Hello 15,000,

First of all a pitch: NEED, 9 @ Night film #6 is opening at the Mill Valley Film Festival on Oct. 13, Rafael Film Ctr., San Rafael, Calif., and on Oct. 14, at 9:30 PM at the Sequoia Cinema, preceded by a party on Oct. 14 at the Outdoor Art Club, Mill Valley sponsored by the SF Weekly We have sold out the Rafael Film Ctr. screening on Oct. 13, but were given a bum count for the Oct. 14 date in Mill Valley and so have many tickets available. We’ll be out there leafleting in the sleet and snow but it’d be great if all you huddling around the fire drinking grog could phone some friends. If every 15,000 member contacted two people who live in or around the San Francisco Bay Area, we’d have that second show sold out in a day. If you can, please support the side and call two people. They can get tickets by going up on http://www.mvff.com or calling the Box Office (925)866-9559.

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I just returned from Digimart, an international conference on digital distribution, which took place in Montreal. I was on a panel with filmmakers/producers from Australia, China, Canada, etc. and spent three days listening; thinking; talking; and meeting distributors, producers, thinkers, writers, festival heads, and other filmmakers who are trying to create alternative distribution using the new tools and opportunities.

Two ideas struck me in particular. Peter Broderick, one of the main organizers of the conference was very clear about one of them. He said, “Distribution is broken. It is actually much worse than you think it is.” He pointed out that very few films get distribution, but that even those that do fail to get money back. Distributors just don’t do what they say they’ll do. Maybe they can’t, maybe they won’t; but they don’t. We’ve all heard about Hollywood’s creative accounting, but the practices of smaller independent companies are not as well known.

Most people at the conference were in agreement that deals were made to be broken and were… routinely. There were distributors who got up to claim their honesty and maybe they’re the exceptions that prove the rule. But if films can’t be distributed, and if they are, their producers get cheated, we really have no distribution system at all. We have opportunists fleecing artists who don’t have the knowledge, energy, or determination to help themselves.

I was there to listen and learn and since the conference was about distribution and the lack of it, I was fairly quiet about my real feelings re: American cinema. I did say that I thought the real problem was not technical, but cultural, but I don’t think it was useful to turn a conference on distribution into a discussion about aesthetic values. However, in retrospect I wish I had been more effective in trying to make the main point. It doesn’t matter if films get distributed or not distributed… if they’re not worth distribution in the first place.

And that’s where I come from when it comes to American cinema. But you know that and I promised restraint last time. So I’m going to delete the next paragraph and use it later when the steam starts building up again. (deleted paragraph)

The other idea which struck me emerged from the War of the Rights now being waged by traditional music and movie producers and distributors against the digi-bandits of a new generation, (which includes most of the people at the conference. ) Three year old kids know how to copy DVDs from Netflix. So do 90 year old cyber-thugs. And they do. I know this isn’t fair, but water isn’t fair to iron either. Rust happens. And if it does it’s probably best to accept it and find a creative way to get it to work on your side. Generosity might be such a way, and this was the message of the pundits who came to the conference. Give your work away as much as possible so that people get to know about it. Obscurity is a worse fate than piracy. Build up word of mouth through giving gifts of your work… then work out parallel ways to get paid through selective sales. I thought that was an eye-opening thought.

And so, we are going to be working out new ways to offer our work to 15,000 members. We’ll let you know details soon. In the meantime, let’s get the Oct. 14, 9:30 screening of NEED at the Cine Arts Sequoia Theatre in Mill Valley sold out. Again, you can get tickets by going up on http://www.mvff.com or call the Box Office at (925)866-9559.

Aim high,

Rob