..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

By all outward appearances, Noel should have been greeted by the media with the same frenzy it reserves for any movie featuring multiple Academy Award-winning actors, an all-star creative team behind the camera, and an interesting business story to tell. Instead, the inspirational holiday weeper crept into the marketplace over the weekend, and went unremarked-upon by the celebrity-obsessed press.

Consider:

Directed by Oscar-nominee Chazz Palminteri (The Usual Suspects), the PG-rated Noel starred Susan Sarandon, Penelope Cruz, Robin Williams and Alan Arkin, all of whose trophy cases overflow with acting awards, and young hottie Paul Walker (The Fast and the Furious). Alan Menken (Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast) provided original music; it was shot by Russell Carpenter (Titanic); edited by Susan Mores (Hannah and Her Sisters, Zelig); and the sound team included John Leveque and Anthony Milch (Three Kings).

In it, Sarandon plays a divorced, middle-age book editor, who’s so devoted to the long-term care of her invalid mother that she’s forgotten how to enjoy her own life. While visiting her mom in a Manhattan nursing home, she becomes acquainted with a mysterious stranger (Williams) at the bedside of another dying patient. Their story plays out, along with those of a half-dozen other similarly distressed New Yorkers, over the course of one particularly eventful Christmas Eve.

Before screenwriter David Hubbard calls on the angels to dole out their yearly allotment of miracles, he requires his pitiable creations to jump through several fiery hoops. Hence, Noel doesn’t merely tug at the heartstrings, it strives to yank them completely out of the bodies of its audience.

Critics in the handful of cities in which Noel opened on Friday were hardly charitable. As usual, Roger Ebert best summed up the collective groan.

“Only a cynic could dislike this movie, which may be why I disliked it,” wrote the patriarch of a America’s reviewing class. “I can be sentimental under the right circumstances, but the movie is such a calculating tearjerker that it played like a challenge to me.”

Considering that critics and audiences tend to reside on opposite ends of the meters that measure cynicism, these negative reviews didn’t immediately prompt the producers to head for the nearest ledge. My Big Fat Greek Wedding proved audiences will respond positively to schmaltz, if only their friends and neighbors steer the word-of-mouth bandwagon to their doors.

Indeed, the backers of Noel appear to have anticipated just such a negative critical response, and agreed to collaborate on a safety-net strategy that could soften the impact of the blows. The same plan also would limit the usual exposure associated with marketing and distributing a star-laden longshot.

“I was having dinner with Howard Rosenman, the producer who originally brought this small, magical indie movie to Chazz,” recalled Dan Adler, chief strategic officer of the Convex Group, which bought distribution rights to Noel after it failed to interest mainstream firms at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. “He explained how difficult it was going to be for Noel to cut through the clutter and find an audience. After I mentioned what we doing with Flexplay, light bulbs went off over both of our heads.

“We both wanted to reach the broadest possible audience with our products. The thing we were most concerned about was finding a picture that was PG, and Noel had this spirit of community … bringing people together.”

Although the strategy snuck under the radar of most writers, if successful -- and that’s a very big “if” -- it could open a lucrative new distribution route. It also would be relatively review-proof.

Even absent critical support, Noel still appears to have all the right ingredients in place for this, the first experiment into the “tri-multaneous” release of a first-run picture. And, no, it doesn’t involve high-speed Internet networks, or the long-promised downloading of feature-length entertainment product.

On Tuesday, after opening theatrically in about 10 cities, self-destructing Flexplay DVDs of Noel will be made available to shoppers on Amazon.com. For $4.95, buyers will be able to watch the film, in the comfort of their own homes, for a period of 48 hours. After that, the discs turn back into a pumpkin, and …

Normally, a three-day video window would have to be considered ridiculously short, even by the standard set last week by Surviving Christmas, which now will arrive in stores four days before the actual holiday (when it probably should have been released in the first place). If Flexplay is going to work at all, however, both the technology and business model first have to prove themselves in the competitive marketplace.

The Atlanta-based Convex Group owns more than 100 media patents and holds exclusive distribution rights to CD-ROMs that fit into the lids of soft drink cups. The company recently took over Flexplay DVD, for which Noelwould be its first high-profile release.

Flexplay discs differ from conventional DVDs in their sell-through price of $4.95 and pre-set viewing clock, which begins ticking only when the product is removed from its packaging. Forty-eight hours later, a DVD player’s laser beam now longer is able to read the DVD, which, by now, has turned from red to black. Unopened, Flexplay products have a shelf life of about a year.

