Ira Deutchman has been producing, marketing, and distributing independent films for over thirty-five years. He has worked on more than 150 films including some of the most successful independents in modern film history (Lulu on the Bridge, Matewan, Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road). Deutchman was one of the founders of Cinecom, as well as Fine Line Features; two companies that helped to define the independent film business. He is currently the managing partner of Emerging Pictures; a New York based digital exhibition company that operates a network of theatres across the country. He is also a Professor of Professional Practice in the Graduate Film Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, where he is the head of the Producing Program.

MMM recently had the opportunity to discuss the changing dynamics of the independent film business with Mr. Deutchman.

MMM – How does Emerging Pictures work with independent filmmakers in distributing their films?

ID – What we learned from the cultural stuff we do like ballet and concerts was that by taking something and making it a special event in a movie theatre… just showing one night with maybe an encore - you are actually creating a totally different theatrical model.

When we work with filmmakers directly who don’t have traditional distribution in place, we try to talk them in to doing that sort of thing with movies.  We do a one-night-only event that might be in many theatres all over the country, where we might actually have a live component like a Q&A in one location that’s being broadcast to many other locations. The idea is that by creating this event, we are creating value for the filmmaker, but without the need to spend the kind of money, or resources, to do a much more traditional theatrical release.

MMM – What does it take for an indie filmmaker to break through to a broader market?

ID – The movies defined as independent films that broke through to a big audience this year, were described by a lot of publications as “aggressively middle brow”.  They appeal to a very broad audience that aspires to being more intelligent, or more on top of things than the general audience, but yet they really are not interested in film as an art.  They are interested in very traditional story telling.

The King’s Speech is the example that everybody points to as being, if you want to be really pejorative about it, like a jazzed up Hallmark Channel movie. Yet, it ends up with the Oscar for Best Picture and making over $200 Million at the box office; and yes, it was an independent film. These exceptions are really designed to be mass market movies, and in reality, they have no connection whatsoever to the traditional definition of what we would call an independent film, which is a film that exists outside the mainstream because it has to exist outside the mainstream.

We have always gone through cycles where a certain type of movie ends up surprising everybody and doing much, much better than it is supposed to given the conventional wisdom in the marketplace.  A really good example was Winter’s Bone, which is a movie that by all rights should not have done any business at all. While it didn’t break through to hundreds of millions of dollars, it did get Oscar nominations and it did do quite well for the kind of movie that it is.

The way the cycle tends to work is that next you see all of the distribution companies that had any sort of market power looking for the next Winter’s Bone.  Fox Searchlight ended up picking up Martha Marcy Mary Marleen at Sundance, which when you look at that movie, the only excuse to buy it, would be to buy the next Winter’s Bone.

What Hollywood has a tendency to do, is to reach out in whatever direction has recently worked, until that direction is saturated to the point where it is not working anymore and then they turn to something else.  The independents end up having to work around them… whatever Hollywood is not doing at any given moment, is exactly what you should be doing as an independent - creating something that is filling a gap in the marketplace. So that is the way that these cycles tend to run.

We are in a moment where I think the cycles are being disrupted though, and it’s for the same reason why almost every form of media is being disrupted.  It has to do with the internet and the fact that all of a sudden, you have got this mechanism that on the one hand, makes content in any form available, or theoretically available, to anyone who wants it at any time and without any sort of tollgate on it other than whatever pricing model you are willing to come up with. Then, on the other hand, it is an incredibly powerful way of aggregating audiences and reaching audiences in a targeted way.  Put these two things together, and it’s an incredibly disruptive force.  To me, the most interesting thing that is going on right now is those forces and what’s going to come out the other end, which nobody really knows.

MMM – How is the internet changing the game? Is it democratizing the independent film market?

ID – I think that the big corporations would like you to think that it is. But, the reality is, the only way you can make decent money in an internet based economy is if you are working in quantity.  Meaning that Amazon and Netflix are the ones that are going to make all the money, and filmmakers are going to making pennies.  I think the thing that we have to be fighting against right now, is this concept that somehow, the long tail makes indie film potentially profitable because the evidence is that it only makes Apple, Amazon, and Netflix profitable.

All the current business models, that I am aware of in the media space, are actually a nightmare for independents because what they do is reduce the value of content and increase the value of anybody who has a proprietary channel. I see Apple as being the true evil empire, when it comes to content right now. What they would like you to do is give your content away for free as long as they can sell you a new device every two years.

MMM – What would you tell independent filmmakers given the current independent film market dynamics?

ID – First of all, people have to reduce their expectations. Traditionally, people that have thought of the movie business, even though they equate it with art, being some large lottery ticket where there is always the expectation that you would somehow get rich.  Many filmmakers just have these completely unrealistic expectations about how difficult and how expensive it is to reach an audience in theatres.

When you use the word democratization, I see that word slightly different than I think a lot of other people get in to their heads.  I see it as a process by which film is becoming one of the arts in a traditional sense.  Nobody becomes a painter with the expectation that they are going to become rich.  It happens occasionally, but people who are taking art lessons and learning how to paint are not thinking, ‘Someday, I am going to be hanging in The Louvre, and I am going to make millions’.

That has always been part of the culture of movie making, and I think what has to happen is people need to readjust those expectations to where they are interested in using the medium to create art.  But they also have to adjust their lifestyle expectations to be like an artist.

If you look at the fine arts, and you understand that there are people who paint because they just love doing it, and they really don’t care if they ever have an audience or sell a painting.  There are people who actually can sell paintings at street fairs and maybe can eke out a little bit of a living, but probably have to carry another job also.  And there are people who actually somehow break through and hang in galleries and in theory can make enough money to live off of. Then there are people who hang in museums.

That hierarchy is something that I think we are heading toward with filmmakers. With everybody in the world becoming a filmmaker, because the tools of the trade are so inexpensive now and accessible, it means that we are going to have a new order.

You will have the people who will somehow break through and win an award at a film festival and maybe get a distribution deal. You will have the people who are making crappy little videos and putting them on YouTube, or forcing their friends to sit through them. The thing is, there has never been anything in the middle before.  I think there is going to be a new artisanal class of filmmakers who are going to have to learn how to make movies really cheaply, become really good at it, and become the equivalent of the street fair artist.  They will sell their own DVDs online, or create their own channel on YouTube that they are monetizing by getting advertising revenues.  That is what I see happening when we talk about democratization.

In theory, if you develop a Facebook fan base, and you can solidify that fan base and turn that in to a form of commerce for yourself, you can have a nice little side business making movies for your audience.

MMM – What about filmmakers that desire to see their films in theatrical release?

ID – If you go back twenty-five or thirty years, there really were two parallel universes:  The art film theatres catering to a tiny, very specific audience, with scaled back expenditures, and the big Hollywood business which thirty years ago, wasn’t quite as expensive as it is now.

I see those two worlds separating again from each other in the same way that it was true thirty years ago.  I think there is going to be no middle ground in terms of theatrical release of movies. It’s all going to be huge Hollywood special effects-driven roller coaster rides, and then there is going to be art films for a discerning audience still interested in seeing that on the big screen.  I think everything in between will essentially be TV.