Last week, I wrote about the ongoing battle between filmmaker Caveh Zahedi and Mark Cuban, which began on Caveh's blog and was picked up by numerous outlets writing about film. You can read the entire post here.
The gist of my post was a growing skepticism on my part, mostly in relationship to how Zahedi was portraying the conflict. In the beginning I was sympathetic, but as time went on and additional posts were written, I became less so. As I wrote over on Paul Harrill's blog, the controversy was starting to lessen my enthusiasm for seeing the film (but Paul's interview with Caveh, which I found very interesting had made me excited to see it again).
Perhaps not surprisingly, Caveh posted a response on my blog earlier tonight. You can read it in context of other comments here, but the full text of the comments are printed below:
Dear AJ,
First of all, I really liked your Gigantic film.
Second of all, you make some oddly hypothetical
assumptions about what I did and did not know which
you could have easily determined for yourself by
contacting me. I'm not that hard to find. You write:
"Was he told that his decision to sign on for this
program (his film had already been self-distributed to
indie houses around the country) would prevent his
film from being booked at nearly all the national film
chains (all of whom refuse to screen IFC or HDNet's
day-and-date releases)?
If Zahedi knew this and agreed to proceed with the
program anyway, he was necessarily signing onto an
extremely limited theatrical distribution scenario,
perhaps because he felt his best venue was pay-per-
view. In other words, he knew that most theaters in
the country would refuse to show his film. From what
I can tell, there is no evidence that he was unaware
of this situation."
Well, that's simply not true. No one told me that "most
theaters in the country would refuse to show" the film.
I have no idea why you would assume that I would
have known that. The fact that there was no evidence
to the contrary? But there was no evidence either way,
and you never bothered to ask me.
You also write the following:
"Perhaps it was a more recent post, a fairly dubious
claim that MySpace had censored the film by refusing
to run a banner ad for it, that made me start to question
the line between standing up for yourself and milking it
for all it's worth. The notion that MySpace, with its
audience of teenagers, is an appropriate home for the
film's advertising - Filmmaker Magazine rave or no -
strikes as an absurd argument."
What is dubious about my claim? MySpace posts all of
Filmmakers picks of the week. The only one they have
ever censored is my film. I, personally, find it absurd
that my film would be banned as a Filmmaker Magazine
pick of the week simply because of its title.
And MySpace isn't only for teenagers. It's for anyone.
There are plenty of people in their twenties and, yes,
even their thirties who frequent myspace.
Like I said, I liked your Gigantic film, and you're obviously
a very thoughtful person, but it's rather distressing to see
oneself erroneously criticized based on false assumptions
and no attempt whatsoever to ascertain the facts.
Caveh, first off I want to say that I'm sorry that I haven't had a chance to see your film yet. It's clearly enjoyed by many people, including many that I respect. I'm sure that I will enjoy it when I get to see it, hopefully at a theater. And thanks for the kind words about Gigantic.
But on these two points, I feel like we will have to agree to disagree. First, I made the assumption, perhaps in error, that you, because of your own work distributing your film would have had an extremely in-depth conversation with IFC about which theaters they were thinking of putting your movie in. I know I had that discussion with Cowboy about Gigantic. Often times if they mentioned a theater and I knew of a theater that I liked better or thought had a better reputation, I'd grill them on it. They'd then offer up why it was unlikely - the place wouldn't show docs, they only worked with folks like Miramax, our film wasn't high profile enough.
So I assume that you have this same ongoing conversation with IFC and I assume that at some point the fact comes out that most major chains won't play day-and-date movies. I mean, I knew that just from reading Indiewire articles - and you have far more experience distributing your own work than I do. So I just thought it probably came up at some point - that IFC must have told you, "we're somewhat limited because this is a day-and-date release".
If they didn't tell you that, then I think you have a bone to pick with them. Even more so than with Mark Cuban and Landmark.
On the MySpace point, you are certainly right that there are people in their 20s, even 30s on MySpace (I plead guilty to that myself). But I don't think that MySpace censored you by not allowing the Filmmaker Magazine rave to run. Was it hypocritical of them, when they are also running come hither hottie ads on every other page? Sure. Is it reactionary because they are feeling the long lens of scrutiny over underage sex charges? Maybe so.
But it's not like you are completely banished from MySpace. You have your own MySpace page and your film is featured prominently on the Filmmaker Magazine page and in their blog, which is easily available to all of Filmmaker Mag's 15,000+ friends.
To me, censorship is a heady charge and not something to be thrown around lightly. If a theater wanted to play your film and a city government came in and said, you can't show that film, cause it's about sex - that, to me, is censorship. But when a commercial online service says your movie can't be prominently featured on their site, whether it has a large underage audience or not - that, to me, is not censorship. It's what my mom used to call, "the breaks" - sometimes they fall your way, sometimes they don't. I'm sorry that in this case they didn't fall your way.
Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing your film and will write more about it when I do.
Your pal,
AJ
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