Drinking Buddies
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Happy Christmas Director Joe Swanberg on the Financial Life of the Independent Filmmaker
“Transparency benefits everybody.” That’s Joe Swanberg, whose recommended Happy Christmas opens today, talking about distribution dealmaking, but he might just as well have been talking about all aspects of his career and financial life. Indeed, Swanberg is nothing but transparent in this long interview with producer, director and ArtHome founder Esther Robinson focused specifically on making a living as a writer/director — precisely the subject most directors won’t issue a comment on. The interview was conducted for Robinson’s current piece in the new print edition of Filmmaker, “Still on the Job,” in which she revisits several directors featured in an […]
by Esther B. Robinson on Jul 25, 2014 -
Joe Swanberg and the “Fun” Mandate
Drinking Buddies was conceived and executed as Joe’s “bigger” film. Bigger in the sense of its intended audience — we knew we wanted to reach as large an audience as possible — and bigger in scale. Unlike his past films, which he had made largely on his own, this one had a 50-person crew, multiple investors and movie stars. It was an experiment that could have gone very badly. What if we gave Joe all this money and resources and he just shot into a corner? What if the new infrastructure crushed what was special and intimate about his films, […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Aug 23, 2013
