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

Indie Anna Groans and
Another Crusade

When the Sundance Film Festival announced its slate of competition entries at Thanksgiving I was seized by the thought that perhaps this was the year not to make the trek to Park City. It had nothing to do with the movies either to be juried or the invitees in other sections.

Two things crossed my mind. The more obvious matter was how the little event that championed alternative, innovative and arcane movies had evolved into a circus with hucksters and hipsters as well as the legion of dedicated aficionados, acquisition executives and filmmakers.

Sundance, or rather Park City, has always been an ambivalent location to host a movie event let alone one that ranks among the most significant on the calendar. It's not really set up to be film friendly. The screening venues are no better than adequate, and often far worse, and the lack of sites specifically designed to screen movies has meant that these instant screening rooms have necessitated that the festival expand geographically.

The event is the cinematic equivalent of shuttle diplomacy and the shuttle doesn't run nearly as well as Il Duce's railroad. Everything breaks down when snow and winds blow in over the mountains and my trusty Farmer's Almanac foretold of a particularly inclement season.

There's also a palpable tension between the merchants of this skiing Mecca and those forces representing the festival and its offshoot events. In its early days in Park City (it originated in Salt Lake City), Sundance was a modest undertaking that attracted a hearty though select crowd and the shopkeepers along Main Street thought this band of scruffy, non-skiers a colorful, harmless group. They weren't buyers and didn't head for the slopes but their numbers were relatively insignificant.

That began to change radically in the 1990s and as the film folk began to displace the ski bums, pressure was brought to bear about rescheduling the event during off or at the rim of the peak season. Sundance organizers wouldn't comply and the compromise was to move its focus away from Main Street. As a result it lost its hub locale, the Z Place, and in recent years has found it difficult to negotiate a base hotel or develop a core area for the 10-day extravaganza. The recent arrival of marketers, while an asset for the local economy, chafes at the sensibilities of the area's Mormon roots.

The underlying irony is that the very filmmaker the festival elevates cannot really afford the freight of hotel rooms and meals in this high price winter enclave. It is a shotgun marriage with a longevity that truly flaunts the odds.

The greater ambivalence I recognized was less systemic. The rise of Sundance had to do in large part with serendipity. The very nature of an independent movement makes the prospect of organization difficult. Mavericks do not work in unison, and prior to the 1980s they were niche players bucking the majors for any sort of recognition let alone screens or patrons.

Sam Arkoff and a few other producer-distributors figured out a way to be frugal and entertaining and once in awhile found mainstream success when there were lulls in the studios release schedule. And a couple of times a decade, John Cassavetes would tire of studio assignments and direct something emotionally powerful that was foreign to the sensibility of the majors. However, following the Second World War and the Paramount Consent Decree of 1948, the art house crowd belonged to aliens with names such as Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut, Bunuel and Antonioni.

Though a wave of film school brats began to appear on the scene in the 1970s, the successful grads generally did one or two gigs for Roger Corman prior to signing a housekeeping deal with a major. But, by the end of the decade, the European and Asian lions had passed on or were off their game and as we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. It so happened that an explosion of talent was about to occur in America to replace the fading international talents.

Another decade would pass prior to the arrival of sex, lies, and videotape that won the audience but not the jury prize at Sundance. It would subsequently win the top prize at Cannes and this $1.2 million production would gross about $70 million at theaters around the world. Others followed and the majors began to either set up "specialty" divisions or buy them.

The thing about waves is that as surely as they roll in, just as predictably they will recede. The imminent decline of the American independent tsunami has been on the horizon for several years. Those singular voices that rode the crest don't have many contemporary heirs and, increasingly, the people financing alternative movies wind up giving the green light to cheaper versions of the sorts of comedies and dramas studios used to produce but no longer seem to make.

It's not that the well has gone dry, it's just that the water table is mighty low. But the infrastructure is in place and product used to shore it up isn't of comparable quality anymore.

The strain on the seams has become more evident since Sundance 2004 when there was already evidence of fewer rabid buyers, lower guarantees and only the faintest hint of the type of blood lust competition for a savored title.

While the manifestation of specialty arms doing the bidding of studios has changed over the years, they were in ample evidence during the 1960s and popped up again at the start of the 1980s. Though their life cycle was longer than the May Fly, these classic divisions generally sustained five to seven year careers. The typical scenario would arise from an independent success such as Tom Jones or The Kiss of the Spider Woman. Some ambitious senior executive would decide his company should have a thick slice of this pie and establish a division dedicated to alternative movies. The new unit would be given a healthy acquisition and marketing budget and play havoc with established independents and many - unable to compete financially - would wind up closing their doors permanently.

