Apparently, all we really want is bad TV. Time and time again, we take an opportunity to have a great diversity of programming and turn it into the same bland mix of procedural TV shows, reality TV and America’s Funniest Home Videos. Bravo was originally a network for independent films and performing arts; it’s now nothing but reality TV. IFC was for truly independent films; now it just spoofs documentaries. MTV had music, now it has the Busch family. Netflix was going to be a celestial jukebox of films, now they admit no one was watching many of the films in that deep library and they do better with “docu-series” like Tiger King or “true crime” docs like American Murder, which is now its number one most popular documentary ever (a friend lamented to me last night that they’d never heard of it before that was announced) . The web would allow us to have unfettered access to all of the world’s knowledge and creativity; but apparently, we just want to launch our own Funniest Home Videos on TikTok.
We now have almost 300 OTT services to choose from. But I can’t find anything to watch. And most people can’t be bothered. Instead, they’re watching Nathan Apodaca drink Ocean Spray… bringing Rumours back to the top Ten of the charts for the first time in 42 years. And I’m right there with all 60+ million of you, wondering if I can tear myself away from my phone and social media long enough to bother to stream a film from any of the thousands of film festival’s offerings out there. Not that I would know any of these festivals existed if I wasn’t in the industry, because press and buzz from and for them is mostly nonexistent and my non-industry friends don’t even know they’re taking place…because they’re stuck on TikTok, trying to avoid the news on Twitter.
Good luck with that in the next 2 weeks.
Theaters are celebrating that they can open in New York state now (but not in NYC), but I ask you… who exactly is going to a theater, trying to avoid Covid and the news at the same time, right before an election to see… what films?
But back to my point. Every time we’ve gotten a new technology, it was supposed to bring us more indie film, arthouse cinema, social issue documentaries, and maybe something experimental, but time and again, we end up with … bad tv. I’m sure one of those 300 OTT services offers plenty of arthouse films, but none of them are breaking through all of this noise and finding any audience. And the services that do have an audience – Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, Hulu (do we even name HBO Max or Peacock, etc.?) – aren’t buying or distributing very many prestige arthouse or indie titles. I once argued - “If all we get from this paradigm shift is that every film ever made becomes available for purchase on demand, anytime, forever, at a fair cost, we will have failed. We’ll have just created a better TV.” Now I wish we could have that “better TV” instead of the one we’ve created, where I’m paying ever more for a ton of tv shows I don’t even want, or paying with my time on some app that just wants to sell me to the advertisers.
As I said last week – we need a new public media, one that “in the words of the act that founded PBS – “addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences.” Right now, the people trying to do that – while not perfectly – are just those poor film festivals and arthouse cinemas that I mentioned above. They’re both trying to make lemonade out of this situation to the best of their abilities, but the it ain’t easy. Festivals have been able to move online with success (albeit with hiccups), but theaters can’t survive much longer on reduced capacity and virtual releases. And while I won’t set foot in a movie theater before things get much safer in the US, I wholeheartedly believe theaters are part of our cinematic future.
I’ve called before for these two groups to get even more collaborative and forward thinking. My new dream is that all of them – let’s say anyone who is a member of the AHC or FFA automatically qualifies – get together and create a universal membership and SVOD/TVOD service. For one fee – paid monthly or annually – I get to be a member of my local favorite film festival and/or arthouse cinema, I get access to all of their programmed films online during their fest (or in person when that happens again), I get a discount on any ticket I buy for virtual or IRL theatrical, and I get access to a site that is like a Netflix (Net-Fest?) of the films each of the participating venues has curated (with a mix of free SVOD and paid TVOD titles). I also get a discount whenever I go to any of the participating venues anywhere in the US, just by showing my membership card. The revenue from my membership goes to my designated local cinema/festival, with some portion of it going to a pool that is paid out to filmmakers whose films are programmed. Any time I buy/rent a film from the TVOD offerings, a portion goes to my local fest/cinema and the majority goes to the filmmaker (or rights holder if they have distribution). The films in the Net-Fest Site are all curated and organized by the participating venue’s programmers/curators. Just in case no one subscribes to this service, all of these films get automatic aggregation services to get on Amazon and other TVOD stores, perhaps funded by part of our member fees or a foundation, so they are distributed, and can be discovered on other platforms.
A lot more needs to be worked out. I’ve spent a grand total of 30 minutes thinking about this and writing this up, so give me some slack. What’s the right price for me to pay for such a service? What are the splits? How do we ensure diversity and representation? How do we handle films with distribution vs. those without? But these aren’t rocket science questions and it wouldn’t take much engineering prowess to build this out – hell, we could just repurpose an OTT site that goes out of business soon – which happens all the time. But something like this would come a hell of a lot closer to a better TV than anything we’ve built thus far.
