The Low Budget Hustle
Three independent film
distributors market
their wares carefully,
innovatively . . . and
successfully.
by Lori Higa
When the independently produced Re
turn of the Secaucus 7 was first re
leased last year, it did the kind of
business that any lbinm feature (blown
up to 33) about a reunion of Sixties
activists would do—disastrous Rattier
than let it die a quiet death, however,
independent distributor Specialty
Films pulled Secaucus out of circula
tion, revamped its ad campaign and
launched the film a second time. Sec
emeus went on to gross more than
1330,000 in Seattle alone and broke
house records at two out of four theai
ers where it opened in the U S. Shot
on a miniscule budget of 160,000 by
director/writer John Sayles, who'd
never looked through a camera be
fore, Secaucus is well on its way to
earning $2 million
Indie film distributors are the un
sung heroes of die movie business
They've saved from oblivion many' a
film like Secaucus which lack big
budgets, name actors and showbiz
hoopla. It is the indie distributor who
maintains virtually the only channels
for these smaller, forgotten films that
still possess the passion, intimacy and
attention to matters of heart and mind
that the big Hollywood films like Star
Wars sadly lack
And the indie distributors control
the release of those films made out
side studios, often saving them from
certain box office death The majority
of indie distributors are small opera
lions living by their wits, like guerilla
fighters, they are often forced to
employ' unconventional tactics simply
to survive
Working out of Seattle, Specialty
Films has built a reputation making
profitable propositions out of cult
films like Kin# of Hearts (starring Alan
Bates), Harld & Maude (Bud Cort
and Ruth Gordon) and Allegro Non
Troppo (a spoof of Fantasia) The
philosophy at Specialty, says manager
Robert Bogue, Is "to distribute films
that would normally not get seen but
deserve to be seen for a particular rea
son." For example, Bogue says King
of Hearts was an anti-war film really,
but its sentiments weren't overt We
felt it w<as more effective that way.”
But, not all independent films are
worth seeing. "Some distributors think
they can sell an indie feature film just
because it's an indie feature film. But
often they're films no one wants to see
except the people who made them
There's a lot of junk out there that
doesn't deserve to be seen. Our films
are marketable And also have some
thing to say. We are definitely
capitalists — our job is to make money
for our producers and a profit for our
selves ”
Making money often requires an
unheard of flexibility in dealmaking.
"With a major studio, filmmakers
usually get about 30 percent of the
profits after expenses are recouped —
that may take a century, Bogue says.
"We're usually after a *>0-50 split after
expenses are met. That's unusual. We
don't always get that. We re also will
ing to take a lower split on a special'
film,"'
In the case erf 5ecaucus, Specialty
agreed to distribute the film in 10
major cities over the course of a year
and spend a minimum of $100,000 on
prints, advertising and promotion. “A
major studio would never make a
commitment like that," Bogue argues.
Secaucus was considered a tough sell
because it lacked name actors, graphic
violence, sex and car chases and was
concerned with aging Sixties radicals,
not exactly a topic teenagers could re
late to. "Studios just don’t devote that
kind of attention to any one film, not
even in the special classics division at
UA. If a film falls flat on its face after it
opens, they'll pull it, cut their losses
and move on to the next. They' re han
dling 15-20 films at a time, as opposed
to our one or two." Bogue estimated a
distributor today needs a minimum of
$250,000 to cover costs of launching a
film "wide" — in about 200 theaters.
With such astronomic costs, studios
often have no other choice but to drop
a film after a poor showing. “We work
very carefully and thoughtfully on
every film we distribute We don't
abandon it just because it doesn't do
well at first"
Specially employs a carefully
orchestrated three-pronged approach
to garner box office receipts. This con
sists of building word of mouth among
youthful moviegoers, name familiarity
and critical acclaim. “When you’ve got
all those, you've got a massive success
on your hands,” adds Bogue. The
method has worked even with
documentaries, considered by Bogue
and his contemporaries to be "the kiss
of death in movie theatres" Yet Spe
cialty was able to turn a profit on the
90-minute documentary The Man Who
Skied Down Everest, about a Japanese
fellow who did just that “We made it
seem like an event, an exciting pros
pect with a limit to its availability."
Specialty's next project is Street
Music, a 90-minute feature about a
street musician and a burnt-out social
activist whose dying romance parallels
the story of the run-down San Fran
cisco Tenderloin hotel where they live.
Screenwriter Jennie Bowen was in
spired to write Street Music while
working for Zoetrope Studios in San
Francisco, located across the street
from the International Hotel, a resi
dence hotel for Asian immigrants.
Scheduled for demolition by its Asian
businessmen owners the Hotel be
came a cause celebre in the Bay Area.
Like Specialty, First Run Features
handles indie films for distribution
primarily to first-run theaters.
A New York firm, it’s another to in
troduce new concepts to the an of dis
tribution. Established and run by a
cooperative of young filmmakers
working under the aegis of Frank
Spielman, an outspoken, silver-haired
veteran of the film booking business,
First Run strives to present what it
terms “the finest in independently
produced American film." Its roster
includes such highly touted films as
Northern Lights (about turn-of-the
century South Dakota farmers fighting
oppressive businessmen), Best Boy (a
loving portrait of the filmmaker’s
mentally-handicapped uncle), Alam
brista (a true story from the point-of
view of an illegal Mexican immigrant
by Rich Kids director Robert Young),
Rosie the Riveter (on women workers
contributing to the war effort) and The
War at Home (studying the effects of
the Vietnam War on the community of
Madison, Wisconsin).
