We're here at one of our favorite festivals, The Waterfront Film Festival. It's a weekend for Industry people to let their hair down (while Midwesterners put their hair up) and watch the "best ofs" from the festival circuit. The atmosphere is pleasantly uncharged compared to Park City in January, and casual conversations flow. There are also some panel discussions, most designed to be eye openers for young Midwestern filmmakers.
On Friday, Spout's own Rick was on the panel discussion "3,000 Miles Away from LA." Sitting up front with him was a melange of directors, writers and creative developers, all who live or lived in Michigan at one time (four of the six panelists live in LA now). The topic: Can a filmmaker make a living between the coasts? The basic answer: yes, but not if you're an actor. The caveat for anybody working in film is this: Even if you make films outside of LA, to become viable (i.e. get paid), you have to tie the knot with people in LA. Essentially, for a filmmaker, this means the check that allows you to quit your day job will be signed in LA. It's inevitable.
What was blatantly absent from the conversation was any real questioning of this assumed paradigm. Does somebody in LA really have to sign my check for me to be viable? What if a filmmaker quit their day job because, say, they have hundreds of smaller checks coming to them from a loyal audience? It reminds me of Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life going to old man Potter for a fat wad of cash, getting denied, then jumping off a bridge. He simply couldn't see what was really going to save himâ€"a whole lot of small wads of cash pouring in from people who loved him.
Maybe the Frank Capra ending sounds idealistic. But, seriously, what is preventing this paradigm shift, away from assumptions that the checks have to be signed in LA, other than old patterns of thinking?
For any artist, that shot at the big time is the dream that gets you through college into a cold reality of nepotism, backbiting, and an unhealthy dose of cynicism.
We have no national program to promote film as anything but entertainment. Entertainment is a commodity and the market belongs to big voices. The same is true of books. Music is the only thing so primal and infectious as to reach us beyond the din of the television. It's so consumable and our hunger for it is so great, that the traditional means of consumption cannot defend themselves from our desire.
It seems inevitable that film will follow suit, stripping away all the middle layers that separate the consumer from the artist. Technology provides the means now to bring it to us. The market is overdue for a shift.
We live in a new prohibition. What we want we can't have yet. There are many who take it anyway. Who download as they like, who see what they want and when they want to. For now they are the underground of empowered consumers. They thrive on a new economy of access. Certain college kids and teenagers get busted, but the train is rolling and nothing can stop it.
When the old guard is weak enough, they will abide new distribution structures so they can eke out a living. The iTunes music store was a hard sell, but the result was a validation of a new medium.
Nobody questions the selling of an iPod, though many of them are populated with illegal downloads. I myself cannot wrap my head around the twisted legalities of the music in my possession. We are all being criminalized by the very passion the media has helped foment.
For what it's worth, the technology exists. The medium is real. What happens next is some sort of compromise. The artists receives more of their due. In fact, all those would be artists can at last actualize their vision without requiring a hollywood budget. So, the very form of film is changing. Becoming more consumable, more available.
Posted by Scott Krieger on June 16, 2006 02:36 AMWhat happens next is a leap that is so obvious, we can all say "yes" in unison. For now, there is Hollywood.