May 12 at 8:47am

Why The 75 Problems Get My Attention

I wish it was as simple as aim high, be thoughtful,  be ambitious, take some risks, and make a good movie.

I have looked at these 75 problems (yesterday’s 38 + last year’s list) because I have spent the last 20 years making 60 films. Each of those films is a big choice for me and it is not a business choice (although survival enters the equation) or ever an easy choice; I make movies because I love the project, the work, and admire the director.

I think most people would classify the majority of my films as art films. 90% of them were also made with at least partial funding from private sources. I am really proud of them on an artistic level. I am also proud of how they’ve performed for their investors (generally). And every single director I worked with will say they made the movie they wanted, and that inspires me deeply.

It’s easy to argue any point I’ve made on my lists, but anyone that lives with the films and the process as I do, looks at the situation we all are in, well, I would be surprised to find that person denying this situation as I’ve presented it (though they are certainly welcome to, and I am confident that I will learn a lot in the days to come from people’s responses).

It IS about the art and the appreciation and the world we live in – that’s why it is about the business, as business– particularly here in the USA — is what facilitates this expensive artform beyond the unique position of a specific individual that can create in isolation. The romance of the isolated artist whose vision can not be denied crushes more great work while spawning self-obsessed navel gazing in droves.  We need a structure that supports work from beyond the realm of the privileged.

Anyone who fails to think that everyone’s work is interconnected, doesn’t live in the real world. If my films don’t perform both artistically and business-wise, it will be harder for the next people to make ambitious work. Yes, you can go out and make movies for next to nothing, funded by people who want to support your pursuit of  the art — and that’s going to yield some stuff I know I will love — but it is not going to help us build a sustainable enterprise of diverse, vital, ambitious work or the supportive participatory community that truly appreciates it. Only extending our labor and commitment to an infrastructure rebuild will do those things.

Believe me, I want to focus on the creative first. I spend years developing filmmakers’ work without pay or protection. Personally what I think I do best is identify, develop, produce, and deliver such work.  But to leave the issues of how we discover, identify, appreciate, promote, present, and expand both cinema and its audiences alone these days, is to dig art film’s grave.

If you are reading this, I know you don’t want that to happen, and I look forward to building it better together in the days to come.  Forgive me though, if I take some time out to make some movies along the way…

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  • Webster, I do ask filmmakers to aim high. I posted 32 Qualities Of Better Film awhile back. I could probably do an update on that to get it up to a much higher number. What's surprising is that most of those pursuits are necessary after a script comes to me. When I watch most indie work they haven't reached for many of them. I am pleased with the work I have been able to collaborate on. I think they had the success they did precisely because they reached high and had artistic ambition. It is a hell of a lot of work to be thoughtful in the creative process. It makes me go back to the advice I gave two years back at Filmmakers Forum: slow down. Make less films. Collaborate more on others work.
  • Maggie, I totally get the crushing blow of isolation. It's not an accident that I have always had business partners and seek out collaborators. It is an incredible feat to do DIY. I have to believe there are always partners out there. Maybe as a breach birth twin delivered prematurely to the world, it is ingrained on all my synapsis. But that might be a bit TMI.

    I certainly agree with Jim that all the art schools and business schools and film schools need to develop a course of study that encourages and enhances collaboration. I am really heartened by the number of film making cooperatives that have sprung up in recent years.

    We are going to build this better together for sure.
  • Maggie, what a beautifully written post that reflects exactly what I feel and experience as a filmmaker. When I read it yesterday I thought your term "multi-year breach-birth" was incredibly apt. It must've made an impression on me. Last night I had a dream that a good friend of mine was having a baby -- and it was a breach-birth.

    Here's to birthing our babies, however they come!
  • Webster
    Ted says"...to leave the issues of how we discover, identify, appreciate, promote, present, and expand both cinema and its audiences alone these days, is to dig art film’s grave."

    Am I missing something? Are "art" filmmakers somehow deliberately not doing these things? Or are you saying that these things are not inherent in the creative filmmaking process and therefore require a business sense outside of the creative effort? Because I believe that great filmmakers have a sense of these things inherent in their work from the start and that you don't have to find ways to inject or contrive them into the periphery around the film.

    Of course great filmmakers are few and far between so perhaps you just have a low bar, and are not asking anyone to shoot for the high art, just the big bucks.
  • I certainly enjoyed “The romance of the isolated artist whose vision can not be denied crushes more great work while spawning self-obsessed navel gazing in droves.”

    I think there is a very fundamental problem. Our education system is based on individual accomplishment and implicit or explicit competition. There is very little education that fosters collaborative work of any substantive kind, despite the fact that the work of most organizations (and complex artforms, like film) require collaboration.
  • Sustainability strikes a chord with me these days, for sure. I’ve just finished my fourth film, second feature doc. Each one of the features has been years in the making, with multiple trailers made for fundraising and for the finished film. I’ve written many a grant application, secured some grants and private money, poured my own money in, built websites, developed strategies which were implemented and abandoned, recommendations used, markets attended, film festivals applied to, distributors contacted and yet, the feeling of isolation is the thing that dogs this filmmaker. Not an uncommon story at all, I imagine.

    I often think of myself as a lone woman behind a computer, making paper and waiting on what I sometimes call my multi-year breach-birth. I don’t see myself as a navel gazer, but rather as a one-woman-band. There is no romance in this version of indie filmmaking, although outsiders believe that’s true when I say I’m a filmmaker. Even today, someone said, "Congratulations you’re doing something that you love!" Wrong. I love my film. The process and the industry kicks my ass, and truthfully, I have quite an enormous capacity for rejection, tenacity and commitment---and an enormous belief in the beautiful and meaningful art product I’ve created and it’s viability in the market. (And yes! I know it can make money, if the opportunity presents itself.)

