I haven't yet made it over to the Los Angeles Film Festival although I plan to see a couple of films there this week, including one made by someone I went to college with. In the meantime, I've been taken by an article in Thursday's LA Weekly, an interview between film critic/writer Scott Foundas and filmmaker Sally Potter, who is screening her new film Yes at this year's festival.
Foundas had actually reviewed Potter's film at last year's Telluride Film Festival . It was the premiere of her film and, from how she describes it, the response from the audience was fantastic. Foundas, who has written wonderful articles/interviews over at Indiewire, reviewed the film for Variety and panned it. In particular, he wrote "Yes is the type of purely intellectual construct that, even when it works, inspires most audiences to say 'No.'"
As Potter notes, many people look to an industry publication like Variety for a prediction of how a film will perform commercially. Even if you're an established indie filmmaker like Sally Potter, if the first big review says "most audiences will say 'No'" to your film, you now face a huge uphill battle with potential distributors, as well as other critics and writers. (Needless to say, if you're a new filmmaker you're chances of being picked up could be destroyed entirely.)
So, here she feels that her screening has gone extremely well, the audience seems to love it and, quoting her, "it felt like incredibly bad luck that the only review that came out of Telluride was from a person who didn’t respond positively to the film."
To that I would add, not just that he didn't respond positively, but that he argued that most audiences would see the film as he did, even though, perhaps, he was in the minority with his viewpoint.
I actually really like film criticism; I find it interesting to read, especially if I like the writing style of the critic, but even sometimes when I don't. I confess to enjoying the occasional review that just eviscerates its target, such as Anthony Lane's takedown of The Phantom of the Opera in the New Yorker. It may be heartless, but it's terrific fun to read. And I actually find the topic of film criticism itself pretty interesting - it's likely I'll blog about it more than a few times.
But there is a tendancy of some critics, evidenced here by Foundas, to write about their expectations for an audience's reaction to the film. This is, I suspect, part of the job, particularly at a place like Variety and Hollywood Reporter. My problem with this is that it's often incorrect. It's a prediction, that's all, like "I predict War of the Worlds will flop." Which is a lot different from writing, "I've seen War of the Worlds and it's going to flop. Audiences will say "no"."
In my own experience with Gigantic, we had an issue that boiled down to this: how would non-fans (not people who hate them but folks who were perhaps unaware of them) react to the film. I later learned that this is an issue that gets discussed (particularly by marketers, publicists and investors) any time you are doing a documentary that focuses on a musical artist. The questions are asked: How big is the fan base? Will the fan base turn out? How do we get beyond the fan base? How will a non-fan react to the film? (and conversely) Is this movie just for fans?
My intention with Gigantic was to reach beyond what I consider to be the band's hard core fans (the folks who tend to obsess over the meaning of Particle Man) to people who liked them vaguely ("I remember them - they did the song about the birdhouse and they had weird videos.") and people who had never heard of them ("They Might Be What?") but might be open to discovering an interesting musical entity.
In making the film, I interviewed more than 50 people from all stages of the band's 20-year career and everyone I talked to had positive and warm things to say about John and John - and trust me, I asked about fights and trouble and strife. So what you ended up with was a positive look at a couple of creative guys who, in my opinion, hadn't gotten a lot of credit for their many accomplishments. Also, besides the occasional bad temper or control freak-out (which is hardly stunning news in this or any field), there was just nothing awful to report. And frankly, I didn't believe in overhyping some small negative point to create some false sense of "balance". We even made fun of the lack of a dark side by creating a section of the film highlighting their huge addiction problem....with coffee.
Because of this positive tone, many of the reviews focused on whether or not the film was solely "a gift for fans" and whether "non-believers" would be interested. And often we would have, sometimes in the same city, one critic who would say "this film will only be interesting to fans of the band" and another critic who would say "this is perfect for people who've never heard of them". Strangely enough (or maybe not) the critic who would say "this film is for fans only" was often a fan himself (or he hated the band and couldn't imagine why anyone sane would want to spend 100 minutes with them), while the one who proposed Gigantic was good for the masses was someone who'd not been that familiar with TMBG in the first case.
And while I'd like to believe that the latter person was correct (and somewhere deep inside I probably they are, at least 84%), in truth neither could expect to be speaking for 100% of the audience. And while the latter review might send someone to check Gigantic out, the previous review is likely to keep them home. As Potter states quite truthfully, when you're dealing with an indie film, you need all the forward momentum you can get. This is not to say that a film critic should give us indies more of a break or that they shouldn't report their problems with/criticisms of a picture. But I think they should try to stay out of the prediction business, since they don't know whether you will be "bored stiff" or "on the edge of your seat". Isn't it enough that the critic himself/herself was bored stiff, must they imagine the same banal fate for you?
Gerald Peary, the film critic for the Boston Phoenix, is making a documentary about film critics and criticism. It should be pretty interesting. There's some info about it at his site.
http://www.geraldpeary.com/filmproject/outline.html
Posted by: Joe Swanberg | June 19, 2005 at 09:44 AM
Perry's project sounds fascinating. There was something last year (in Newsweek? can't recall) where a filmmaker and critic talked about the film/review. I remember one was with Kevin Spacey. I really liked that for the same reasons that I liked this dialogue with Potter and Foundas.
