Producer Ted Hope emailed me about this essential three-part series by Mark Pesce entitled “Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV.” It’s from May, 2005, but it’s still an utterly relevant essay on how television producers can successfully adapt to a BitTorrent world in which audiences are in control of the process of distribution. Pesce’s predictions are provocative — he believes, for example, that the broadcast networks are soon to morph into high-powered ad agencies as opposed to content distributors — and I’m not sure I agree with all of his advice to producers regarding the content of […]
Good article in The Guardian about Al Gore’s trip to Sundance with the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. From the piece: “What can a film that has helped make Al Gore sexier than Paris Hilton possibly be about? A partial list of its contents would include the greenhouse gas effect, the proliferation of carbon dioxide, the convection energy of hurricanes, the paradoxical flood-drought syndrome, melting methane in Siberia, the history of the Ice Age and the physics of solar ray absorption. It becomes no clearer why this film is having such an impact when you learn that it largely takes the […]
After I posted Ted Hope’s movie pitch, 1000 Red Pieces of Sarah, below, Hope received this email alerting him to a fictional competing project from someone who prefers to be referred to as “an anonymous source”: “Hate to blow your bubble, but (off the record) Michel Gondry is directing the almost exact same movie as a co-production between Palm, Res Magazine, and Tokion Magazine, who has a first look deal with Nathan Hornblower, who controls the underlying rights to the autopsy reports of Eric Red’s victims. Additionally, Governor Schwarzenegger and Ed Pressman are still squabbling over Conan royalties, and the […]
Here’s Jim Cramer on the video podcasting revolution: “Bloggers may be stealing readers away from newspapers, but when it comes to audio and video feeds, people will go for high production values. Which would you rather spend time uploading to your iPod: An episode of Lost or a grainy feed of someone prattling about their favorite celeb? So, for a few more years, the media we download will be the same stuff you see or hear on old media. The masses will have to wait for cheap, yet sophisticated production technology in order to win a wider audience. Until then, […]
As Indiewire and Anne Thompson have reported, veteran exec Amy Israel, who worked acquisitions for Miramax and then production for the L.A. post house The Orphanage, has been named Executive Vice President of Production and Acquisitions at Paramount Classics by its new head, John Lesher. In a statement, Lesher said, “”Amy’s extensive background and stellar reputation makes her an ideal choice to help us create a wholly new, dynamic production and acquisition-driven film business. Her expertise as a producer, and her involvement in some of the most successful independent films of the last decade speak volumes about her leadership and […]
In the last Filmmaker I wrote about New Order’s recent video compilation and the various “artist-directed” videos that producer and filmmaker Michael Shamberg commissioned for the band over the years. In the piece, Shamberg announced that a website would be up detailing the project, but, due to health issues — Shamberg took ill in London this summer and was hospitalized for three months — the site was delayed. Now, Shamberg has emailed to say that he’s better and that Kinoteca is online. Over the next few months he will be gradually putting up info on all the New Order video […]
Albert Brooks premiered his new movie, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, in Dubai last week. In the film, Brooks’s character is sent by the U.S. Government to Hindu India as well as predominantly-Muslim Pakistan to learn more about Muslims and their taste in humor. From Heba Kandil’s Reuters piece: “Audiences in Dubai gave mixed reviews of the film, which Brooks wrote, directed and starred in. But for the most part, they welcomed it, saying it was refreshing to see a U.S. production that did not vilify Muslims. ‘It was different from the usual movies we see from America. […]
The Sundance Institute has just announced the 12 projects selected for the 2006 Screenwriter’s Lab, which takes place in January the week before the Sundance Film Festival at the Sundance Resort. From the press release, here are the attendees and their projects: “Kit Hui (writer/director), U.S.A./China, A BREATH AWAY: As Typhoon Ellen approaches Hong Kong, the residents of a high-rise apartment complex struggle with their individual emotional demons, not realizing they are connected by more than the increasing swarms of flies invading their homes. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Kit Hui emigrated to the United States at age 16. […]
Paul Cullum has a great, out-of-nowhere piece in the New York Times on the unexpected collaboration between avant-garde publishing elder statesman Barney Rosset and Chicago-based filmmaker James Fotopoulos. Rosset ran for years Grove Press, publishing works by such authors as D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and William Burroughs, and then successfully defending these works from U.S. obscenity charges. When I was a teenager I picked up the Evergreen Review Reader, an anthology of works culled from his literary magazine, and it opened the door for me to a whole world of radical literature and theater. Cullum’s piece is one of those […]
The ubiquitous but broke boyfriend-and-girlfriend filmmakers behind Four-Eyed Monsters get another jolt of publicity today as they become the poster children for Charles Lyons in his New York Times piece on the personal financial perils of indie-film financing. From the piece: “[Arin] Crumley and [Susan] Buice spoke about their 14-month ordeal making Four Eyed Monsters, which dramatizes how they met online, and in which they co-star. The movie was well received at its Slamdance Film Festival premiere in January and screened at 16 other festivals. But like so many independent labors of love, it has yet to attract a theatrical […]