All these wonderful things

The Monday Brief: JOAN RIVERS Opens Big, A Legal Break for Berlinger, Sheffield Moves to June and the P.O.V. Power List

First off, apologies for the break in posting.  Between traveling to New York, working on various projects and the start of the Los Angeles Film Festival, I've found myself starting several posts (including the last two Monday Briefs) only to watch them go unfinished.

Truth is, this summer might be somewhat light in our coverage around these parts, although we're gonna endeavor to stay on track this month to cover two of the year's most important festivals for documentary - LAFF, which launched seemingly successfully in its new downtown digs last Thursday, and Silverdocs, which kicks off tomorrow...

In the interim, there's been a lot of news in the documentary world - shifting dates for a top festival, a legal victory for a noted filmmaker and a list that does what lists tend to do: get people talking.

But the past two weekends, the biggest headlines in the doc world were made by a film that premiered at Sundance...

Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg's docu-portrait, JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK, was the big winner at the specialty box office the past two weekends.  Opening a week ago at 7 theaters (but as indieWIRE noted - on three separate screens at NYC's IFC Center), the film took in an estimated $24,368 - the biggest per theater debut for a doc this year.  In its first weekend, the film took in more than $170K, more than the combined total take of Stern and Sundberg's previous two (critically acclaimed and super serious) docs, THE TRIALS OF DARRYL HUNT and THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK.

In its second weekend, the film cooled off only slightly as it expanded to 29 screens, managing a still strong average of just under $8K per screen, bringing its grand total thus far to more than $475K.  According to Peter Knegt's iW piece, IFC Films plans an aggressive rollout for the film, expanding to the top fifty markets by the 4th of July.  It could be the doc of the summer (at the box office at least), and seems likely to become the 4th $1M doc of 2010 (following BABIES, OCEANS and EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP).

Also fairing quite well last weekend was Madeleine Sackler's charter schools documentary THE LOTTERY.  Variance Films released the doc on a single NYC screen to a potent $17K+.  THE LOTTERY screened at this year's Tribeca Film Festival and a handful of top regional fests (Sarasota, IFFBoston, Cleveland among them) before its quick and successful theatrical launch.

This weekend saw the release of another Sundance doc, 8: THE MORMON PROPOSITION, the first out of the box for Red Flag Releasing.  Released on 16 screens, the film took in an average of more than $3K.

Segueing out of the theatrical box office, news continued to break last week in the Joe Berlinger/Chevron/CRUDE footage case.  And this time the news was good (at least for anyone who cares about documentary)...

A federal appeals court granted Berlinger a temporary stay in the case and will soon rule on his appeal of the lower court judge's decision that he must turn over his raw footage to Chevron.  This means Berlinger won't have to turn over the footage immediately, which would have been the case if the appeals court had denied his petition for a stay.

Berlinger's lawyer, Maura Wogan, told the NY Times that if the court hadn't granted the stay, "(Berlinger) would have been forced to turn over this material before the appeal was heard – he would have, in effect, lost his right to an appeal."

Berlinger will join filmmaker Morgan Spurlock for a special Stranger Than Fiction this Tuesday at NYC's IFC Center.  The event will be a benefit for Berlinger's legal defense fund.

But perhaps the biggest news of the past week was announced with relatively little fanfare.  Confirming rumors that have been circulating for months (we even included them in our festival profile last December), Sheffield Doc/Fest announced that their 2011 edition will be held in early June.  That means two Doc/Fests in Sheffield separated by little more than seven months (they will still hold this year's event the first week of November).

Memo to the LA Times: Al Gore Doesn't Have an Oscar to Take Away

It's truly hard to know who is more full of shit: conservative Academy members Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwyn who are demanding AMPAS take away Al Gore's AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH Oscar in light of what may or may not be a scandal in the academic community over climate change OR LA Times blogger Andrew Malcolm and his editors who reported the story:

"No, it wouldn't do anything for the environment.

But two Hollywood conservatives (yes, there are some) have called upon the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to rescind the prestigious, profitable gold Oscar statuette that it gave ex-Vice President Al Gore et al two years ago for the environmental movie AN INCONVENTIENT TRUTH.

Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd, both Academy members, are among a small, meandering pack of known political conservatives still believed to be on the loose in the liberal bastion of movie-making...

Chetwynd and Simon were prompted to make their hopeless demand this week by the leak two weeks ago of a blizzard of British academic e-mails purporting to show that scientists at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit systematically falsified data to document the appearance of global warming in recent years.

The university is reportedly investigating the claims, which added dry fuel to the never-ending political debate over whether the Earth really is warming as a result of human activity or if it's just normal natural cycles and the debate is what's heated. The demand to withdraw Gore's award provides yet another opportunity to argue."

Newsflash to Malcolm and the LA Times:  Al Gore doesn't have an Oscar to take away.

Add to the list of things that we have to serially debunk on this blog the fallacy that somewhere in Al Gore's ever-so-green mansion in Nashville sits a little gold man.

The Oscar for Best Documentary went to director Davis Guggenheim, not to Gore.

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."

KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON Out Today on DVD

Nearly three years ago, I started this blog in large part to serve as a filmmaking diary as I was about to start work on my second feature.  It has, over time, morphed into something else entirely, which is all for the good.  But occasionally we return to the original intent and purpose and today is one of those days.

There are many, many stages of getting your film out there, to a strangely inverse corollary of your own level of excitement or nervousness vs. the number of people who actually see the film.  There's that first screening, where tens or hundreds or, in the right festival or venue, a thousand people see your film, and your emotion is running high.  But as time goes on and you're at your fourth, fifth, sixth festival, the level of anticipation is obviously diminished, even as another hundred people here, another hundred there, sit in the dark to watch your film.

Same goes with a theatrical release, if you're lucky enough to get one.  It's not quite the same sense of wonder - after all, now it actually starts to matter whether or not anyone shows up - but you're potentially reaching a larger audience and getting more press.

Today is my third signpost on the journey to endless runs on the Sundance Channel, the release of the DVD of KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON.  It's not been a smooth journey, I will say quite frankly, and there were days when I started to wonder if there'd ever be a DVD release, and if there was one, whether I'd write anything about it here.  But ultimately, I'm proud and happy that all the folks who have written me asking why the film didn't come to theatres in Florida or Texas or Iowa or wherever, can now get the film from Netflix or Amazon or whatever outlet they choose.  (PS - If a film doesn't come to your town or state, it's not because filmmakers or distributors are snobs, it's because your local art house won't book it - and that includes the vaunted Landmark chain.)

2007: The Year in Nonfiction - The Issues

While an exceptional year for film quality, tt would be a mistake to argue that 2007 was a good year for the nonfiction film "industry", such as it is.  Despite the best efforts of many (from filmmakers to writers to distributors to exhibitors), the year featured one bad news story after another - box office down, interest down, distribution options down.  And then, come the end of the year, the bad joke that was the Academy's Documentary Feature Shortlist - long on staidness, short on imagination.

So, grab a stiff drink and revisit the lowlights of a thoroughly depressing year as we recap The Top 5 Issues in Nonfiction 2007:

5. All Michael Moore, All the Time

The unveiling of a new Michael Moore opus is starting to seem like the release of a new Harry Potter book.  In addition to the release itself, there's the nonstop hubbub and hoopla that surrounds it.  With Potter, this means costumed kids standing in line at bookstores.  With Michael Moore, it means an endless series of "fact-checks" from the "serious media", lambastes from conservatives ("it didn't gross 100 million, it's a flop!") and tortured second-guessing from the left ("someone has to say it, I just wish it didn't come with all his baggage").

This year, the SXSW-premiere of a new, supposedly unbiased anti-Moore film kicked off the debate a full three months early.  The subsequent whining by the film's makers that festivals were blocking their film in deference to the mighty Michael added some questionable last-minute PR to their cause.  Throughout all of it, it became clear that it wasn't enough to debate SICKO, Moore's treatise on the health care crisis, because we were still having an active debate about Moore's first feature, ROGER & ME.