Posted by: AJ Schnack | June 19, 2005 at 02:51 PM
I was a bit surprised to hear her talk about the Telluride audience being 99% in favor of the film. That's just not the case. It's true that it seemed a majority liked it, and buzz was good around town, but I was one of the people who saw it there, thought it was interesting, but was not at all in love with it. And there were quite a few people who came out of the screening hating the film. I think maybe it was an age thing. The younger people, even those who liked it, seemed to think it was interesting but not great, and the older audience seemed to connect with it more. But Telluride is a much older audience that most festivals, and also whiter, wealthier, and more educated, so it was a good environment for a film like Yes.
Posted by: Joe Swanberg | June 19, 2005 at 04:26 PM
That's an interesting point. I actually went to check out Yes' reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. It's early - just 6 reviews - but it was split down the middle, 3 apiece. I think that my argument still holds, however, because again Foundas was making a prediction on how audiences would receive the film - and at least from what you describe, the older, whiter, wealthier patrons (who probably made up a sizeable percentage of the audience at Telluride, and for that matter the audiences at many urban art houses) seemed to connect with the film even if the kids did not.
Speaking of the kids, Joe is a filmmaker in his own right and has a very fine film that premiered at SXSW 2005 called Kissing on the Mouth. You can check it out at www.kissingonthemouth.com
Posted by: AJ Schnack | June 20, 2005 at 12:43 AM
Word. Thanks for the plug!
I've seen My Summer Of Love and The Holy Girl in the past few days, both dealing with girls of roughly the same age, and The Holy Girl was the better film by far. But midway through Holy Girl, the old lady behind me started checking voice mail, and then 15 minutes later got up and left. Even old people are now obnoxious cell phone users. What gives?
Posted by: Joe Swanberg | June 22, 2005 at 06:43 AM
I also saw "Yes" at Telluride. In fact, it was my first chance at theater managing there, and we not only had a film break, but a print that kept going in and out of focus. So I had a producer talking in my ear pretty much the whole way through. As a result, I may not have been able to give the film my full attention, but I have to say that I would bet dollars to doughnuts against that movie ever ever doing well in a theatrical release.
I think your point about reviewers needing to speak for themselves is a great one, but I also see a sense of obligation, especially from Variety, to comment on a film's box office chances. And "Yes" doesn't have a hope in hell of making money (given a traditional arthouse release), imo.
I also agree with Joe that it's dangerous to give too much weight to audience feedback after a premiere (especially filtered through the director) because everybody is going to tell Sally Potter that they liked her movie. Hell, I told her that I loved all of the mathematical games in it. Which is true, I did, but I didn't tell her that I thought the ending lacked punch or that I found the experiment of writing a whole film in verse to be fascinating but not necessarily emotionally compelling. Fact is, a director is going to hear good things about their movie from the people around them, especially after a premiere.
Posted by: david kinofist | June 23, 2005 at 08:06 AM
It seems that the reviews are definitely split between those who argue that the film is sublime (as Andrew Sarris does) and those who take a pass. The thing is, enough of those "sublime" reviews from certain, well-regarded critics (Sarris and Ebert among them) could push some audiences into the film - perhaps not the kids (are the kids really going to Joan Allen movies these days? I mean, they should, but...). But what does that lead to - a 2 million dollar box office take? Less? More? What does a film like that hope to do and what was the budget anyway?
As for Variety, I agree that they have a certain responsibility to gauge a film's box office potential. I guess my quarel is, again, with the choice of words - "insprires most to say no". I would have less problem with "might have a hard time breaking even" or "a good portion of the audience might have trouble sitting through this". These types of statements are less definitive, but would have still made the point.
Very glad to have heard from 2 people who saw the film in Telluride and who can at least put Potter's recollections in perspective.
Posted by: AJ Schnack | June 23, 2005 at 02:50 PM
I just saw "Gigantic" for the first time, and really enjoyed it. The DVD extras are an especially big hit in our household; Our 13-year-old and 9-year-old were somewhat familiar with TMBG before, but now they're full-fledged fans.
You're exploring some interesting topics on this Web site, and not all of them related to documentaries! You can count on me to keep checking in.
Related to your points about musical documentaries finding an audience: Do you think a performance film (a modern-day "Stop Making Sense," for example), or a concert-tour documentary that profiles an engaging but less-than-superstar act, would stand a chance in today's market? What's most likely to draw an audience to a film about an unfamiliar performer: a sense of humor, a sense of "gravity," a buzz about the film's structure or concept, a straight-forward presentation of good music - or all of the above? (Or none of the above?)
Posted by: Greg Williams | June 28, 2005 at 05:46 PM
Thanks so much Greg - and spread the word.
I think the questions you ask related to music documentaries are very interesting and definitely worth exploring. I'll definitely talk about them at length in a future post - please keep an eye out.
Posted by: AJ Schnack | June 28, 2005 at 09:57 PM
I'm generally willing to give any documentary a chance, but straight-up performance films usually don't catch my interest - even if they feature people whose work I know and like. Maybe I'm not a typical viewer, but I need something more to keep me going: a high-concept premise, some up-close-and-personal moments away from the stage, other faces, other places, etc. (You assembled a good mix of all these elements in "Gigantic." It helped, of course, to have John and John in your viewfinder ...)
Posted by: Greg Williams | June 29, 2005 at 06:22 PM