One thing that no one ever seems to talk about, (or maybe they do but not often), is that the market for indie film shifted in the mid to late ’90s, when the mini-majors stopped picking up tons of indie film. They began financing many of their own productions, and with their bottom lines so good at that point, they got bought out by the studios to become a new studio division. The “heyday” pretty much ended at that point. Not so much for those so-called “indie films” being made by these studios’ specialty divisions, but for all those indie filmmakers funding their own movies with relatives’ money and Aunt Visa or Uncle Mastercard.

The real indies then had less places to go to find a home. But everything is cyclical — or at least has been — in one way or another. The explosion of DVD gave indies a new lease on life, at the end of the ’90s, and still does. (If the deal is at least decent and the distrib does a good job.) What I find interesting is how much apprehension and angst is currently on display from so many — which, yes, is partly because we’re on the possible verge of a tectonic shift in content delivery for movies. BUT, we’re also where we are because of the worst economic crisis in most of our lifetimes. And this is exacerbating the various shifts taking place with content delivery.

The “heyday” was over long ago. There may be a new one coming, who knows. I believe there will be, because again, everything is cyclical. The number of indie movies being made every year is astounding. 3-4 times what it was in the ’90s. Can this go on, if these filmmakers don’t make money to keep their dreams alive and their work in motion? The short answer is ‘yes,’ because there will always be another filmmaker behind the one that only made one movie and then went back home to Ohio, perhaps broken.

There are a lot of possible solutions (besides Darwin’s “survival of the fittest”), and one of them is that filmmakers all need to realize that they must take matters into their own hands, and embrace the journey of overseeing their own movies into the marketplace. Just directing or just producing and only having to “worry” about that is definitely a thing of the past.

Jerome Courshon
“The Secrets to Distribution”

The issue in distribution begins at the beginning of the food chain – how much do investors have to invest in order to get a picture made, which then dictates how well a film has to do in distribution to recoup and then yield a profit.

Other countries settled this issue a long time ago with national film boards, film commissions, etc. that finance films outright or provide deep tax and financing advantages to individuals or companies who put up capital.

You should not be so accepting of the bloated status quo of the high cost of production, unreasonable talent fees and riders (see Roz’s comment), jacked up acquisition fees to cover the inflated costs of production, and the impossible-to-meet scenarios for distribution that would need to be achieved to cover all of these initial costs and then make money for the distributor. This economic model was specious (op cit your treatise on distribution that I reviewed years ago in your tenure bid at Columbia) in the best of times when distributors and exhibitors actually had control over the means of distribution and could at least tangentially maintain an audience’s attention, it is unquestionably impossible now for all of the reasons everyone in that small conference room in MOMA was gnashing their teeth about.

The fact is, that the solution to the production-acquisition-distribution-exhibition conundrum does not exist in past economic models located in New Yorkistan. You”re a smart guy Ira. Think more expansively.

I find your insights right on the money.

Brave New Theaters is an amazing organization that organizes community screenings. These may not all take place on big screens yet, but with the price of digital projection going down, it won’t be long until community centers can afford mini theaters to show smaller films like “White Knuckles” or “Rethink Afghanistan”, to take two examples from their site.

I don’t think Americans will ever stop going to the movies, it’s just where they go that might change.