Many years ago, I was having lunch with Scott Macaulay, the prolific and esteemed producer and long-term editor of Filmmaker, and in my recollection of the conversation, I said that what I really wanted to write was an article saying everything is fine. Forget the constant handwringing about the state of the industry that was prevalent in what were called blogs back then, and are just as prevalent in what are now called Substacks even if they aren’t (this isn’t one, but people tell me it is all the time). “I’ll commission that article,” he said, and I laughed and said it would be too off brand for me, and that was that.
I thought about writing it a few times since that lunch but had almost forgotten it when Scott reached out to tell me he was leaving Filmmaker, and was editing his last issue, and wanted me to finally write that article. Except in his memory, it was an article about how everyone complains about “gatekeepers” in the industry, but maybe those weren’t such a problem, and maybe we’d be sorry if we got what we wished for and got rid of them all. That’s something I’ve said before, too, so maybe my memory was wrong and he was right. Either way, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to finally write this article for his last issue, whichever version it was going to be (I never know when I start writing anyway).
I wrote it, Scott made some suggestions for changes, and it was off to the press. But it wasn’t. Somehow it was lost in the shuffle, and my article wasn’t printed after all. Scott apologized, and said it would run in the online edition, and who reads print anyway, right? The article came out online a few weeks ago, heading into Sundance, but I forgot to mention it here, more than once. Not just my article – but I forgot to mention that everyone should check out all the “last” articles Scott commissioned and edited for his final edition of Filmmaker. They’re all great. Mine is somehow in the mix, and it might not be great, but it should spark a conversation. I tend to hear more feedback from my readers and friends when I re-publish things here, so below is my article. You can also read it at the source, and stumble into those other great articles. I suggest doing so now, because I’m not so sure that anyone can replace Scott’s editing, even if they try, and I’m not sure the organization that publishes Filmmaker will try. Filmmaker under Scott’s editorial leadership has consistently been my favorite read in the business. It was the place to find the “new faces of indie film,” get in-depth interviews with directors written by other directors, and my favorite part – catch tidbits about other artistic mediums of interest. But I’m glad Scott’s leaving, as I am hoping it means he’ll be producing more movies, and perhaps also surprising us with some new endeavor. We might miss his editing and writing at Filmmaker, but everything will be just fine.
++++ Here’s the article++++
Look back at the history of Filmmaker Magazine, or of film blogs, newsletters, and now Substack, and you’ll find a lot of handwringing over the state of the business. Some general sense that we’ve left the golden age of independent and specialty film, and there is some bigger problem – either that you can’t fund artistic films, or that you can’t make a career producing them, or that you can’t get them picked up for distribution, or that there are many good films that never get distributed at all, or that audiences can’t find them once they do get distribution because they aren’t marketed correctly, or that they get lost in the algorithm, or lost in the noise, or overlooked due to the competition for our attention from social media, gaming, or just plain old sleep, or that what’s holding back the best films is a system of gatekeepers, or some combination of all of the above. I’ve been guilty of writing about some of these things myself, especially about those gatekeepers.
But maybe nothing is wrong, and everything is just fine. The industry works just about as well as it should. And part of how it works is to be found in the gatekeeping. Yes, that system we all love to hate might just be the most necessary part of the system. We are facing a flood of content, and no one, not even the most ardent cinephile can keep up with the number of films being made. The festival programmers, the acquisitions executives, the sales agents, the distributors, the bookers for the theaters, and even the critics who all seem to “conspire” against certain films getting seen are also the ones who help find the gems and bring them to the attention of the audiences who quite frankly don’t have time to watch even one-tenth of the films these folks turn down.
There’s this notion out there that there are numerous films getting held back by this system of gates, but maybe that’s because many of the films that don’t break through aren’t bad (let’s concede that some are bad), but they also aren’t quite good enough to make the cut. If we’re honest with ourselves, many of these “undiscovered gems” aren’t always quite polished. They’re maybe one degree off from where they could be, and someone had to make that judgement call – a call that no filmmaker will make about their own film, of course. Or maybe that film is perfectly made, but its appeal will be to a limited audience. Film fests, theaters and even Netflix don’t exist to only appeal to a small audience, all of them need large groups watching.