However, after several seasons of modest to dismal returns, the next ambitious executive would take a look at the affiliate operation and wonder who had deemed it a worthy venture. Even profitable operations could not hope to generate the sort of money equal to a weekend gross from a major blockbuster. It amounted to nickels and dimes, perhaps a few awards and little of consequence for a studio film library. The Trump card had been played and the cardholders were fired.

The studio affiliates that are feeling the heat include Miramax, Paramount Classics, Warner Independent and United Artists, while Fox Searchlight is the current poster child and Sony Classics continues to be indefatigable. The woes underscore one essential truth: the majors are not in the business of being niche players.

The demise of Miramax and a likely new company under the stewardship of Harvey Weinstein has been about to happen any day for more than a year. Michael Eisner never liked the idea of acquiring the company and it's long been speculated that he agreed to Jeff Katzenberg's zeal to buy it as a sort of folly that could be used to usher him out the door. Instead it generated the colossally successful Pulp Fiction in its first year in the Mouse House and continued to rack up a couple of conspicuous hits annually as well as lots of Oscar nominations and statuettes.

In true biblical fashion the seven fat years would eventually turn lean. Harvey Weinstein's ambition to be a part of the mainstream began to embrace the likes of The Gangs of New York and Cold Mountain and other prestige titles that failed to balance the books. At the same time, brother Bob Weinstein was developing successful genre franchises including Scream and Spy Kids under the Dimension Film label and a string of highly profitable movies made for DVD and cable. Eisner hatched the idea of retaining Dimension and casting off Miramax but negotiations appear to have scuttled that possibility.

So, if the Weinstein departure is inevitable, what becomes of Miramax at Disney? The operation has already been eviscerated in terms of staff and if the company acquires anything at Sundance it will be mostly for purposes of show. Whoever assumes the reins will be inheriting a legacy and likely a mandate to carry on with an emphasis tilting toward the Dimesion bias.

The idea behind Paramount Classics was largely to accommodate a fair number of offbeat ventures generated by synergistic components such as MTV and Nickelodeon. It only got a crack at Better Luck Tomorrow, while Jackass or Narc were consigned to its parent because Classics was quickly tagged as a niche player incapable of handling anything with even a whiff of mainstream crossover potential. It didn't help matters that its president Ruth Vitale had iconoclastic tastes and quite regularly took on movies that were impossible marketing challenges.

The demise or restructuring of the division has been protracted but no one expects a last minute reprieve. The most likely scenario is that change will occur after Brad Grey takes over stewardship of Paramount Pictures and has time to assess his options. In the meantime it's been neutered and its presence at Sundance is pro forma rather than pro active.

If the lingering deaths of Miramax and Paramount Classics appear protracted they are a no more than a fraction of a half-life when measured against MGM. The once elegant lion of the industry has been on life support for an astonishing five decades as its ownership has ping ponged endlessly between Kirk Kerkorian and others and back to Kerkorian whose intention always seemed to be to find bigger and bigger buyers for its vaunted film library.

The recent sale to Sony is unlikely to default back to the leverage buyout king but the fate of MGM and its specialized division United Artists remains shrouded in fog. Logically there's no reason for Sony to have yet another production-distribution entity with such divisions as Sony Classics and Screen Gems pumping out movies. Yet even with the MGM deal in play, it announced the reactivation of TriStar. Nonetheless UA is for the moment a hobbled entity and a phantom presence at Sundance.

The one studio that doggedly stayed out of playing the Classics card was Warner Bros. However, a thaw seemed imminent several years back when rumors swirled that Sundance artistic director Geoff Gilmore would head such a division and its first release would be the Australian import The Dish. However, the studio had trouble justifying the move in light of recent successes of niche fare including Best in Show and The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen and the idea imploded.

The idea lay dormant for several years until Steven Soderbergh pressed studio brass to create a division to handle the more offbeat fare his Section 8 company was developing, as well as similar fare from Castle Rock and other on lot producers. Warner Independent would be largely a division to service existing projects and augmented by a few outside acquisitions. Former Miramax executive Mark Gill was hired to head WIP and it bowed just last year with Before Sunset.

The amazing aspect of the start up is that rumors of dissent, upheaval and rancor are so ferocious one has to assume they're more than pique. Gill apparently feels constrained and has butted heads with studio executives and Soderbergh. It might have all been swept under the carpet were it not for the company's lackluster performance in year one. A hit goes a long way to ironing out wrinkles.

When you add it all up, who really wants to be present at the apocalypse? The juxtaposition of an ailing film movement set against the backdrop of snow and glitz isn't the postcard view that sounds at all appealing when one could be sitting comfortably in a cozy chair. If I truly wanted to confront the horror, being embedded in Iraq sounds infinitely more appealing.

- by Leonard Klady