In the meantime, I do think I might crawl into some hole somewhere and avoid all news and social media between now and the end of this (probably never-ending) election. So consider this fair warning - if I don’t publish a newsletter in the next few weeks, it’s because I’ve hunkered down offline as a survival tactic. I barely got around to writing today's edition given my anxiety over all of this, and imagine few people will be able to read about much else in the coming weeks, anyways. Stay safe folks.
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Film
25 New Faces of Indie Film - Filmmaker Magazine launches its 2020 25 New Faces of Indie Film - and this is always a great list. I haven't read the entire article yet, but glancing at it, I only know a handful of the folks listed, but they are all due for discovery, and this is the one annual "must-read" list of new faces in the industry.
Movie Theaters Can Open in New York (but not NYC): Finally, a small bit of "good news" for theaters, as Cuomo said they can open to limited capacity in NY State (but not City). No word on what films they'll show, or how many audiences will show up, or whether this matters since without NYC and its boroughs you still won't get the demand Hollywood needs to open up bigger titles (which can then attract audiences who aren't scared of one another/covid).
Indie Women Study Finds Some Growth, but problems at film fests: The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, announced that the group’s Indie Women study found women comprised 38% of directors working on narrative features and documentaries, up from 33% in 2018-19. Unfortunately, the study also found festivals selected and/or screened twice as many narrative features directed by men as by women (but also found that festivals selected and/or screened almost equal numbers of documentaries directed by men as by women). (via Variety)
 Jason Blum joins Future of Film Summit: The Future of Film folks just announced that Jason Blum will be giving a keynote on their first day, November 18th. He'll kick off what promises to be an exciting two days of talks and activity around the future of storytelling. I'm on the advisory board, and am helping to set up a brand-funding panel as well. From the organizers: With Future of Film’s most ambitious and extensive programme yet, this online edition will utilise multiple channels and initiatives to bring together the pioneers of film who define the future of the industry, focusing on the three critical strands: Storytelling, Innovation and Reimagine. From keynote speeches to panels, debates, live Q&As and in-depth workshops and bespoke networking, the summit will investigate the intersection between business models, audience behaviour and technology and how they are transforming the way stories are told, sold and consumed. Register here (and if you can't afford it, let me know as the organizer is willing to help out those impacted financially by covid, etc.).
IDFA will show all selected films in a movie theater - The world's greatest doc festival (or the one always fighting to be that with CPH:DOX) announced that any film selected will play in a movie theater, even if the audience is limited to 30 people, as it currently is in the Netherlands. Which is pretty great.
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Miscellany:
Nothing is Boring if you Really Focus on It: Some great advice for writers - or any creative - comes from Neil Shurley writing in Medium about Ben Brantley's exit from the NYT as their lead theater critic. Brantley wrote a piece about his years as a critic, and what shaped him as a critic, which lead to some great advice:
But then, as I continued to read, this paragraph leapt out. And I realized Brantley’s skills came from so much more than just practice:
- I can honestly say I’ve never been bored at the theater during the past several decades. That’s because I’ve learned that nothing is boring if you really focus on it. This is a worldview I’ve tried to apply when I’m stuck in traffic or waiting for someone at a restaurant or looking at the bedroom ceiling when I wake up.
Boom.
“Nothing is boring if you really focus on it.”
It’s so simple, isn’t it? Close observation rewards itself. By truly focusing on whatever’s around you, you will never be bored. And, as a writer, you’ll never run out of material. (h/t to Redef for this link)
Section 230 is not Confusing, and Ajit Pai is a Spineless Hypocrite - Oh boy, here we go. In upside down Republican land, section 230 is confusing and something that the President, Bill Barr, Ted Cruz, f-n Clarence Thomas and now Ajit Pai all need to weigh in on - all erroneously - because they all think web companies are anti-Republican...which they are not. Everyone should be as pissed off about this bullshit as me, and I'm so angry I can't even write about it without blowing my top. So read TechDirt's take-down of Ajit Pai and the FCC and all of this bogus bullshit instead. You can also read Vox's great explainer here.
Spotify Allows Podcast Hosts to Use Songs - In a great move, Spotify is allowing its podcast hosts to use snippets from songs, or entire songs, in their podcasts, and Spotify will handle the licenses/fees. (H/T to Matthew Ball and article in The Verge). Considering they have pretty much every song, this is a great new service for its podcasters - who can now legally and easily discuss, analyze or quote a song, which used to be quite a pain. This will likely never happen for film, since no one is making a universal film queue anymore, but one can dream.
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