Disney has been selling Buena Vista films, employing exactly the same technology, under the ez-D brand since August 2003. The difference is that these titles already have been spun through the sell-through and rental cycles, and probably serve best as temporary diversions for lap-top toting guests at Disney resorts.

Because of the nearly immediate availability of Noel on DVD, all potential viewers -- especially those living in the markets not included in initial theatrical release -- can be reached through the kind of targeted marketing campaign in which every penny, newspaper article and talk-show appearance counts (it’s also being plugged on Amazon and the imdb.com sites). Moreover, it gives disenfranchised adults in market large and small an opportunity to see some of their favorite stars perform, without also enduring the indignities of the mega-plex, or paying a fortune for popcorn and a diet cola.

The Flexplay version of Noel won’t contain any of the bells and whistles now commonly associated with DVD releases of most Hollywood and indie products. These will be added for the standard wide release of the non-Flexplay DVD, sometime later.

The third leg of the “tri-multaneous” release of Noel will arrive in the form of a one-night-only airing, Nov. 28, on cable’s Turner Network Television.

For TNT, Noel represents programming that will feel fresh to the vast majority of its cable audience. By limiting the exposure to one airing, the film’s DVD sales -- immediate and eventual -- likely will benefit, as well. Once upon a time, this kind of move would have been considered counter-productive, but that theory has repeatedly been discredited since the introduction of value-added DVDs.

Just as idea-starved movie studios have benefited from the public’s acceptance of the format -- and their willingness to purchase old wine in new “director’s cut” bottles -- producers of television series also have been able to tap into the mother lode in TV-to-DVD sales. They did this without putting a major dent in their syndication deals.

Also, before the end of the year, Noel will have opened in Argentina, Italy, Denmark and the Czech Republic, where the presence of Sarandon, Cruz and Williams, at least, will carry some weight at the box office. So, in addition to the usual ancillary routes to profitability, revenue streams from foreign markets also could benefit the original producers’ patience.

Although I’ve never met anyone who actually obsesses over the proper disposal of DVDs -- or that of batteries and printer cartridges, for that matter -- Flexplay wants consumers to know that its discs are fully recyclable and conform to all applicable EPA environmental standards. To this end, the company has partnered with GreenDisk and other environmental organizations to develop and test other “closed-loop recycling options” (and work “proactively with content providers”) to broaden its collection and recycling program.

Good for them.

Before too long, someone will come up with a system that addresses the studios’ desire to control every single direct or indirect link to the consumer’s wallet. They don’t much cotton to interlopers, and have pissed on every new delivery system not under their corporate umbrellas, from cassettes to file sharing, mom-and-pop video stores to Netflix. It would be nice to think that Flexplay or any other system would cater to the whims of film buffs and students of the international cinema, but that’s probably too much to ask of anyone besides Netflix, Facets and Movies Unlimited. Collectors won’t find much value in Flexplay, while Wal-Mart and Blockbuster aren’t likely to stray much further afield than their existing tried-and-true all-the-hits/all-the-time policy.

That said, however, I do believe that Flexplay DVD -- along with Convex’s media partners -- might just provide makers of indie and documentary titles with a workable option to prohibitive marketing costs and the mall-based movie economy. For consumers in outlying territories, it could prove to be a godsend, in that it would allow them to enjoy the same low-budget features attracting smart audiences in the big cities.

Flexplay probably also would benefit travelers looking for alternatives to the expensive pay-per-view movies now offered in resorts and hotels. Innkeepers could provide DVD players to their guests -- as a courtesy, or for a nominal fee -- and profit from the sale of Flexplay titles (especially as babysitting aides). Hospitals, airports, cruise ships and computer retailers also could be used as distribution points for such short-term entertainment.

Convex could just as easily solve the studios’ problem of providing screeners to Oscar and Emmy voters, without immediately seeing their movies pirated for fun and profit by the relatives of academy members. Principals standing on both sides of the Hollywood establishment disagree on the security of self-destructing discs, but no one has yet come up with a better solution.

Moreover, recipients of academy screeners could help save the environment by collecting their used Flexplay discs and driving to the local DVD recycling center in their hummers and SUVs. How Hollywood is that?

- by Gary Dretzka

November 16, 2004