Jim Stern touts careful budgeting, more
By Steven Zeitchik - The Hollywood Reporter
June 20, 2009, 10:22 PM ET
Producer Jim Stern issued a warning call to the indie business
Saturday, saying that if it wanted to endure, it needed to stop
working at cross-purposes both with itself and its financiers.
Speaking in the high-profile -- and high-pressure -- slot at the L.A.
Film Festival where Mark Gill gave his now-famous "The Sky Is Falling"
speech last year, Stern told the audience that the indie world needed
to more deeply consider and respect both marketing and financing
aspects.
"It's been hip to disrespect the money," he said, just as it has been
fashionable to neglect marketing concerns in the development process.
But to succeed, he said that "we need to cut costs, mitigate risks,
target our audience."
Stern, the producer (and sometimes-director) behind pics like "A
Chorus Line" doc "Every Little Step" and Mark Ruffalo con-man movie
"The Brothers Bloom," was speaking at the Finance Conference at the
L.A. Film Festival. The address has become a kind of thermometer for
the state of the indie business. Last year, Gill gave a keynote at the
conference in which he warned that financing models, distributors and
other part of the indie world were on the brink of collapse.
Less than a week later, Paramount Vantage had been consolidated, and a
year later the indie world find itself in a far bleaker place.
Given the market travails, Stern faced a tough task with his address:
he could not simply underscore the misery, but he couldn't risk
sounding overly optimistic about the indie world's future either.
So he walked a line in his speech, acknowledging the brutal realities
but offering several ways out.
"We're upside-down on the mortgage and it's time to mail in the keys,"
he said, citing the stat that nearly 10,000 films were submitted to
Sundance last year -- and only three to-date have been released
theatrically.
Stern, sounding for part of the talk like the second coming of Gill,
described a climate where studio tentpoles are flourishing, but the
number of indies that have made even $1 million this year dwindled
from 16 at this point last year to six currently.
But he also prescribed several methods of salvation. He highlighted
what he called "smarter movies," alluding to those that were careful
about budgets and conscious about audience.
Stern's theme was that filmmakers who followed their own heart at the
expense of the market were often due for a rude awakening.
"I love Sundance," he said. "But it gave rise to a sense of
entitlement to personal films," adding that indie filmmakers was at a
point in the business cycle that "if you make a personal film, don't
be surprised if it doesn't get an audience, or, even much worse, if it
doesn't get sold."
Greater attention to marketing from even the earliest stages of
development has been a major theme in the indie world of late, though
naysayers have noted that some of the best indie and specialty pics in
the last year -- movies such as "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The
Wrestler" -- were driven by an intensely personal vision that didn't
explicitly consider marketing until after they were made.
As part of his solution, he also singled out entities, such as Hulu
and iTunes, that were exploring and peddling on-demand and streaming
video. "These are the once and future friends of independent film," he
said.
Stern suggested that producers stop worrying about casting pricey
A-level talent, a drain on the budget he said had in most cases ceased
being a factor both for international sales and domestic boxoffice. "I
don't think stars drive people to the theaters in small movies," he
said.
And he cited international guru Glen Basner as saying that "everything
we've learned about financing films over the last fifteen years we
have to forget" -- a recongition primarily of the shrinking
foreign-sales market -- though like many in the indie world opining on
the subject, didn't fully elaborate on new alternatives.
Stern was definitive about drawing a line between the studio business
and the indie one. He said the indie world sometimes concerned itself
with areas, like special effects and photography, that should be the
province of tentpoles.
"Movies can look terrible and get an audience, and movies can look
terrific and not," he said.
But making succesful indies also required a complex series of traits, he said.
"You need to be as sly as a fox, as slippery as an eel, as
thick-skinned as a hippo -- and as rich as Sidney Kimmel."
Then he added, "But if you don't meet those qualifications, don't
worry -- it works just as well to be crazy as a loon."
To read speech, go to page 2.
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