Report

"Full Grown Men" road trip reaches theaters

By Michael Fox

Not so long ago, theatrical distribution was the Holy Grail for independent filmmakers. But if you’ve been to an art house in the last six months or longer, or semi-regularly peruse the arts section of any newspaper or magazine (let alone the trades), you’re well aware that the box-office returns for foreign films, indies and documentaries are at a dangerously low ebb. So the winners who do score distribution in the current environment, like local filmmakers David Munro and Xandra Castleton’s Full Grown Men, which opens July 25 at the Lumiere, SF, experience something more akin to tempered enthusiasm than unadulterated joy. A theatrical run isn’t quite a hollow victory, but (with apologies to David Mamet) it increasingly feels less like a Cadillac El Dorado than a set of steak knives.

Munro neatly summarized the state of affairs in an email. "It’s a perfect shit storm for under-the-radar films like ours at the moment—the implosion of the specialty market (Warner Independent, New Line and Picturehouse all went under last [month]) due to out-of-control ad costs, a glut of product bumrushing screens as a result of digital DIY production, and audiences waiting for small films to hit home video to watch on their 52-inch screens. One noted producer has called it a ‘pre-internet, post-studio black hole.’"

The shift in adult viewing patterns that began in the ’80s with home video has accelerated with the advent of DVD and, most crucially, the success of Netflix. I’ve heard tales of 20-something urbanites reading a rave review in Friday’s New York Times and, instead of picking up the phone and making weekend plans to see the movie, going online and adding it to their Netflix queue. Then they forget about it, and some months down the road the disc shows up in their mailbox.

DVD sales have become a vitally important revenue stream for Hollywood studios over the last 10 years. In fact, for most mainstream films the theatrical run feels like a promotional campaign for the DVD. But that model, where the first-run release is a loss leader that’ll be covered by high-volume home-video sales, doesn’t work for specialty films.

Distributors of independent and foreign films and docs count on a certain amount of DVD sales, of course. But those sales can’t justify the multimillion-dollar budget necessary to imprint a film in the national consciousness. Even the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film or Best Documentary Feature is of dubious help in that regard.

The days appear to be over, unfortunately, when an indie film could generate a buzz without the benefit of a major award, either on the basis of its director’s singular vision and reputation (Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Todd Haynes and Todd Solondz come to mind) or its own fresh blend of idiosyncrasy and controversy (She’s Gotta Have It, Swoon). Which brings us back to Full Grown Men, a quirky, poignant tale of a boy-man reluctant to grow up and fit in.

Full Grown Men premiered in 2006 at the Tribeca Film Festival, a high-profile bash that is arguably second only to Sundance as a showcase for American independent films. Located in New York City, headquarters for most of the distributors of specialty films, Tribeca seemed to be a perfectly acceptable launching pad. Indeed, Munro and Castleton exuded enormous confidence when they headed east that spring for their film’s debut.

Two years on, Munro and Castleton were once again in Manhattan in June, basking in their theatrical premiere of Full Grown Men at the Cinema Village. The film wasn’t acquired out of Tribeca, however; in fact, as the filmmakers trekked around the festival circuit (including local stops at Mill Valley in the fall of 2006 and San Jose’s Cinequest in spring 2007), a deal began to look more and more remote.

"If we didn’t have some theatrical screening and release and validation, that would have been hard," Munro confided in a phone conversation last month, "That was my goal, and it has been my goal for so long, to make a movie and have it come out."

Munro and Castleton certainly had their investors in mind, although they had been up front with them from the beginning about the long-shot possibility of making a profit from an independent film. This was especially true of a small, Florida-set comedy starring Matt McGrath and Judah Friedlander, and featuring cameos by Amy Sedaris and Alan Cumming. Familiar names and talented actors, but none with the magnetic ability to lure big crowds and, by extension, distributors. Perhaps the most difficult aspect for the filmmakers was dealing with the cold-water shock of adjusting their dream to match reality.

"I don’t know if our movie is a consensus kind of movie," Munro says. "We always had one fan [at each distribution company] but someone up top would say no. A lot of buyers said, ‘Two years ago, we would have bought it. We’re going after genre [now]. We need certain things like name actors. We don’t have the resources to build this thing from scratch.’ Several buyers said, ‘It’ll cost us a million dollars to give your movie a shot in the marketplace. And we might not make one dollar. Or we might.’"

Consequently, Munro and Castleton developed a plan with their investors to self-release Full Grown Men. It turned out that would be unnecessary. The first break the filmmakers caught was being included in indieWIRE’s annual roundup of the top 15 films that weren’t picked up for distribution. Nine of those titles were part of the 2007 "Undiscovered Gems" series, and "Full Grown Men" topped the pack to win the Sundance Channel Audience Award. The prize includes a 2008 theatrical release through Emerging Pictures in at least five cities, backed with a $50,000 budget for prints and advertising, followed by an exclusive television broadcast on Sundance Channel.

At a Manhattan press conference announcing the award in January, Emerging Pictures’ Ira Deutchman did not engage in euphemisms or smoke-blowing. "You all know that distribution is in crisis," he said, "And anything we can do to get all these films to some sort of audience is better than nothing."

Full Grown Men opens in San Francisco next week with screenings at the Lumiere starting July 25. It’s also opening soon in Florida cities, Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey, Nevada, and upstate New York. While a theatrical run used to be the full-throttle pinnacle of an independent film’s life, in Munro and Castleton’s case it feels, well, not anticlimactic but like the culmination of a marathon. It also signals an end to a particular way of funding and producing independent film.

"We made a movie that we hoped had some crossover appeal, was accessible and had [actors] that people know," Munro muses. "I tell people now you’d be nuts to have a budget like we did. It was the high end of low budget. I tell people spend $10 million or spend a dollar. Don’t spend in between."

The future of movies, especially smaller movies, appears to be some permutation of video-on-demand as well as on the Internet. At the same time, Munro notes, the Internet as a medium seems increasingly suited to work of shorter duration. Whether it’s a matter of attention spans or streaming and download speeds, there’s a limit to what people will watch on their monitors/laptops/smart phones. At the moment, two-to-three-minute Web serials, YouTube clips and segment-length videocasts have the upper hand.

As Munro puts it, "Not a day goes by when someone’s not throwing dirt on the indie film coffin." It’s certainly easy these days, though not the least bit pleasurable, to wax pessimistic about the prospects for specialty films and movie theaters. The future isn’t yet clear, however, so this conversation will continue. For Munro, some things are more certain than others.

"My goal of getting the film on the big screen, I don’t think it was about entitlement as much as that was my dream," Munro says. "Having achieved that in some respect, I feel very open to what the next thing could be. There’s no part of me that wants to rush out and raise $2 million and make another movie."

topics: bay area, comedy, directors, independent film

07.16.2008