For much of the past week, the indie film world and many of my favorite sites and blogs have been talking about the decision by Mark Cuban and his Landmark Theaters to pull Caveh Zahedi's new IFC Films release I Am a Sex Addict from one of its theaters in Berkeley. The reason? IFC is owned by Comcast, which is refusing to add Cuban's HDNet channels to their cable system. Therefore, Landmark will not show any of IFC's day and date films (films that are in theaters at the same time as appearing on TV pay-per-view channels) in cities where Comcast operates (however, they will show the films in markets where Comcast does not operate and they will show IFC's other films - those not appearing on TV - in all markets).
Seems pretty straightforward.
The kerfuffle began when Landmark and IFC booked the film in one of Landmark's theaters in Berkeley, California. Apparently, the booking was something that slipped through the cracks of Landmark's no-IFC-day-and-date-in-Comcast-markets policy. When Cuban or someone at Landmark realized that Zahedi's film had been booked, they pulled it. I Am a Sex Addict ended up premiering at another theater in Berkeley.
Somehow, this has become either the biggest cause celebre in indie film or one of the biggest cases of misplaced outrage in recent years, and much of it has been launched by Zahedi, who has chronicled the dispute on his Indiewire blog and who is making something of a career out of stoking the fires of independent David vs. heartless corporate Goliaths.
I'd been wanting to write about this for the past week but I've been so immersed in my own post-production that I haven't been able to get my thoughts together. It really wasn't until I read Anne Thompson's insightful article in yesterday's Hollywood Reporter, that I began to crystalize the narrative that was playing out in my brain.
To backtrack, I first wrote about Zahedi during ongoing discussions here and on David Lowery's blog about DIY and self-distribution. Lowery interviewed Zahedi and questioned him on a minor skirmish that had erupted when Zahedi, who had previously printed a self-distribution manifesto, decided to team up with IFC Films.
As I wrote in February:
For some, this was a great development - Zahedi had
proved his route was successful and only took the deal
that he wanted. Or was it the ultimate sell-out, someone
promoting the thrills of DIY when (he was), at the same
time, negotiating with one of the largest indie
distributors.
Recently, Zahedi was invited by Indiewire to blog on their site. It was here that news of the Landmark decision was first announced by Zahedi.. The subsequent week-long blog campaign by Zahedi is a fascinating look at how the internet has made the personal public, and he could not have picked a better sparring partner than Cuban, known for publicly responding to criticism and questions in ways unheard of for the typical corporate head/multi-millionaire.
It all began last Monday when Zahedi posted the news that he had reportedly just received from IFC:
The film was set to open this Friday at a Landmark
Theater in Berkeley. Postcards have been made and
sent out. Posters have been put up. Articles have been
written. But he has decided to nix our screening (on a
whim?). People are going to show up to the theater,
and will be told: "Sorry, Mr. Mark Cuban decided he
didn't want this particular film playing at his movie
theater, because IFC Films is distributing it, and they
have a video-on-demand deal with Comcast, which
hasn't been very nice to him."
Further, Zahedi addressed Cuban directly:
Well, dear Mr. Mark Cuban, I know nothing about your
beef with the folks at Comcast (I've never met the
gentlemen) but I made a film which your theater has
advertised as opening this Friday, and I would argue
that it's not exactly considerate to just cancel the
screening (without warning) only a few days before
it's set to open.
To no one's surprised, Cuban showed up not long after with a direct response:
Lets set the record straight here. The folks at IFC
knew last month where i stood on this and why.
Cuban said that the problem came about because IFC tried to book the films in Landmark's theaters even though they knew Landmark had the no-IFC-day-and-date-in-Comcast-markets policy. An uniformed Landmark staffer ended up booking Sex Addict by mistake.
Cuban's decision, Zahedi's public pleas and Cuban's subsequent responses were soon the headline in the indie film world. Indiewire alerted with a short buzz piece that appeared last Tuesday. Eugene Hernandez had a longer piece running later that day:
Likening the situation to being held hostage and
caught in a turf war, Zahedi told indieWIRE today
that he is quite disappointed by the situation,
particularly given the amount of work that had
already been put into the opening at a Landmark
theater in Berkeley. The indie film, an
autobiographical comedy about the life of a man
who becomes addicted to prostitutes and sex, will
still debut at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco
tomorrow (Wednesday, April 4th) and a replacement
booking at the Elmwood Theater in Berkeley will
replace the Landmark showing starting Friday.
Zahedi has been documenting the ups and downs
leading up to the theatrical release on his
increasingly popular weblog.
"It is too bad that Mark Cuban is taking such a narrow
view of it," Caveh Zahedi told indieWIRE in a
conversation today. "It is misguided...but I understand
it. It seems like he is trying to make public his fight with
Comcast. I am sympathetic to his attempt, it seems like
there must be some solution."
(....)
Reached by email today, Mark Cuban told indieWIRE that
he realizes such a request might be difficult and added
that neither Landmark nor IFC stand to make much
money from the theatrical release but, "Comcast gets to
promote that they have movies in their VOD program that
are currently in theaters. While I don't think it takes away
from attendance, I do think it creates financial value for
both IFC and Comcast."
"I'm not going to allow Landmark to subsidize that
relationship," Cuban told indieWIRE in the email. "If
Comcast was a partner, I would because it would be
a win win for everyone. But they aren't, so we won't."
Cuban also explained that Landmark will continue to book
IFC's day-and-date releases in Landmark Theaters that
are not in Comcast markets.
As his initial post continued to gain attention and traction in various media, Zahedi began a series of posts (including a plea to filmmaker Steven Soderbergh to act as a mediator) on the IFC v. Landmark situation. Most of his posts, which doubled as open letters to Cuban, were variations on the following theme: Thanks for your response, I understand your position more, but in reality what you are saying doesn't make any sense, please respond.
