Wednesday, September 1, 2004
We’re on the plane from SFO to Trudeau Airport, en route to the World Film Festival in Montreal. This is our third road trip in four days. We’ve had little sleep: we were up all night hastily printing business cards and half sheet “pitch menu” cards with descriptions of our four feature projects in development. We have 25 kitschy beige tote bags with our URL printed on them, a flax seed grinder and a bottle of aspirin. Don’s foot is throbbing because he sprained it playing with the family on our recent vacation and the battery in our tape player just died, interrupting our remedial French lesson. There is nothing left to prepare: we are simply packets being switched to Montreal.
Don is a successful director of photography, after 20 years of plying the trade. Connie has worked here and there in the movie business. Together we’ve written three feature screenplays for the fun of it, and are working on several others. We’ve been toying with the idea of making films with them. This had been an urgent yet unfocussed notion until Don got a call from Beryl Lusen, whose short film, The Right Gift, Don had photographed. Beryl’s film was selected for competition at the Montreal World Film Festival. Beryl suggested that we pitch our projects at the festival’s co-production market. We would miss the first few days of the market due to prior commitments, but we couldn’t pass it up.
The Marche International du Film, at the Festival des Films du Monde Montreal, was started by Serge Losique 28 years ago. The festival itself has a reputation for showing great works by film artists from around the world. Depending on your perspective, this means either “art house films for cineastes” or “films that will never get a significant theatrical release, especially in the U.S.”
In the last few years, Serge and his festival have been criticized as being out of step with the glitzy upstart Toronto film festival, not to mention the commercial festivals, Cannes, Venice and Sundance. Serge’s response has been essentially: too bad, film is an art, get used to it. This friction has gotten to the point that a few weeks before the festival Telefilm Canada and Sodec (Canadian state funding agencies) threatened to pull a total of C$1 million out of the festival’s funding unless big changes are made (read: Serge resigns).
The market is focused on co-productions. Many countries have state funding for motion picture production. Many of these sign co-production agreements that enable producers from signatory countries to pool funds to make movies. The United States, of course, has little state funding for motion picture projects and does not sign co-production agreements. Still, according to some producers, foreign co-productions can be created in the good old American, back-door way, and that those knowing the ropes can get them done. It’s all a matter of personal interaction, who you know and Yankee gumption.
So here we are, on our first full day as feature film producers. We don’t know too many people. We don’t know the ropes. We have little clue what we’re doing and few ideas of where to get a clue.
Thursday, September 2
We’ve come to pitch. Don knows how to offer shots to directors, but neither of us has had to pitch a feature film to anyone before. During our vacation last week in a remote cabin in Minnesota, we refined our pitches on a manual typewriter and practiced them on our relatives, a hastily convened focus group. We slayed them, of course, but how would these pitches fare with foreign producers?
The festival is headquartered at the Hyatt hotel. The hotel’s bar, where the market’s real work is done, is circular; the market salons are in rooms radiating off the bar. When we arrive at 11:00 a.m. the bar is fairly full of chatting, smoking people with badges on yellow market lanyards. The main salon, in the hotel’s Salon Jeanne-Mance, has several tables covered with promotional materials. Most seem to be for finished films. Perhaps six people are drinking coffee at the salon’s high café tables. In the Videotheque, 20 people, whose average age seemed to be about 50, review films at 36 monitors. Market mailboxes are behind a booth in the salon, personed by two very friendly receptionists who greet us and give us our market materials: the Industry List, the Market Guide, the Project Book, and the fat Festival Guide describing films shown in the festival. We are surprised to find that we do not have mailboxes, but the receptionists quickly offer to create them for us.
Over lattes and croissants in the bar, we rip into the Industry List, looking for producers without films in the market. We stuff the mailboxes with our “pitch menu” cards and some of our Lightly Held Films tote bags, email and call people, requesting meetings and setting up appointments. Then we have a late lunch and go to a festival screening which includes Beryl’s film.
The Imperial theater is packed with dedicated, but not young, cineastes. A festival person introduces Beryl as the maker of the short film, speaking in both French and English.
Beryl graciously introduces Don as the director of photography; the audience applauds enthusiastically (for the DP, no less!).
Back at the market, the bar looks rather empty. We post more cards, unaware that everyone is at a party in the nearby Salon des Arts. We meet Beryl and his lovely wife Tabitha, an artist who makes her own beautiful dresses, at Restaurant Julien, which was quite good (especially the confit de canard) and congratulate him on the warm reception for his film.
Number of pitches today = 0.
Friday, September 3
We talk with several film buyers, directors, writers and producers; several people are trying to create co-productions as we are. All have advice: go to the co-production market at the Rotterdam festival; find wealthy Indians in Silicon Valley who are looking for investments; go to festivals, meet actors, get past their agents and discuss your script with them. Most people at the market seem to be buying or selling finished films.
In the men’s room, Don meets Jean, an elegant, old school Quebecois producer. He agrees to hear our pitch and joins us at a table. We pitch our World War II project, which takes place in Southern California. Jean says it sounds great, but that if he produced it in Canada, he wouldn’t be able to release it in America as we would like because American distributors don’t want Canadian films. “Do you have a thriller?” he asks. We mention “Surrender,” our heist picture, our ace in the hole, which we have for just such requests. We agree to send a treatment and begin to pitch another project. “Let’s change the subject to politics,” Jean interrupts. “What do you think of Bush?”
