But what I was thinking about after this book-lovers orgy (while eating brunch at the very delicious Genie's) is how Powell's is such an anomaly in the word of on-line versus off-line retailers and independents versus big chains. Powell's has a very successful dot com (started before Amazon, incidentally) but I want to set that aside for a moment and just look at the Burnside Street store. We've been conditioned to go on line if we want inventory and selection, and go to a real-life store if we want an "experience" within a community. Powell's manages to do both at once (and I'm still trying to get my head around how the Long Tail theory fits into all of this). It's so successful, even amidst the chains, because of its huge selection, knowledgeable and friendly staffers ready to share everything they know, and plenty of in-store events that make you feel a part of a crazy-book-lovin' community. You leave with your books, and a story to tell--an experience.

Are there any parallels in the world of film and DVDs? A way to get the films you really want--to not be limited--yet to have an experience within a community? What's the ideal model for theaters or DVD rental stores? Can an "experience" be created for on line consumers? (Obviously Spout thinks so...)

As Paul pointed out in his last post, there is an advantage to getting on the YouTube train. But it's not all good. It seems to me the greatest advantage of the service--that anyone can post a video--is also the greatest disadvantage. If you are a filmmaker trying to get your work noticed, how is it possible to let your stuff shine through such a dense forest?

Even though some local filmmakers here in GR are finding it an effective channel, for me, YouTube is still not the best place to find a gem of a short film. But who knows what the future will hold. What do you think?

Kevin Reilly, NBC's President of Entertainment, had been watching YouTube as a chance to test market response to Nobody's Watching. Obviously, he was impressed. On KCRW's The Business, Reilly said it's time for the two worlds of the Internet and TV to help each other. The value of the Internet, he says, is it "creates connections where none seemed possible before."

Using sites like YouTube as a way to experiment with new show ideas is getting at a symptom of a larger problem: The Industry is out of touch. Frankly, the decision makers in traditional media—stereotyped as white business executives in the Hollywood Hills—are coming off a period where they made money by projecting heightened reality for the average Joe. Take Friends. Many of us went through our twenties working the same jobs as the folks on Friends, but they had funny banter, great apartments, and beautiful people surrounding them. We did not, but it was fun to spend time with people who did for a half-hour each week.

The vast audience for The Networks lives in average places between the coasts. We're now saying, "Give me something more like me." Of course, these executives don't know "me." Their life isn't anywhere near mine. So they're using the Internet to connect. I think the connections Reilly refers to that weren't possible before are connections from guys like me to guys like him. It's good to hear NBC is listening.

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?

But you could say that absence made our hearts grow fonder when it came to our affections for the SpoutBlog. We missed the stimulation of ideas generated here. We missed hearing from all of youâ€"having a dialogue with other people who are interested in the stuff we can't stop thinking about. We knew all along that the blog was something we not only wanted to bring back, but something we wanted to really throw ourselves into.

So we're back. The design and functionality are new and improved (thanks, Marie-Claire and Scott!), but what we want to do at the heart of this blog is the sameâ€"generate ideas around film and technology and community, and then get a larger conversation rolling around those ideas.

And the issues are already buzzing out there, looking for a place to landâ€"consumer opinion, Internet tastemaking, new marketing strategies, Web 2.0, Internet-based social networks, disruptive innovation, old and new ways to market and distribute films, new filmmaking technologies. It's all happening. It's all open for conversation here at SpoutBlog. So what gets you going?

The Titanic of the old Hollywood system is going down. The unsinkable ship built on Thomas Edison's moving picture camera wasn't prepared for the digital age. The aristocracy are nobly buying off the porters for seats on the life boats. Third class filmmakers are scampering through the halls looting, pillaging, and generally reveling in the anarchy. Jay Epstein over at Slate.com is covering the play by play. And online startups are passing out 4x6 cards with their logo printed on them to all the passengers (you'll see ours at SXSW).

So to get my bearings I'm taking a look back to where we've been so I can get a sense of where all this is going.

