Interesting article in the Hollywood Reporter about how the search for big-name stars to appear in low budget indies is changing the independent film world. I wrote about the trend in August after the debuts of the cast-packed films Thumbsucker and Chumbscrubber.
The HR article cites Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know & Phil Morrison's Junebug as successful anomalies and quotes Roadside Attractions' Howard Cohen saying that without stars, "the movie has to be amazing."
"In truth, we're nervous about acquiring a movie without
a well-known cast. We're considering a movie now that
we love, but it has no stars. We've agonized about it for
an entire year."
Now, imagine you're that filmmaker. You've been talking to a distributor who loves your movie for a year. But they aren't ready to pull the trigger because you didn't cast Glenn Close.
Coincidentally, the film that Cohen is talking about just may be on Indiewire's list of the top 10 undistributed films of 2005, a list that includes two personal favorites of mine, Jem Cohen's Chain and the Duplass Brothers' The Puffy Chair.
The Puffy Chair is exactly the kind of movie that would have stormed out of Sundance ten years ago. Personal, very funny, extremely well-acted, with a small, unknown cast, it feels like a real discovery. Whenever I read an article with one of the Duplass brothers, they allude that they are close to making their distribution deal, but one has to wonder if they aren't chasing the Howard Cohen's, who are nervous about distributing without the likes of something star to hang the marketing on.
Strangely enough, I knew about this difficulty when we were prepping Gigantic, and it's one of the reasons we opted to include bits with Janeane Garofalo, Michael McKean, Andy Richter and Harry Shearer. I felt that it would be difficult to get a distributor to take a chance on a documentary about a relatively unknown band from Brooklyn (one that many distributors had either never heard of or were convinced were a one-hit wonder) and that having the testimonies of some well-known comedians would boost our chances. Ultimately, I was right. Without those stars (and Conan O'Brien and Jon Stewart), it's doubtful the movie would have been picked up.
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