and the credit bubble, the sex bubble has burst too.

You did read last year (or was it the year before) that the 818 saw it’s first decline in sales, didn’t you? (You could read more about it on BoingBoing, ‘cept Xeni deleted the article I fed her.) OMG, but didn’t you guys (by “you guys” I mean porn flacks, credulous MSM “journalists” etc.) tell me that the “adult industry” was recession proof?

Now it’s the sex writers’ turn. Apparently everyone is fired. Friends, colleagues, and even people who should have shut up 10 years ago — all swept up in corporate cost cutting and (maybe) the realization that post intertubes, merely being frank (frequently spelled O V E R S H A R I N G) about sex isn’t the precious commodity it once was. (more…)

Okay, I’m not actually going to be in Tel Aviv, but tomorrow night both DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER and ASHLEY AND KISHA: FINDING THE RIGHT FITare going to be playing in the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival! Here’s the info:

Tel-Aviv Cinematheque, TLVFEST – Israel International LGBT Film FestivalYair Hochner2 Sprinzak StTel Aviv 64738 Israel
3:00 AM, theater L for ASHLEY AND KISHA3:15 AM, theater G for DAMON AND HUNTER

I don’t know why these films haven’t had more success in the US LGBT Festival circuit, no Reeling, no Frameline, no Philidelphia, none of the big gay and lesbian film fests. The whole film fest thing is a bit of a crap shoot, and after our submission blitz for ASHLEY AND KISHA, I decided that reaching for the film fest brass ring wasn’t the best place to put our money and energy.

Don’t get me wrong. We are thrilled thrilled thrilled when our films get a chance to play in a theater! And we’d never turn down a chance to be in a festival. But we’ve completely given up on the idea that first you do the film fests, then theatrical, the DVD. Both DAMON AND HUNTER and ASHLEY AND KISHA went out to the people first, then on to the film festival circuit. (We put the festival laurels on the second or third pressing.)

This is a contrariun marketing strategy, but it’s worked for us. Our DVD sales are on par with some of the most recognized documentaries of the last couple years. I think one of reason for this is that we don’t cannibalize our DVD sales with endless low or no paying festival appearances or a money-losing theatrical run. Apparently we’re not alone. From a recent Business Week article:

OPTING OUT OF THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT
But like musicians who shun record labels (BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/07) to sell their music themselves, anecdotal evidence suggests documentary filmmakers—already an entrepreneurial bunch—are foregoing the conventional path of shopping their films to a distributor. They’re skipping such deals and using the Internet to get their stories in front of people who want to hear them.

But while DVD sales might be the financial backbone of Comstock Films, I still think there’s something special about seeing a film in a theater. I still think there’s something magical about the power of a film to turn a group of strangers, sitting in the dark, into an audience. And I because we’re inculcated in the notion that sex is a private, shameful act, I think that’s something wonderful and unexpected when that happens with one of our films.

So meet me in Tel Aviv, meet me there tomorrow night! If not in person, then in spirit!