1) Although the means of storytelling have been modernized for our pleasure, it doesn't appear our addiction to stories around the campfire and painting on cave walls is going anywhere.

2) Many great films have been made since Hollywood was turned from a farming community into the entertainment capital of the world. Look at 1939, the first Golden Age of cinema: Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Hitchcock's Rebecca. Also, countless pieces of crap have been produced. Memory has a way of sifting out the crap. It sifted out the crap then and will sift out the crap now.

3) Since the WWII generation hung up their fatigues and joined the workforce, the job market has gradually diversified. College grads today may be inundated with possible directions to take career-wise, but the probability they'll someday find a job that really suits their individuality is at an all time high. Same with all this video download, Long Tail, online community building jargon. In the end, we may look fondly on the simple days when the only thing worth seeing at the theater was Will Smith's latest flick, but the films we collect will be far more tailored to our refined interests, rather than limited to our base and blunt interests.

4) Rosemary's Baby, The Blair Witch Project, Silence of the Lambs, Primer, Fritz Lang's M, The Sixth Sense and Open Water all have two things in common. A) They're thrilling. B) They're all made by smart filmmakers. The future may involve scores and scores of films with high and low budgets clamoring for our attention, but it's the smart filmmakers and they're smart films who'll get it.

Big inhale. Big exhale.

So. Seen any good movies lately?

Karina Longworth over at Cinematical interviewed Geoffrey Gilmore, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, earlier this week. His hopes for the Internet and distribution are tempered.

"What are the gates people have to go through? Everyone embraces the fact that there are no gates. Well, that's terrific on one level, theoretically, but what does it mean? It means there's a lot of junk out there."

Gilmore says regardless of accessibility, films still have a marketing problem. People need to be able to find out what's special about the film. So how does the audience find out about its distinctive quality? At Spout we've often used the phrase, "Infinite accessibility creates the problem of infinite choice." When confronted by the problem of making a choice from infinite options, we either fall back on what we know is safe or we make no choice at all. Which is why we need gatekeepers.

Geoffrey Gilmore is a gatekeeper. He's the ultimate decision-maker for what's programmed at Sundance. In the interview earlier this week, he came across as a benevolent gatekeeper: He judges films on what they set out to do and whether or not they did it well. If a film is shot on digital video he asks, "Is the film better because it's shot on DV?" Other gatekeepers are not so benevolent. Hollywood studios are gatekeepers allowing through only movies that stand to put money in their pockets, regardless of quality. Withoutabox.com is another kind of gatekeeper. Somebody over there is deciding what will be distributed and what won't. The 35 year-old film geek who runs the local video shop is a gatekeeper. All of these people decide somewhere along the way whether or not a certain film will reach you.

Gatekeepers are people who put the film on your radar. Whether through a national advertising campaign, a film festival, or a simple recommendation, they are the connecting point. The beautiful thing about a gatekeeper, like Geoffrey Gilmore or the video shop guy, is they don't just grant the films they love permission to pass through their gates. They become champions for those films. At Spout, we're not opening the floodgates for infinite accessibility. We're providing a platform for gatekeepers of all walks to come and champion the films they love to their widest possible audience. When audiences have an infinite number of films to choose from, we think they'll want access to gatekeepers more than they'll want access to films.

Like the first screening I went to where Living Room Theaters announced their initiative for high-end boutique theaters to show independent and foreign films. It's a brand spanking new business plan and they'll be opening up in Portland and Miami to start. Hopefully they'll work out the kinks around ticket prices (they're target audience includes "Baby boomers in the process of retiring with high purchase power and considerable free time" and "College students"). The same day, the Sundance Institute announced plans for a new arthouse initiative. They brought a dozen arthouse curators here to Park City to develop their programs for this year.

And at the IndieWIRE party last night, IndieWIRE announced a partnership with The San Francisco Film Society to launch www.sf360.org.