    None-the-less reality beckons. This is not an ideal way to be making movies. I have a lot to say, and can do it in a meaningful way. It may not however be the way that I continue to express myself as an artist. For today it is. And as we all know, the world is changing—hence me even responding to this blog. : )
  • Ted-- Your last post on the list of 38 and this post, among other blogs I've been reading for the past few months, suggest to me that what might be brewing here is the eventual formation of a powerful umbrella org that truly represents independent filmmakers--something like, say, the International Filmmakers Guild--an org that takes your list and other ideas and creates a manifesto that can go to bat for filmmakers in this new digital age, from negotiating standard distribution guidelines (especially for streaming deals with the Netflix of the world) to advocacy in the industry and beyond. This would have to be an org open to all filmmakers, not just those who have made it into the upper Hollywood orbit.

    Looking at the history of our industry, every time a guild has been formed in our business it's because the artists involved are being taken advantage of. I've written about this on my own blog (http//www.thesensationofsight.com/blog-comments) regarding the formation of the first guild, for example, and what it can teach us (The Dramatists Guild way back in the 1920s) when the vibrancy of the American theatre was hanging in the balance. Then SAG, WGA, DGA, etc. appeared when the need arose as the film industry grew. It seems to me that perhaps the time has now arrived for independent filmmakers to form their own united front. Otherwise, most likely each of us will continue to try and do our part in isolation with no real clout.

    Trouble is, who is going to jump in and get something like a filmmakers guild up and running? It's a huge undertaking, as it has been in the past. Some savvy big players would have to step up to the plate who care enough about the future of cinematic art and the nurturing of new talent to get the ball rolling--established folks who see the need to develop some strategies for the sustainability of filmmaking careers in this new digital age. Easier said than done. But, as you've said many times, if something isn't started, we risk a future with no vibrant art film culture other than the output of the Hollywood machine.

    Thanks for all your efforts in helping to keep the conversation going.
  • "The romance of the isolated artist whose vision can not be denied crushes more great work while spawning self-obsessed navel gazing in droves."

    Love it! However I don't believe the privilege of being an Auteur is limited to those who are themselves financially privileged--and personally, I refer to the admired Auteurs of past and present when I define 'pure' cinematic storytelling. Advances in technology have created a burgeoning underclass of rebellious filmmakers from the underbelly of our business who are completely oblivious to the rules they're breaking (as they're unaware of them to begin with). These filmmakers are also privileged; free from the bureaucratic system of film, finance and obligation.

    We must re-evaluate and redefine 'success' in terms of sustainability and freedom of Artistic expression, as independent film as an Artform may ultimately liken itself to the days of the wandering minstrel.


    [Miles Maker is a story author, motion picture auteur and independent distributor whose dynamic media ventures encompass mobile, social and real-time megatrends @milesmaker on Twitter. He is the Group Director of IndieClub NYC, the Executive Producer of Directing Actors and a Raindance NYC Affiliate]
  • Dog,
    The thing with projects coming in from a known source, is that it is all a process. Today's unknown becomes known via some sort of engagement. The person that writes the good letter, is more likely to get me to watch their short or read the treatment. The next time around they are a known source.

    And then to get into the semantics of art, well, I am not about to. The fact is generally speaking if it is not Hollywood and not exploitation, film gets classified, rightly or wrongly as art -- and generally whether it succeeds or not, it has that aspiration.
  • doghouse
    The difficulty here is that there's a fundamental disagreement in these discussions which is never resolved or even raised: the films which you and other esteemed producers in the independent realm have produced are not universally regarded as "art", or even as "art films", in a generic sense, and not often seen as the equal of the best of international art film. I'm sorry, but this is not an uncommon point of view.

    Would Hollywood have produced these American independent films? No. Do they have some redeeming features? Of course. But whether they offer the excitements, high intelligence, challenges of form and intense focus usually associated with art is another question.

    And to the extent the films don't satisfy these requirements, whose fault is it? Clearly, if the scripts and conceptions and the talents of the directors are not equal to the demands of art (which is to be expected; art is rare), there's not much you can do about it. You're also limited by the reluctance of investors to embrace "art", when "art", by definition, will be comprehensible to relatively few people at the script stage, including producers themselves. Also, it must be admitted that New Wave excitements, the departures from industry norms which made non-Hollywood films exciting 30 or 50 years ago, will not work today. The filmmaker has to do more, than simply "depart".

    I think we can say that these structural characteristics of the medium - the absolute dependence of "artists" (real or imagined) on private producers and investors, if they seek to work beyond the garage-budget level - has not been fruitful for American independent film.

    You yourself acknowledged in an earlier thread that your company receives thousands of scripts a year, but that you've never produced a project which didn't come to from a known source. Even acknowledging that 99%+ of what gets sent to you is beneath comment, this statement is as damning of "independent film" as it can be.

    While the state subsidy/art panel model is far from perfect, it does allow film culture to thrive for brief periods. Meanwhile, our "free market" works about as well as our free market does in health care. This is the wheel that we refuse to invent (much less re-invent). The American way has produced the mediocrity and failed commercial aspirations of the Sundance Dramatic Competition. This failure is even more infuriating when you consider that professional sports are state-subsidized in the billions in this country.

    But that would appear to be the American way. Independent film is this country is exactly what you would predict from a free market model. Commercial finance does not knowingly produce films with the non-commercial characteristics which such films needs to succeed commercially.
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