New Site! New Blog! New...readers, I hope!

So I done got me a new website, www.DeLargeFilms.com. As you'll quickly see, we have a blog section, and our inaugural post, "It's About Overhead, Stupid"can be found HERE.

Enjoy, and be sure to check in regularly as, from now on, all our posts will be there. Thanks!

Shameful - OR - Most of my family saw "Tiny Furniture" last month

I don't really do New Years resolutions. I won't get into why, but the point is the following was a coincidentally-timed epiphany (rather than being precipitated by the new year) that I had when, visiting my aunt's house up in CT for Christmas dinner (despite that fact that most of my immediate and extended family would self-identify as Jewish) I discovered that pretty much everyone in my family, save for my father, uncle, and youngest present cousin (my two younger cousins were in NJ) had all seen “Tiny Furniture” in the past couple weeks.

My surprise immediately spurred action: I couldn't help but pull up the box office numbers (from The Numbers, if anyone cares about source). The newest available data at the time was from a week before, 12/17, when IFC reported a cume of $228,811.

What. The. Fuck.

I caught the movie at SXSW – It was great. Really great. But given the above figure, I couldn't make sense of this. Two of my closest friends had approached me about seeing making a trip to the IFC center in late November to see “Tiny” which was weird enough because one was a lawyer, the other works in retail jewelery, and neither tends to be aware of any indie films unless they're from a mini-major. The same can be said about the above mentioned family—I'm the only one in my family who works in the film industry and, although my mom is a pretty serious film buff, she probably only hits art-house theaters 1-2 times a month.

So why, then, did I find myself standing around in my aunt's living room, stupefied, surrounded by lively conversations about the movie itself as well as Lena's upcoming HBO series with Judd Apatow? I had seen “127 Hours” far more recently (SXSW is in March, after all) and was totally knocked off my ass by it—and like any movie that has a powerful effect on you, I really wanted to discuss it with someone. Of course no one in the house had seen it. For those of you counting, at 38 days out (the same length of time from the opening of “Tiny Furniture” to 12/17) “127 Hours” had a reported B.O. Cume of $8,250,856. By my math (which, admittedly, sucks—I stopped taking math when I was 16) that means that “127 Hours” had sold roughly 36 times more tickets within the same time frame. And yet here I was, surrounded by people who had seen “Tiny” rather than having watched James Franco cut his arm off in what was arguably a career-defining performance.

As I mulled this over, the reality of the situation hit me like a brick to the face as the ghost of my ex-girlfriend (no, she's not dead, she's still in Cali where we parted ways) murmured into my ear: “Are there any women in it?”

I couldn't tell you how many times I heard this question. I'm a cinephile to a fault and like to see anything that even looks palatable while it's still in theaters. I curse Landmark, AMC, Regal, Cinemark and every NYC art-house theater every time I do the math and realize I probably drop $3,000 a year on tickets and Coke (and to the multiplex chains, I have only this to say to you – a $6, half-gallon soda is inappropriate for any situation. Before you begin offering soda I.V.s and feed troughs full of candy and popcorn, I think I can safely say you're already heading in the wrong direction). So, naturally, I tried to drag my ex to the theater pretty much every single weekend when we were still dating—even if, as she pointed out, most of the time there wasn't an available, decent-looking movie with a SINGLE FUCKING MAIN CHARACTER that she could relate to. About as often as I'd try to pull a bait-and-switch (“Look, this actress is definitely playing one of the main characters”) she'd point out that, most of the time, the stock female served as either an object rather than a character, or, worse yet, a character so male in her persona, so idealized as the “perfect girl” that you quickly realize she's not an actual woman but rather a version of a male best friend who happens to have lady-parts.

And before anyone skewers me for that last bit, I'm hardly suggesting that what society accepts as gender roles are more valid than the alternative, but rather that these characters are 1-dimensional and fall closer to an exception than the rule. I consider myself open-minded and a feminist so if you think I'm being sexist, please give me the benefit of the doubt that this is a shortcoming of my writing rather than my ethics.

On that note--I'm not going to turn this into an ethical argument – I do think that the industry (yes, that includes “truly” independent film) is inherently sexist AND racist – but frankly I think the ethics behind these issues are a bit too nuanced to be argued one-sided in a blog post—and if you think there's no argument against trying to rectify these matters, I'd point out that when you start dictating what kind of art people should be making, you step onto a very slippery slope. So why bother mentioning this at all, then?

I'll make it simple—in particular for all of you with a marketing/business background: There are major demographics being completely under-served.

For all the talk of emerging digital markets, DIWO and DIY media distribution, freemium and tiered pricing, release windows, etc., I'm a little aghast that no one seems to be discussing the fact that a vast majority of film, both independent and studio backed, caters primarily to men—in particular, white men—and worse yet, independent film seems to trend even one step further and skew towards white, educated, upper-middle class men. There are exceptions abound—but so long as they're getting credit for being exceptions, there's something wholly amiss with the landscape.

So much of the discussion on Twitter, on festival panels and in the trades has been about changing models, paradigm shifts in the way people consume media, and finding new ways to engage audiences – when really, there's I think we might be in an unlikely situation where acquiring brand new audiences (read: women and minorities in particular) might be more energy (and cost) effective than engaging an already exhausted and, dare I say, cynical audience that has been saturated by a glut of content aimed at them that has been growing at near exponential levels for a few years now.