The Web site will act as a kind of online networking center for everything related to the Bay Area film and visual arts community. Filmmakers will be able to find resources related to filmmaking, and film fans can get daily news relating to everything from local documentaries and experimental films to Pixar and George Lucas. (Read more at The Examiner)

Among their future plans, sf360.org is planning city wide movie nights and school screenings of films both with and without distribution. I was pretty pumped about the idea of viewing San Francisco from space and seeing the lights of outdoor projectors all over the city. Then I turned to chat with some guys at the party who turned out to be Ironweed. They're part of coordinating the film event efforts around San Fran and they've got a Movie of the Month Club going now that looks pretty sweet.

I can't help but wonder if I am the cause of all these new initiatives. I have been blogging about this other theater experience for a while now. But nobody is giving me credit for their business plans. That's just the way it goes. Maybe I'll become one of these guys that thinks up ideas and files patents all day long.

There is a story I've heard a hundred times that goes something like this: a young filmmaker drops out of school, she shoots a film on borrowed loose change, gets that film into Sundance and, shortly after the premier, over a hotel coffee table she's handed a check for millions of dollars by a larger-than-life executive of a distribution company. The rags to riches little filmmaker's next film is funded by a studio with a budget 20 times larger than her first.

I see filmmakers get frustrated when their film goes to festival after festival and no executive invites them back to the hotel. The ball ended and Cinderella went home with a swan shaped wad of tin foil filled with leftovers. This is where a lot of bitterness can set in around the thought "I can't get my film distributed." But, as David Lowery points out, you can get your film distributed. You just don't get the option to have the Cinderella, overnight success distribution deal. But distribution is always an option.

Anybody who reads this blog knows I get frustrated with what's showing at my local movie theaters. I often don't get to see those films that went home unplucked by Hollywood. In Grand Rapids I get Hollywood schlock in heavy doses. Which is where the folk musicians can teach us all a lesson, preferably in ballad form.

Folkies know their odds of becoming Sony Records' next little darling and touring with Kanye West are about a million to one. They have no delusions of grandeur. What they do have is precedent to build a community of followers themselves. When you look at the film world, it starts to look a little silly. The scenario of birthing your baby, selling it off, saying your good byes and putting it on a plane to LA with five million bucks in your back pocket is just so bizarre. Especially when the audience for that film (people like me) is dotted all over the US. What will the movie theater experience look like in the future? I hope it looks more like the music industry. I hope we get our mega-blockbusters playing to a huge audience on Friday night, and on Saturday night David Lowery is packing out the house at my local college auditorium. Maybe I'll get through the the line afterward to shake his hand and tell him how much his film moved me.

This article I read is not just continuing to beat the drum of Hollywood's doom, but it's an insightful piece about how we're not just distracted from going the theater by technology, but the creativity eminating from technology inspires me believe in possibilities. Most movies at the multiplex just make me feel numb and dumb after 2 hours.

As it stands, Hollywood has become a prisoner of a corporate mindset that is squeezing the entrepreneurial vitality out of the system. It's not just that studios are making bad movies - they've been doing that for years. They've lost touch with any real cultural creativity. When you walk down the corridors at Apple or a video game company, there's an electricity in the air that encourages people into believing they could dream up a new idea that could blow somebody's mind.

At the big studios, the creative voltage is sometimes so low that you wonder if you've wandered into an insurance office. The dreamers have left the building. Back in the 1950s, David Selznick, out walking one night with Ben Hecht, glumly said, "Hollywood's like Egypt, full of crumbling pyramids. It'll just keep on crumbling until finally the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands." As I said, show people like to exaggerate, but these days when I go around Hollywood, I can see the crumbling pyramids too.

From Patrick Goldstein's article In a losing race with the zeitgeist

So I'm taking a little blue-sky time here to dream of the movie theater that runs on giving me more options, not less. The theater I'd want to live at. (I secretly hope Landmark Theaters will consider this a quick and dirty business plan to elaborate on.)

