Authors — Scott Macaulay

THE WRITE STUFF

Michael Fleming has a noteworthy story in Variety today reporting that a dozen screenwriters with strong commercial track records have joined together in a collective called Writing Partners which is making a deal at Fox. Offering a stark contrast to the cliche of the abused Hollywood writer, the Fox deal offers the scribes real incentives to bring spec projects to the studio. From the piece: The writers, who’ll take small upfront payments and will only get their usual fees on films that go into production, will also be guaranteed input as producers, and protection from being rewritten without their permission. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 14, 2007
THE DYLAN TAPES

Pitchfork Media reports today on the soundtrack for Todd Haynes’s upcoming I’m Not There. The film is now slated for release on November 21 and the soundtrack will be release three weeks earlier, on October 30. Artists who will cover Dylan on what sounds like a fantastic disk include Karen O., the Hold Steady, Sonic Youth, Tom Verlaine, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Yo La Tengo, Antony and the Johnsons and many, many more. A complete track listing can be found at the link.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 14, 2007
THE OWNERSHIP SOCIETY

Over at Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow reports on the Mission:Impossible-like self-destruction of videos legally purchased from the Google Video Store. He quotes this letter from Google sent to the purchaser of a Star Trek episode: As a valued Google user, we’re contacting you with some important information about the videos you’ve purchased or rented from Google Video. In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007. To fully account for the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 13, 2007
IFP’S FILMMAKER CONFERENCE SHAPING UP

The IFP’s Filmmaker Conference has announced the names of some of the panelists who will be taking the stage at the Puck Building in New York City next month from Sept. 16 – 21. Filmmaker Magazine’s Managing Editor Jason Guerrasio and I will be moderating a number of conversations, including those with producer Jon Kilik (Julian Schnabel’s upcoming The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Babel), former Artisan co-founder Bill Block of QED Intl., an LA-based financing, sales and production company, and former tech investor and entrepreneur Tony Liano of Cracker Content, a streaming entertainment network. Over the course of the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 9, 2007
DELIRIOUS MARKETING MADNESS

Over at the website for his film, Tom DeCillo is posting a very funny series of video podcasts in which he parodies the insanity involved in promoting an independent film — in his case, Delirious, which opens August 15th. Here DiCillo is at an early marketing meeting… and what’s scary is that I’ve been at marketing meetings only slightly less crazy than this one. And here’s the latest, in which DiCillo tries to get star Gina Gershon to do some viral marketing in a clip with the Google-friendly name of “Gina Gershon Sex Tape.”
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 8, 2007
A FAN’S NOTES

Over at his Indiewire blog, Matt Dentler posts about the planning for next year’s panels at SXSW and includes this link to a stream of the 2007 panel, “Building an Online Fan Base.” I attended this panel, which featured Lance Weiler (Head Trauma), moderator Scott Kirsner (CinemaTech), David Straus (Without A Box), Ian Schafer (Deep Focus), Scilla Andreen (IndieFlix), and thought it was a great and stimulating discussion on challenges and solutions for indies in the internet marketing space.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 8, 2007
WE HAVE ARMAGEDDON

Boing Boing points to this hilarious, jauntily scored piece of media analysis in which the folks at iTulip annotate Jim Cramer’s CNBC meltdown yesterday in which he begged Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke to cut the discount rate tomorrow. “We have Armageddon!” he shouted, fearful that the current credit squeeze will decimate the financial industry. The iTulip people (who I know little about) provide a populist critique, wondering if free market free falls are only allowed to happen to aging industrial companies and not financial services.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 6, 2007
THE BLEAK BEAUTY…

In Variety Todd McCarthy has penned a personal take on the death of Bergman and Antonioni that begins by rightly recognizing the privileged place they held in 20th century cinema: Are there any directors today made of such stern stuff as were Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni?As a matter of fact, there are — the likes of Hou Hsiao Hsien, Abbas Kiarostami and Bela Tarr come to mind. But the miracle of Bergman and Antonioni, who died on the same day, July 30, at the ages of 89 and 94, respectively, is that, while making films expressive of bleak, even […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 4, 2007
HOW TO PRODUCE A ONE-WEEK LONG FEATURE FILM RUN

Over at his blog, Sujewa Ekanayake takes his experience self-producing a one-week run of his feature Date Number One in an alternative venue and breaks it down into the hard numbers. He talks about staffing, projector rentals, sound and the advantages of setting up a projection space in a non-traditional venue rather than renting a theater.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 4, 2007
THE EYE OF THE BEAR

At it’s heart, the independent film movement is driven by private equity — both the expansiveness of your college buddies or parents’ (or proverbial dentist’s) portfolio, or the adventureousness of private hedge funds looking for new investment opportunities. But the distance between macro economic goings on and the money hitting an indie filmmaker’s LLC is so vast that we often don’t consider how the broader economy is affecting our own. Here, then, is a clear and sobering article from Agonist that explains the current sub-prime mortgage mess, the possible contagion resulting from it, and both its best and or worst […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 4, 2007

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