But SICKO provided it's own controversies (including the aforementioned idiocity that it was somehow a flop), with charges of hypocrisy (why is he staying at the Four Seasons if he's such a "man of the people", wondered the very un-serious LA Times) and loose journalism (from the likes of Wolf Blitzer). 

Seems unlikely to stop the kudos to come: Moore's position as "the most important man in nonfiction"™ neatly guarantees loads of critics prizes (especially from groups that barely see more than 5 docs a year) and a probable Oscar nod.  Meanwhile, Moore-haters and liberals who like to seem above it all can bask in the critical drubbing of CAPTAIN MIKE ACROSS AMERICA, his Toronto-premiering tour film.

4. Oscar Qualifying Rules

What started in late 2006 as a bit of anger and much head-scratching over the Academy's charge that films had to play 14 cities in 10 states, ended just as bizarrely this fall with a total reversal - you only have to play in New York and Los Angeles.  In between was months of debate over whether the new rules would make it impossible for films to qualify or would guarantee that the shortlisted films were true theatricals.  The verdict - no and no.

It hit a nadir when IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS producer John Sinno wrote, days after the Oscars, an Open Letter to the Academy, in which he blasted the new rules.  His screed captured the "sky is falling" attitude of some in the doc community and prompted many uninformed film writers to guess that most films would be out of the running under such a system.  The truth was that plenty of films would have been able to qualify in past years and 70 films still found a way to qualify this year, and (as you'll see at issue #2) being a true theatrical release was in no way a mandate.

But beyond the surface reactions, there were serious issues.  The Academy seemed to have no idea what venues actually qualified a true theatrical venue.  They planned to leave such research up to filmmakers and theater owners to determine.  Meanwhile, a cottage industry was born, as filmmakers without distribution (or whose distribution was pending) spent tens of thousands of dollars making sure their films traveled to enough cities.

The Academy seemed to realize that the whole theatrical mandate was a debacle, but their fix is likely even worse.  In a repudiation of the last decade's push for theatrical releases, we're back to a 2-city requirement.  It may not be the bad old days of Saturday morning screenings at 11 AM, but it's not much better - a week in Los Angeles (likely again hidden in the sparsely-attended downtown Laemmle) and a week in New York (hey Anthology Film Archives, your phone is ringing).  You know that the likes of HBO and THINK will be able to secure a week, but will you?

3. Declining Distribution

One of the not-so-quiet secrets of the year has been the struggle of many award-winning films to get distribution.  The storyline usually goes something like this - film premieres at a major festival and wins prizes and plaudits, interest is expressed by one or two of the usual doc-distributing suspects (Magnolia, THINK, IFC, etc.), a deal is discussed and seems to be in the offing.  Then, suddenly, the deal is off and the filmmaker ends up making a deal with a smaller, start-up company that promises grass-roots marketing with fingers crossed that theaters and press will come aboard.

Of the 7 major North American festivals that award prizes for nonfiction - Sundance, SXSW, Full Frame, Hot Docs, Tribeca, Silverdocs & Los Angeles - only one grand jury prize winner, Alex Gibney's TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE, ended up with an experienced distributor - THINKFilm.  The others, which include Jason Kohn's MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET), Jennifer Venditti's BILLY THE KID and Pernille Rose Gronkjær's THE MONASTERY - MR. VIG & THE NUN, all ended up patching together distribution, with MANDA BALA thus far fairing the best.  The Sundance jury winner has made more than $

One would have to go back to 2001's Southern Comfort (about the life of transsexual Robert Eads) to find a grand jury winner at Sundance that didn't wind up with an established distributor on board.  And this was before the two big purchases out of Sundance - IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON and MY KID COULD PAINT THAT - disappointed at the box office.  So what does that bode for 2008?

2. The Oscar Shortlist

After all the maneuvering by the Academy and the posturing about the importance of theatrical distribution (see issue #4), when the Academy released its vaunted Shortlist of 15 films in November, shockwaves reverberated through the nonfiction community.

On its face, the list made a lie of the Academy's so-called theatrical mandate.  Only six films of the fifteen had actually had a traditional theatrical release.  Three of the films had already aired on television.