1. It's in the neighborhood. If an audience lives within walking distance, there would be no need to buy cheap land for a massive parking lot, and no worries about gas prices. Many old movie houses could be converted back to their original use. (The one in my neighborhood is currently a church.)

2. Beer. Yes, I'm that shallow and so is everyone else I watch movies with.

3. Multiple cuts, a win/win situation. As Soderbergh said in the same article, "I often do very radical cuts of my own films just to experiment.... I think it would be really interesting to have a movie out in release and then, just a few weeks later say, 'Here's version 2.0, recut, rescored.'" I like the  film, I come back for the other cut. I hate the film, I try it again with the different cut.

4. Club combos. Like Wednesday night is for Hitchcock and knitting.

5. A grumpy baby room with a two-way mirror for moms to see the screen while they breastfeed (that one's for my wife) or for dad's to not miss the action on their night out with baby.

6. The "no-movies" room. This is kind of like the bookstore cafe. You can hang out without paying for a ticket, or just hang around after the flick is over. You know how it breaks the magic sometimes if you leave the theater and then decide where to go and then drive there, get a table, etc.

7. Split screen double feature: Steve McQueen. Two movies, one really wide screen, lots of earbuds. I hold hands with my wife while she watches The Great Escape and I watch Papillon. You definitely can't get that at home (and maybe there's a good reason for that).

8. The Movie Book Club. We have a month to read Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie Matewan and then we watch Matewan and discuss.

9. An intermission. If theaters would "pause" the movie for five minutes during an appropriate moment, it would give people a chance to stretch, go pee, or grab another beer (see #2). Two years ago I would have beaten myself for suggesting such a thing. But then I really hurt myself during The Return of the King.

10. An "opening act." These don't pay, so it would be before any trailers or ads. But for the hard core, if you come early-maybe 30 minutes before the movie begins-you get to see some experimental work, cartoons, or the work of a local filmmaker.

11. Alternative snack bar--pistacios, dried fruit, popcorn, pretzels, chocolate, maybe even raw veggies and dip. Lots of snacky type things that you load up on a tray and pay for by the ounce (imagine the price of popcorn then). Obviously pizza would be there, wood-fired preferably.

I'm drying up here, but I have the feeling there are more ideas out there, so I want to put some parameters on any additions to this list. 1) It needs to conceivably be a revenue generator, so don't suggest February as All John Waters Month. 2) It should be an incentive to leave home, so a booth with headphones and a DVD player has some serious overlap with my living room experience, and is therefore disqualified.

Of course, for some of you the issue will be mostly review. They cover the usual names-Mark Cuban and Steven Soderbergh (2929 Entertainment and Landmark Theaters), Harvey Weinstein, Lloyd Braun (Yahoo!)-but they also give some back-story to what the studios are doing to keep up. Still, the coverage around film distribution and the digital age is heavily slanted toward the question, "How will Hollywood survive digital download?"

Who cares? Why is it that corporate brass monopolizes the discussion around the coming new age of film distribution? I really don't care what happens to them, I care what happens to me. It's no surprise to me that Chicken Little was released this year because the mood with these media execs seems to be "The sky is falling! And it's raining every film ever made and they're available for free! And Mark Cuban is the mad scientist controlling the weather!"

So silly. But as Steven Soderbergh and Mark Cuban are quick to point out, the Hollywood system is terrible at innovating and very skilled at reacting. So they're reacting to what happened to the music industry and jumping on the the iTunes train to salvation. But what about me? Why doesn't Anne Sweeney at Disney-ABC TV, Brian Roberts at Comcast, Kevin Tsujihara at Warner Bros and Blair Westlake at Microsoft sit back, take a deep breath and imagine what it is like to be a little fella like Paul-a father and film lover living in the gloriously snow covered Midwest?

Please, imagine me suddenly being able to get 100,000 films for $2.99 each downloaded onto my iBook over a wicked fast internet connection. Imagine me sitting in a cafe, sipping the House Blend, reading a one paragraph synopsis on a movie-a movie I will commit two hours of my life to. Now imagine me picking up my cell phone and calling one of my film club buddies and asking them if they've heard about any good films lately.