First Run's films typify the wide
spectrum of themes and styles that
comprise independent films today —
from documentaries of a political or
historic nature to personality profiles
and dramatic features Though many of
First Run’s films have won prestigious
film festival awards and even an
Academy Award (Best Boy), engage
ments in first-run movie houses have
eluded them, simply because they’re
outside the mainstream of Hollywood
product. Indie films are usually rele
gated to the limited, “non-theatrical"
market of colleges, museums and art
houses. But First Run is one of the few
distributors to aim for the commercial
market of first-run theaters. It does this
in an unconventional way. Tradition
ally, distributors pick up the tab for
prints, advertising and promo, in ex
change for a large fee and a cut of the
profits. First Run, for a small fee (17-25
per cent), acts as a booker on behalf of
a film's producer who pays for prints
and promo himself. With the enorm
ous overhead studios must maintain to
distribute films, First Run, like Spe
cialty, has the luxury of not shelving a
film if it performs badly. It can and
often does try again to release a film
until it goes into the black.
In less than two years since its for
mation, First Run has scored a few dis
tribution successes. Spielman locked
The Wobblies, a film about the IWW,
into a Cambridge, Mass, theater for
one week. The film performed so well
at the box office that the theater owner
ran it for four weeks. The War At
Home has grossed more than $100,000
around the country. First Run also
broke into the the tough New York
market with an imaginative strategy —
it arranged for 17 of its films to be run
over a three-month period at a
Greenwich Village theater, thus divid
ing costs of advertising, promo and
theater guarantees 17 ways, with hopes
that interest culled by one film would
spill over to another in the series. The
plan worked to some degree — the
films broke attendance records and
grossed a total of $126,000.
First Run’s success is due to a grass
roots approach to promotion, utiliz
ing local groups and press rather than
TV and radio ads to reach viewers.
“We have to do that because we can't
afford to just throw a picture into a
theater like the majors,” said Spielman.
"We’re not looking for great amounts of
money so much as we're looking for
exposure. We’re trying to raise the
consciousness of people — let them
know it’s not a crazy thing to do — to
go see these kinds of movies, and to
show exhibitors that these films are
commercial, and can make money.”
San Francisco’s Clark Communica
tions is also experimenting with an in
novative distribution method. Christ
ened Cinema Circuit,’ the plan is to
distribute to colleges short topical
films grouped into feature-length pack
ages. “Women Being” is the premier
package, consisting of four award
winning documentaries: Workplace
Hustle (a didactic docu-drama on sex
ual harassment, narrated by Ed Asner);
Marathon Woman, a coolly objective
portrait of a 42-year-old Japanese run
ner; One Year Among the Many, an
ephemeral but visually stunning
memoir of a recently widowed elderly
woman, and Little Boxes, with
foiksinger Malvina Reynolds shot
against Daly City's colorful rowhouses.
The celebrated documentary Quilts in
Women's Lives, once part of the pack
age, was eliminated due to allegedly
unreasonable demands by its maker.
In business since 1978, indie
filmmaker Clark Communications
came to national attention in May 1981,
when a story on sexual harassment,
appearing on the front page of the
Wall Street Journal, mentioned its
1979 production Workplace Hustle.
The timing couldn't have been more
perfect Sexual harassment was a con
troversial issue spurring lawsuits af
fecting the pockets of American busi
ness. As a result, Clark was inundated
with requests for Workplace from For
tune 500 companies. It has thus far
sold a phenomenal 700 prints in five
months. A film like Workplace ordinar
ily takes about 10 years to rent that
number of prints. Inspired by the
windfall, Clark decided to create a dis
tribution network for indie filmmakers
believing there might at last be some
money in it for them too. Clark
selected college campuses as its first
target because colleges hadn’t been
approached with packages before, said
Joseph Vogt, director of special proj
ects, himself a recent college graduate
in film. '
Many colleges, Vogt pointed out, are
losing money on the blockbuster and
not-so-blockbuster Hollywood features
they screen. “These films are usually
paid for out of student activity fees,”
said Vogt. Schools like UCLA charge a
nominal 75* or $1 for admission but
seldom are houses packed at these
screenings because “everyone’s al
ready seen ’em at the theatres or on
HBO or something like that."
With Cinema Circuit, Vogt em
phasized, “we’re giving schools a
chance to make money and also offer
ing our services in promotion, which
no one else is really doing. Since
we’re helping to get the press out, the
posters, everything to make it come
off, 1 can almost guarantee that if we
work with them, we can make money.”
The company is arranging to get
films screened in “nicer” campus
theaters rather than “in gymnasiums or
in a room where a movie screen’s
been set up. That way, they can invite
the community, who will maybe pay a
buck more than the students do, to get
involved with the school and also see
the films.”
For the present, the fate of Cinema
Circuit is uncertain as groundwork is
still being laid, but Clark Communica
tions continues to sell Workplace at
the incredible rate of about 40 prints
per month. "Woman Being" has been
test marketed in the Bay Area to good
results, said Vogt, who is hard at work
contacting some 300 colleges nation
wide. Upcoming packages from the
Circuit will focus on subjects like
“Natural Highs” (on ballooning, hang
gliding, other kinds of “natural" fly
ing), natural healing (specifically,
Norman Cousins’ laughter therapy) and
modem animation. The fatter entails a
package of slick commercials and rock
& roll promo films with computer
generated graphics whose exposure
has been limited for economic rea
sons. As for the future, Clark is at
tempting to hoe another tough row.
“We re trying to get into the theatrical
market, too” said Vogt.