But it was the films that didn't make it that brought the most heat.  During a year in which the notion of a nonfiction new wave began to take hold - auteurs (not journalists) taking real risks with craft and filmmaking style, telling true stories with vision and artistry - the Academy ignored so many truly great films that the mind reeled.

A number of impassioned words were written on the topic here and elsewhere, and these brought a strong, mostly supportive, response.  Startlingly, we received a great deal of positive reinforcement from where you might least expect it - from members of the Academy and members of the IDA (which was also criticized).  So if Academy members know that this year's list is - as more than one Academy member told me - "a scandal", then how did it happen?

We'll likely never know, other than oft-repeated tales of out-of-touch members receiving boxes of DVDs and picking films that played well for them on their television screens, which is an impressive way to reinforce a theatrical mandate.

For our part, the entire episode, from the list to the response, has inspired us to tackle something we began discussing with folks earlier in the year.  You'll be hearing about it in the days to come.

1. Dismal Box Office

I'm as big a cheerleader for theatrical nonfiction viability as the next person, but after months of trying to wish it untrue, even I have to admit that it was a terrible year for nonfiction at the box office.

Part of it was our own fault.  Filmmakers and distributors left the first half of 2008 nearly dry of high profile releases.  By October, there were as many notable nonfiction films opening on a weekend as there were in the first five months of 2007.  Not a good idea.

But there was something else too.  A sense that documentaries are medicinal?  That Seinfeld was right - we're incredibly depressing?  Too much bad news in the world anyway and you don't want to pay $10 for it, you'll just wait to put it in your queue? 

Compared to any year since 2002, when BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE changed everything, it was the worst year for docs by far.  Expected hits like IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON were big disappointments.  Folks at Magnolia are still scratching their heads over why mobs didn't show up for CRAZY LOVE.   And after coming up way short on both MY KID COULD PAINT THAT and JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS, how much does Sony Pictures Classics have to make on Errol Morris' upcoming film to ever want to pick up a doc again.

Waves come and go and 2008 could change everything, what with Errol and Spurlock's did-he or didn't-he find bin Laden flick.  But in a year with a lot of bad news, the site of an empty theatre was the worst news of all.

When Blogs Attract (and Other Documentary Quandries)

There are a couple of pieces I want to point to which, while writing about my new film, have also dealt with the interesting dance that I sometimes must maneuver as it relates to my work here at the blog and my take on the nature of nonfiction circa early October 2007.

Mark Olsen has a great piece in today's LA Times that dives into this headlong.  An excerpt:

"Though the blog began in the summer of 2005 as a direct outgrowth of working on "About a Son," it has since taken on a life of its own. Schnack has become something of an authority figure for the world of documentaries, covering various issues faced by nonfiction filmmakers. In particular, he has written about the recent changes to the Oscar qualifying rules for documentary features, giving close attention to the newly mandated 14-city theatrical rollout for all potential nominees. Unlike many in the documentary community, Schnack has largely been in favor of the rollout, because it promotes theatrical exhibition of documentary films.

Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said that the rollout rules will likely be "streamlined" for next year, in no small part because of the response the academy has gotten from the documentary community, both online and in a series of meetings between AMPAS governors and filmmakers.

One sign of the growing influence of Schnack's blog is that while "About a Son" has played at more than 50 film festivals, the filmmaker has begun to be accredited as a journalist at some festivals where his work has not been shown.

It was while attending the influential Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in North Carolina with "About a Son" this past spring that he really began to understand the way in which his online persona was beginning to bump up against his real work.

"I didn't really know who was reading it," he said of the blog. "I thought my friends and people looking for news about their own film, but when I got to Full Frame so many people came up to me who I'd never met and who are avid readers. People I would consider among the most powerful in our community in terms of being able to greenlight a project or grant money to a project. To find out they're reading was a bit surprising."

There is now a second blog strictly for "Kurt Cobain About a Son." When he started All These Wonderful Things it was without any intention of creating a sounding board for issues within the documentary community. A graduate of the University of Missouri with a degree in broadcast journalism, Schnack's instincts were toward more reported work, and he naturally gravitated toward the issues that affect him as a filmmaker.