Bingo. The real winner in the coming age of Video Download is Verizon Wireless. That is, of course, unless there is a place called Spout to find out about what the people in the know are saying about the diamonds in the rough. Nonetheless, it's exciting to see Fast Company covering some problems we've been working on for over a year now. Maybe it takes the whining of Hollywood brass to get the attention of a magazine like Fast Company, but it's the rest of us who will determine the real future of film.

The latest example was brought to my attention by Kim Voynar at Cinematical. In her post, Landmark Theaters axes discount cards, she laments the discontinuation of Landmark Theater's Discount Card (buy a block of 5 tickets for $30). They dropped the card in favor of more complex and expensive alternatives. Alternatives not created for people like Kim who watch a heckuva lot of movies, people who are looking to love and be loved by their movie providers. Now, giving credit where credit is due, the indomitable Mark Cuban came across her post and had the Discount Card reinstated. But the debacle was another notch in the belt for wandering, misunderstood movie lovers.

In the October issue of Fast Company, CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings put a ham-fisted spin on why their heavy users-avid movie watchers-get less friendly treatment over light movie watchers. Basically, when given the choice of two customers wanting one movie, Netflix will ship it to the customer who watches less. In essence, taking advantage of the avid movie watcher's loyalty, not rewarding it.

The handwriting on the wall was there way before that. Everybody I know who subscribes to Netflix watches films like they're Crack. They need their Netflix because they tapped out the local Blockbuster years ago. But guess who Netflix gears their advertising toward? Thirty-something couples with children. Why? Because those people have the least amount of time to watch a movie. They're perfect for Netflix because every day that a DVD sits on your kitchen counter unopened, unwatched is money in Netflix pocket. So their most loving customers get treated like red-headed stepchildren while they schmooze peeps who want to watch The Fantastic 4.

It reminds me of how my sister used to ditch family night in favor of some friend she just met. A month later, the friend would be gone and guess who was listening to my sister whine about what a jerk that girl was. Yep. We were there. Always. It's crap. If I drink 50 Cokes a day, I want Coke to stick my face on their trucks this holiday season. I don't want them to come to me and say, "Hey. Can you stop drinking so much Coke so that this Pepsi guy over here can have one and maybe change his mind?"

No! Netflix I made you! I am The Monster you've created, Dr. Frankenstein, and now you want to shut me up in the basement while you watch Shall We Dance with your pleasantly moderate wife. Sure, you've won all of these customer service awards because you serviced the mob, but not the people who love you. Come on! If Blockbuster ever gets their act together and robs you of your wishy-washy movie watchers, I'm one of the people who will be there to catch your head before it hits the ground.

Geez. I really went off there. Maybe it needs to become our next statement of What We Believe at Spout, but we believe that building more love for films is not counter intuitive to building a business on consuming film.

There are a number of interesting quotes in the article from "I believe the film distribution system is rather closed" to "plain and simple it's a way for indie filmmakers to slide by the gatekeepers," both sentiments that I agree with.  I also find it interesting that they titled the venture "Truly Indie," which definitely draws attention to the truly non-indie-ness of the existing indie product out there (Garden State anyone?). So while Truly Indie is probably a good step for filmmakers, I see it as really an incremental one. On the upside, it streamlines for the filmmaker an old and risky tactic of renting theater screens on their own dime. It's nice for a filmmaker to have a simple "plug and play" framework now, but that doesn't change the inherent geographic limitations of theatrical release and non-existent marketing budgets that indie filmmakers must face.

The fact is that movies that are released via Truly Indie will most likely never be screened in a theater near my house. What I think will be interesting is if they combine the theatrical release with a DVD release, like Cuban is doing with Soderbergh. I think a step like that can really free a "truly indie" film from theater constraints, allowing it's popularity to spread faster, and put some money into filmmakers' pockets.