Despite the week-long back-and-forth, little news was made that differed from the initial storyline.
My gut reaction to the first reports of this story were sympathy for Zahedi. It seemed to me then (and frankly I still think) that Landmark and Cuban should have honored their booking (it was, after all, at least half their error) at the single Landmark Theater that was supposed to play the film. Landmark and Cuban could have then reiterated their position to IFC and Comcast, namely, "we made an error, we're going to honor the booking, but just so you are perfectly clear, never again". It would have been little skin off Landmark's nose and would have prevented this turf war becoming public.
So yes, first reaction was sympathy, primarily for the difficulty of reprinting the postcards, posters, stickers, etc.
But let's be real. The uproar over the refusal of a Utah theater to screen Brokeback Mountain notwithstanding, indie theatrical bookings are hardly the "set-in-stone" thing they are portrayed as. On Gigantic we were moved from one theater in a chain to a different theater, we were pushed back a week when another film continued to draw crowds, we were forced to share a screen when we had been told/promised that we'd have the theater to ourselves. These things do happen.
Beyond typical theatrical snags, the more I've thought about the Caveh v. Cuban issues, the less they have become cut-and-dried.
When Zahedi signed with IFC, he clearly knew that the film would be a part of IFC's burgeoning day-and-date program (IFC and Comcast have their own pay-per-view channel and IFC Films is acquiring a number of films to provide programming for it). 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.
Did IFC Films tell Zahedi that they would still be able to book the film in Landmark Theaters (as Landmark will book day-and-date releases from IFC in non-Comcast markets) and at some independent art houses? If so, was leaving out the not-in-Comcast-market-ban an honest mistake by IFC, had they not been clearly informed by Cuban or Landmark, or was it an attempt to keep booking films at the affected Landmark theaters until someone said "stop".
It seems strange to me that someone who had already agreed to an extremely limited theatrical run would express such (public) surprise and shock over this situation. One could decide that Zahedi has tried to take a bad situation and turn it into something good for the film - free publicity, a call to arms - and as a fellow filmmaker I can't say I blame his desire to do so.
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.
David v. Goliath part deux.
But again, it was Anne Thompson's piece, that crystalized things for me, particularly the comments of Sony Classics' Tom Bernard:
"It's curious that the two people who are pushing the
closed-window policy are the two people who own
(channels) that need to get on cable systems," said
Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard, an
ardent believer in the traditional release model,
regarding the policies of Cuban and IFC Entertainment
president Jonathan Sehring.
(....)
Traditionalists like Bernard argue, "The traditional
windows are the best way to maximize revenues for
films because movies can be sold in theaters, on DVD,
on pay-per-view, free TV and super-deluxe DVDs," he
said. For example, SPC's "Capote" earned more than
$30 million in DVD retail sales after its theatrical run.
"Indie movies live in a very sensitive ecosystem,"
Bernard said. "We're Mark Cuban's No. 1 customer at
Landmark. Day-and-date, which gives you one shot,
is the worst thing to happen to the indie movement
since the screener ban."
What the Caveh v. Cuban v. IFC v. Comcast scuffle comes down to, it seems to me, is a fight over a theory, an idea of what distribution will look like, should look like, five years from now. Zahedi, who has (rightfully) won praise from many for his innovative approach to self-distribution, clearly felt the time was right (or he had wrung enough from his DIY model) to latch on to the day-and-date model. Cuban and Comcast are imagining a vertically integrated world of content control and ownership. Whether they can integrate their individual plans for conquest with one another remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen whether the future, as they imagine it, ends up being a positive or a negative for independent filmmakers.
But it seems to me that what's been lost in this discussion is not whether Zahedi is caught in the middle or whether its Cuban or Comcast with the moral right-of-way, it's whether filmmakers should embrace the day-and-date theory itself, with all the attached limitations.
Here on this blog, as well as at Lowery's, Paul's and Sujewa's, we've talked about our own theories, our own ideas for what the future of independent film distribution might hold. None of us have implicitly embraced day-and-date as the future (although we have talked about selling DVDs at festivals, which is a way of collapsing the theatrical window that Tom Bernard would probably not like). And for certain different films require different strategies. What works for Capote would not work for Gigantic would not work for Sex Addict would not work for Bubble.
Proponents of day-and-date keep assuring us of its inevitability, but despite the viability of some political documentaries, there's yet to be a breakout day-and-date success story, particularly on the narrative side. In fact, nearly all signs point to the flaws inherent to the concept. Perhaps the breakthrough is just one film away, perhaps the breakthrough will never come. Perhaps, as Bernard describes, it's the worst thing to happen to indie film since the screener ban.
Maybe Zahedi is an indie-world hero. Maybe he really is a David caught between two Goliaths. Maybe he just knows a good hook when he sees one. Whatever the case, it will be interesting to see if his very public battle translates to some degree of success for a film and a distribution chain that he has already embraced.
Addendum to the above - Scott Macauley blogs at Filmmaker about last night's IFP distribution panel in NYC, which included Zahedi as well as The Puffy Chair's Jay Duplass and Down to the Bone director Debra Granik. An interesting line-up of filmmakers who had some things going for them (big time sales agent, major festival premieres, much acclaim) but still had to work hard for a distribution deal.
Still further - Paul at Self Reliant just posted a great interview he did with Caveh. For one thing, Zahedi disputes the gist of an Indiewire article that claimed he chastised the crowd at the recent Gotham Awards. He also talks about video on demand, saying that he sees no downside to it. It's a fine conversation, check it out here.
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