Number of pitches today = 1.
Saturday, September 4
We speak with an actors, screenwriters, a musician, a few film buyers and a lot of directors. We talk with few producers.
We meet with Philippa, an unpretentious world citizen who works for an Israeli company that specializes in co-production. She says co-productions with France or Germany are the easiest. We asked about Japan and Switzerland, countries that are apropos to some of our projects: Japanese co-production is difficult and the Swiss look to the Germans for co-production funding. The Canadians see the United States film industry as the big bad brother. “You must like the people who you produce with,” she says. “There is a saying in Israel, ‘they’re going to be in your veins.’” She glances at our “pitch menu” card, but as none of our films is set in Israel, she politely passed on our projects.
At the evening’s party at the Salon de Arts, we meet a producer from a Montreal company that funds films and also farms, among other things. He had just come back from putting together a deal for slaughterhouse in Romania. We discussed farming. He agrees to read a treatment for “Surrender”.
Today’s pitches = 0.
Sunday, September 5
Paul Cox, a provisionally Australian auteur, meets us for coffee, dressed as we were, in black. Paul, whose film “Vincent” means a lot to us, makes humanist films of the sort we are trying to make. He has a world weary and relaxed look, yet his deep, intense eyes brighten humorously in conversation. He pulls no punches when describing the deep illness of film production, the delusions of filmmakers and the illusions of producers. “In America, it gets worse all the time. Films aren’t [just products to be sold like] chicken wings and hamburgers: they have to do with our dreams.”
Cox thinks that Connie and I are going about things the wrong way, that our “pitch menu” card is too complicated, and that the best route is to slowly grow one project you are passionate about. As Americans, we should forget co-production, although it would help if we could “become Canadian”. If we can get something done, he advises, then we’ll have something to show. “As Nijinsky said, you’ll understand me when you see me dance.”
At the buffet lunch, Don sits next to Paul, a Canadian director who looks like Ben Affleck and whose first feature, which was produced in New York, had screened the night before. Paul is already sick of the independent film scene and is anxious to move on to “$60 million features in Los Angeles.” He hates his New York producer and looks forward to an opportunity to get revenge.
We speak with more filmmakers and producers. Some select a project from our “pitch menu” and ask for treatments. Some recommend other people to us. At the Salon de Arts’ oxygen bar, which promotes a local oxygen club by giving people free oxygen samples through tubes in their noses, we talk with an internet film distributor, film buyers, two Russian distributors and an Iranian filmmaker.
Number of pitches today = 0.
Monday, September 6
On our way to the airport, we squeeze in one more meeting with a polite Japanese producer who primarily distributes documentary features but does some production. Don pitches our theatrical documentary, which works well: he asks Don to e-mail him the script as an Acrobat file.
Number of pitches today = 1.
Our cab driver to Trudeau airport, a warm Frenchman, fills us in on more of the local dirt about Serge and his festival. “There are no stars at the festival!” he complains. Then he blushes. “Unless you two are stars!”
On the plane to SFO, we conclude the following:
- We think that Serge and his festival are great.
- Of the 750 people listed in the Industry List, we counted perhaps 25 producers who seemed to be at the market to create co-productions.
- Even at the Montreal market, where we expected small films to be greeted warmly, producers are interested in making money. Is your film idea marketable? What do you bring (besides the script): money? Attached stars? What films have you produced before? Our genre picture was the most popular.
- Foreign producers seem more interested in who we were than in hearing a pitch; they preferred to read our half-sheet “pitch menu” card. When they saw something that they were interested in, they most often requested a treatment (1–4 pages) or coverage (about 20–40 pages). Only one producer asked for a script.
- The pitch process is a great way to get Spiderman sequels made. It may not be the best way to get movies about people made by first time directors.
Wiser, Don’s foot a bit sorer, we are again packets being switched back home. Don is reminded that producing films is way harder than shooting films! We’re still committed to getting our films produced, but neither of us is quitting our day jobs.
Don Starnes is a director of photography in San Rafael; Connie Kronlokken is a writer. They produce films together as Lightly Held Films.
If You Go To Montreal
- Before you go, obtain a list of producers who will be at the market from the festival’s web site and make appointments to meet them at the market.
- Never miss the first days of a market: attendance dwindled by perhaps half as the days progressed.
- List your projects in the Production Exchange Project Book and your other materials in both English and French. Specify the budget in both U.S. dollars and euros.
- Don’t expect color printers in the Internet Café.
- It is probably best to stay in the hotel that hosts the festival because everyone else is there and it is easier to establish meetings with people. Put your picture on your card or flyer: it will help people recognize you when you meet.
- Watch the films. People love to talk about the films they’ve seen and appreciate it when you’ve seen the films they’ve produced.
- Swag probably works: all of our promotional tote bags, which we put out on the promotional tables, disappeared quickly. We saw a few people carrying our bags, which hopefully made us a bit more familiar to people. The best place to get custom printed promotional materials is Ashbury Images in San Francisco.