If you're reading the above as a causal argument using “Tiny Furniture” as a case study, don't. The fact

is, "Tiny" got an unusually high amount of media attention (in particular in the type of media likely consumed by the females in my family and aforementioned friends, who fall into the same demo) and that, without question, contributed in part to so many people close to me having made the trip to their nearest art-house theater to check it out. And frankly, most case studies are a little dubious when you don't have a really significant group to work off of (and my two friends and 6 relatives don't count.) At the end of the day, though, reviews, feature profiles and the like only draw attention to a piece media (whether it's a book, film, whatever) and there has to be inherent interest in the subject to actually turn this attention into something actionable like slapping down $12.50 + concession costs to see a movie—and that's the issue at hand.

So filmmakers, take heed—if you make it, they will come—so long as “they” isn't the same tried and true audiences that are worn out by having so much content that speaks directly to them.

And to all the marketeers, media distribution theorists, fellow consultants, self-proclaimed experts and businesspeople: Please consider, for a moment, whether your friends, family, and everyone else in your life are really being properly served by the content you study and expound on. If you think they are, I highly suggest the following:

Get your head out of your ass.  

Why I (kinda) turned my back on social media

(Cue sad walking-away music from "The Incredible Hulk" TV show)

I've ignored this for a little too long but I feel like, without addressing it, it's not something I can really move past in any meaningful way:

I've taken a serious step back from engaging in social media (Twitter, most notably) as well as blogging and, in short, it's not for nothing. I've always valued honesty and, to that end, I think it would serve me best to take off the gloves and explain the reasons why with as much disclosure as I can muster. Without further ado:

1.) I feel like, as far as film distribution/marketing/etc. goes, there's little being said that's new and really worth discussing in any sort of meaningful way. There are some people out there whose work I continue to admire and appreciate and when they decide to enter the conversation, I have every reason to listen.

That said, there's a lot of people out there who lack either the context, the experience, or even the topical understanding of media distribution to contribute anything worthwhile—and yet they're still talking and people are still listening. The most pointed example to me is that someone (no, I won't be giving any hints to whom—it's not relevant) who appeared on Ted Hope's list of Brave Thinkers of Indie Film who, as recently as 9 months ago posted a piece of writing (in public) that made it clear he/she had no understanding whatsoever of either the first-use doctrine nor even the most BASIC intellectual property laws. The moment we stop holding people accountable for their “expertise,” I'm not entirely sure the discussion is worth having. I'm by no means suggesting that Ted, or anyone else, has been swindled or lead to believe something that isn't true but what I would say is that there's a serious lack of accountability in the industry and, while that's probably been true for as long as the film business has been around, it's a bit disappointing given the level of access everyone has to information these days. In short—things COULD be a lot more transparent if transparency and accountability were a priority to us—and I think that this problem is compounded exponentially on Twitter because of it's open and accessible nature.

2.) I'm working on something that necessitates a level of secrecy that  reminded me that, as much as it's helpful to engage and build audiences, an air of mystery, hope, and movie-magic hold value in their own way(s). It's hard for me to remember a time before I paid attention to the studios, production companies, distribution companies, etc. attached to different movies—I remember being about 13 years old and telling my mother that I wanted to work for Viacom because of their media holdings at the time—but since that time, I appreciate movies in a different way and yes, I believe some of the magic has been lost as a result. I'm not saying that people should be more hush-hush about their projects, their films, their businesses, etc.—I just think people should be thinking a little bit more clearly about what, when and, most importantly why—they chose to share. I'm big about putting my money where my mouth is—so rather than re-hash the same things over and over and over and looking for new people to listen, I've tried to keep my mouth shut on industry issues unless I have something actually worth saying.

3.) I'm just plain busy. I said at the beginning of this post that I was going to disclose as much as I could and I stand by that: 4 months ago (August) I moved back from California to New York and about a month ago (early November) my long term girlfriend (still in California) and I broke up. The resulting fallout included a re-assessment of where I was in my life and career and where I was going. Based on this assessment I decided to move (to Queens—it's more quiet and less distracting than the East Village, my old hood) and to open my doors to taking on projects in development and helping to usher them through development, production, post production and post-completion (i.e. film fests, markets, distribution/sales and, in the right circumstances, a DIY/DIWO release) rather than finished films—the idea being that my skill set would be more helpful to projects at earlier stages. I've been quietly discussing a couple of projects with past clients as well as filmmakers whose past work I admire but this is pretty much as close to an “announcement” as I'm going to get – While I'll continue to seek and work on finished films that would benefit from my consulting and representation services, this has been pulled back to only make up roughly half of my time/energy since I'm getting into producing. Reading scripts, meeting with other producers and filmmakers and pulling together pitch packages for investors is time-consuming work and, between my recent move and other life changes and my increased work schedule, Twitter has fallen by the wayside. The above reasons (1 & 2) are the reason why Twitter hasn't been a priority as I've taken on more work.

So—I realize this was a bit of an awkward, strangely personal post but, at the same time, I'd hate missing a chance to explain myself, particularly since I really do believe that Twitter and other social networks can be powerful tools in business (and life) that shouldn't be ignored....but then again...it's OK to neglect them sometimes, too.