And if you’ve met a few gatekeepers, you’ll learn that none of them went into this to turn down films, but because they love them, and want to champion all of them. Often, they also answer to someone else, who they must convince to love a certain film, and that next layer of management might be more focused on the bottom line than the art – but they, too, are just trying to keep the doors open and the lights on. They need butts in seats or eyeballs on screens to survive. All of them take chances and try to push their audiences to find something new, but you can only do this for so many films.
Curation is a buzzword, but part of curation involves turning down a certain number of quality films, not just selecting the best. Even sales agents, the people filmmakers (and I) love to hate the most, can only sell what the market will buy, which is probably why they turned down your film – curating what might sell to other curators.
Maybe Netflix doesn’t have that movie you made, but they’ve got enough content that no one is unsubscribing anytime soon. And guess what? These days, any reasonable person can find almost any movie somewhere, if you just look hard enough. Every week, you can go watch an “undistributed” film being… distributed, by its filmmaker at some theater in almost any city. Call it DIY, or self-distribution, or direct to fan, or whatever you want, but even with gatekeepers, films find their way, albeit with a lot of hard work.
But… What about diversity, or gender equity? What about the films about Palestine, or critical of China that aren’t getting picked up by a major streamer due to (self-) censorship? Well, yes, we still have a lot of progress to make, and let’s also concede that we need more diversity among those first-line curators. But here again, we continue to come up with programs to address these issues, even with the current administration’s attacks on DEI, because this is a business, and there is a market for these films. Tubi has found a market for super low budget, diverse films. Watermelon Pictures is making a business of distributing films showcasing Palestinians and Arabs. No Other Land, which famously couldn’t get a distributor, has now made about $3.6M at the box office, using a good theatrical booker. Public media is under attack, but foundations are rallying to keep POV and Independent Lens going, even if they will likely move to YouTube to serve their public. Films will keep finding their audience, despite how bad things are, apparently. And part of that is because of gatekeepers who keep fighting to bring them to your attention.
What’s wrong with this picture? Seemingly nothing, except that very few of us participating in it have built a sizable nest-egg so we can retire and continue to make and watch great films without a side-hustle. But that’s how it’s always been for all but a lucky few. It’s no harder to make a living from filmmaking than it is from any other artform. Or any harder to get an audience. And today, if you want to skip the gatekeeper, it’s easier than ever before, but you have to step outside of that system and go direct to the most sophisticated gatekeepers – the audience.
Everyone has a sophisticated camera, editing system, distribution and marketing device in their pockets today. Young creators making short films and building audiences don’t see themselves just as influencers, but as budding – or even established – studios in their own right. As they become stronger artists, they’re looking back at the history of the artform, discovering films like those of Parajanov, and are taking the artform in new directions, while also building exciting new business models, and more participatory ways of interacting with their audiences. And because they’ve focused on their audience, they aren’t bemoaning the system of gatekeepers.
Of course, they’re also taking the audience’s attention away from other options and crowding the marketplace with even more films – making gatekeepers even more important in helping me to sift through it all and find the best things to watch. But now these new gatekeepers, the new curators, are also creators/filmmakers who we trust more than the old ones. Perhaps we aren’t living at the end of a golden age, but just the continuum of a bright one, and maybe just maybe, the beginnings of a new one.
Sure, I partly jest – there are lots of issues to solve. But we’ve been trying to solve them since IFP (now The Gotham) and Filmmaker were founded, and we’ve been writing and reading about all of these little solutions, and finding the hidden gems together, with the rest of us who care about these things. A film professor once told me that a true optimist is always depressed because they want everything to be as perfect as their dreams, while a true pessimist is always happy because they know things could be worse. Maybe the film world just needs more true pessimists so we can all be happy with things being just the way they are.
