The Monday Brief: More on THE COVE's Battle With Tokyo, Spike's Latest Doc Hits Big and Cinema Eye Moves to January

Good morning from Des Moines, where last night I scored the last chicken lip of the 2009 Iowa State Fair...

Disney released its latest nonfiction release of 2009, X GAMES 3D THE MOVIE, on 1,399 screens, the largest opening for a doc since Disney released EARTH in May.  This time, however, the results were not EARTH-shattering, as X GAMES managed just $572 per screen and a total gross of $800K.  Since the film was announced as a one-week only theatrical release, the ESPN Films-branded documentary may have difficulty making it to $1M by Friday.

UPDATE: X GAMES ended its one-week run with nearly $1.4 million, making it the 7th nonfiction title of 2009 to reach the million dollar mark and the third this year for Disney.

Fairing better was the release of Spike Lee's PASSING STRANGE: THE MOVIE, a filming of the same-name Tony-award winning Broadway musical written by Stew.  The film was recently announced as the kickoff to IFC's new Sundance Selects series, a Video-on-Demand service which debuts this Wednesday on Comcast, Cox and Cablevision.  It had its theatrical debut on a single screen at NYC's IFC Center and managed to gross more than $18K for the weekend.

In other box office news, IT MIGHT GET LOUD continued on 7 screens, cooling a bit in its second weekend to an average of $7,429.  Its cume is now $198K.  Meanwhile, THE COVE is continuing to defy expectations (although not in the ways that one would hope), slipping 40% from the previous week and now down to 29 theaters and total box office of $537K.

Last week, we wrote about THE COVE's producer Fisher Stevens sending a letter to Nikke Finke protesting THE COVE's exclusion from the Tokyo Film Festival.  We noted that drawing attention to a festival rejection was rarely a good PR move for filmmakers, thinking that Stevens' email was some rogue act.  But we'd missed what had previously been something of a concerted effort by THE COVE's filmmakers to draw attention to what they described as the Japanese government's efforts to stop the film from screening in that country.  It began as early as July, when THE COVE director Louis Psihoyos spoke to the IDA's Sara Vizcarrando:

"There was a major distributor who wanted to distribute this film in Japan, but his excuse not to do it was, "I didn't realize there was so much national pressure from the government not to have this film seen." He also said that he was worried the fishermen there might commit suicide if it was out because they'd lose so much face...

The Tokyo Film Festival called today. They said that, ironically, the theme of this year's fest is the environment. Not the top director but one of the directors of the fest said it would be hypocritical of us not to show that film."

An article posted July 20 to Film Journal International quoted Psihoyos as expressing doubts that the fest could withstand pressure not to screen the film:

"Psihoyos says the film is being considered for the Tokyo Film Festival but notes that the director of the festival just wrote to say that the event is controlled by the government. The filmmaker is also working with filmmaker/producer/distributor Luc Besson, who picked the film up for France and has distribution partners in Japan that he’s showing the movie to. Says Psihoyos, “One way or another, we’ll get it shown in Japan.”"

By August 4, Psihoyos was reporting that Tokyo had rejected the film.  In Toronto for a press day for THE COVE, he spoke openly about Tokyo's decision, starting with Peter Howell at The Star:

"He said he'd been warned by a director of the festival, whom Psihoyos didn't name, that the film might not make the cut because it's highly critical of Japan's environmental policies. The country's lawmakers have turned a blind eye to the wholesale capture and slaughter of dolphins by fishermen, a brutal practice covertly documented in the film.

"You have to realize that we get our money from the government and the government doesn't want this movie out there," Psihoyos quoted the fest official as saying."

While Tokyo hasn't said much on the record about the story, they denied that THE COVE had been rejected to Variety, saying:

"We're still in the process of sorting out our lineup -- there will be an official announcement in September."

Meanwhile, despite nearly every outlet (including THE COVE's own Twitter feed - "What's with the Tokyo Film Festival's rejection of The Cove?? Especially with their "green" theme??") - making hay over the Tokyo fest having an environmental theme this year, including having a green carpet instead of a red one.  Except that no one seemed to note that last year, the Tokyo festival had some similar window dressing.  From the LA Times, dated October 18, 2008:

"The Tokyo International Film Festival kicked off Saturday with an environmental theme and stars including American actress Julianne Moore and Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai walking a "green" carpet made of recycled plastic bottles...

The theme of this year's nine-day festival is the environment, said Genki Nagaya, one of the organizers. It includes an ecology category with films on the environment and documentaries about climate change and animals."

The Times article also notes that the Japanese government backs the festival.

Speaking of Toronto, the other TIFF (the one that's in Canada, not in the Pacific Rim) finally filled out its doc slate with an announcement of remaining titles this week.  Thom Powers posted the full documentary list to TIFF's Doc Blog.  Powers has been asking folks to submit their list of films they are most looking forward to.  Among those responding thus far: Michael Tully, Anne Thompson, the aforementioned Peter Howell and Sundance programmer David Courier.  We spoke to Powers about the first announcement of doc titles last month.

Thom Powers also figured into an announcement made earlier this week by organizers of the Cinema Eye Honors (of which I am a co-chair). 

Next year's Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking will be held in January, a move from March, when the ceremony had been held during its first two years.  In addition, Powers, who co-chaired in 2008 and 2009 with me, will now chair the Cinema Eye Nominations Committee.  Filmmaker Esther Robinson (A WALK INTO THE SEA: DANNY WILLIAMS AND THE WARHOL FACTORY) and newly-named San Francisco Film Society Director of Programming Rachel Rosen (formerly of Los Angeles Film Festival and Film Independent) will join me as co-chairs of the 2010 awards.  Producer Andrea Meditch (she was Executive Producer on last year's Cinema Eye winners MAN ON WIRE and ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD) rounds out the Cinema Eye leadership team as chair of the Advisory Board.

indieWIRE's Brian Brooks had a longer piece on the above, including several comments from yours truly. 

"It felt strange to me to come back from SXSW [in March] and be writing the [Cinema Eye] script about WALTZ WITH BASHIR and MAN ON WIRE and saying something that hasn’t been said before. Sundance really feels like the kick off of the new year, and there’s a conversation that happens then about the best films of the previous year and I feel that [Cinema Eye] should be a part of that conversation."

Other stuff we missed this week:  The Sundance Documentary Fund announced the latest round of grant recipients.  Among the familiar names - Yance Ford (STRONG ISLAND), Judith Helfand (COOKED) and Robin Hessman (RUSSIA'S PEPSI GENERATION).

RJ Cutler's THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE had a star-studded premiere in New York on Wednesday, with a screening at MOMA that attracted celebrities like Sienna Miller and Renee Zellweger and the accompanying press that won't come within a country mile of 99.99% of documentary features.  Witness coverage in Just Jared, Style and Access Hollywood.  SEPTEMBER ISSUE opens in New York this Friday.

And finally, what we're thinking about this week:  Food-on-a-Stick.  For those of you who have been to the Iowa State Fair, you understand what I'm talking about.  For those of you who haven't, see the list of "more than 50 delectable items available on-a-stick".

State Fair time means a little bit of down time for us as we embrace the end of summer and before we head off again to work in Southwest Missouri.  [Fair warning (pardon the pun), we may be posting limited updates over the next two weeks and apologies if/when emails/questions go unanswered for a bit.] 

Meantime, we're gonna settle down with a deep fryer, some corn batter and a variety of documentary titles and see if we can sell them to folks departing Des Moines tomorrow.  MAN ON WIRE-on-a-Stick anyone?