"It started as a kind of supplement to working on the film," he said, "and having an access point for people who'd be like, 'Oh, what's this new movie about Kurt Cobain?' And then it just continued to evolve and ends up being this other thing, almost exclusively about issues in nonfiction filmmaking. I don't really consciously think of how it splits up, but I think it's like 40% journalism, 40% advocacy and 20% my personal experiences in this world."

For Schnack, the issue of writing about the race for this year's documentary feature Oscar has already become a tricky one. In previous years he has extensively covered the buildup to the academy's announcement of a pre-nominations shortlist, handicapping the chances of various contenders. This year, he is largely having to beg off for fear of appearing to put his thumb on the scale for "About a Son."

And in a lengthy interview with GreenCine's Francine Taylor, I talked about how difficult it is even for me to draw distinctions between varied work in the nonfiction/documentary realm:

I think that not knowing allows you to go with the flow of the film and it's not as distracting from the audio. Kind of a layered-together thing like two notes of a chord. And less what we think of like a traditional documentary. Would you call this a documentary or a nonfiction film?

I call it a nonfiction film. I actually think that nonfiction is a larger definition that I tend to use generally. When I think of documentary, I think of more of a traditional, journalistic approach of something.

This is more poetic, for example.

There are a lot of films that have nonfiction elements to them, which are maybe in my brain. And actually, I write about nonfiction film - sort of my side gig.

Your blog.

Yeah, yeah. But it's like, and I actually just wrote this, that I don't know if I could explain what the difference is.

Nonfiction just feels like a better description?

Like BILLY THE KID for example. I think I feel comfortable calling it a documentary, but it feels more like a nonfiction film to me. Because I think there are things that [Jennifer Venditti] did that affected how she shot that film and how she made that film.

There's this great movie I just saw, great doc, THE MOSQUITO PROBLEM. To me, that's a classic example of something than is more of a non-fiction film than a documentary. Because it's so composed and structured, and taking advantage of all the skills one can make as a filmmaker.

In the last 10 years, people are taking more interest in, whether you call it documentary or nonfiction film, with cable channels and more theaters willing to distribute - for example, after the success of MARCH OF THE PENGUINS. It's an evolving form.

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS is a great example. That's one I would classify more as nonfiction than as documentary. Here's something that is a scripted piece with narration and they are taking real events as they study them and turning them into this love story, or the story of family, that is constructed from what they've seen.

Which is why these films may be finding more of an audience. I've always loved documentaries, but used to get frustrated when they were nominated for Oscars yet you couldn't see them. It seems like a great time for nonfiction films because they can take on more identity and have more creative freedom.

You look at what Brett Morgen is doing you look at what Jason Kohn did in MANDA BALA. These are people using real film technique and telling real stories. They aren't afraid of using every cinematic skill they have to tell these stories. That to me is the most exciting thing in terms of what is happening in nonfiction. That doesn't mean to say that I'm not blown away by a film like TAXI TO THE DARKSIDE. It has stylistic elements that are really great. But it's a very classic, journalistic breaking down of a story.

THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK, very similar. Those are exciting to me. But I would probably classify them - if I were making these determinations - I probably would say they are more the world of documentary.

Murderball By Numbers

There is, of course, a flip side to the positive box office trending of documentary films - much increased expectations and subsequent disappointment if these expectations are not met. Just to show how the expectation dynamic has shifted (maybe even gotten out of hand), one only need look at ThinkFilm's other big summer doc release Murderball.

After four weekends in theaters, Murderball has grossed more than half a million dollars. This past weekend was its best to date, with a take of more than $200,000. And it seems certain to pass the million dollar mark before summer is over, which would likely move it into the top 50 documentaries of all time.

Among the films in the 1 million to 1.3 million range, a target that Murderball should be able to hit without much difficulty, are a number of films considered to be big successes: Brother's Keeper, Dogtown and Z-Boys, Startup.com, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, The Thin Blue Line and American Movie. Pretty fine company for any film (even if ticket prices are slightly higher).