Manual of Self-Reliance

Re-distributing oneself

By Jonathan Marlow

Have you ever gone on holiday only to wish that you would never return to the place that you’d departed? I wished it. In a sense, I actually did it. If late-August/early-September is traditionally a time for changes, I’ve done this season in spades – married, ankled (in Variety-speak) one job and started another. Why, after writing and talking in the past about my faith in the concept of digital delivery as an ever-expanding and ever-evolving solution to our current film distribution woes, would I leave the Internet-to-TV realm? I haven’t changed. They have.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, dvd, experimental film

Manual of Self-Reliance

Not quite "quiet" desperation

By Jonathan Marlow

Desperate times require desperate measures. Or, as Guy Fawkes supposedly put it (regarding the Gunpowder Plot), "The desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy." For instance, when Thor Heyerdahl’s theory about the possible migration of folks from Peru to the islands of the South Pacific was repeatedly ridiculed, the Norwegian explorer and ethnographer built a raft and made the journey himself. Proved it could be done by sailing the Kon-Tiki toward Tahiti. Didn’t prove that it was done, though.

The minor kerfuffle that resulted from a pair of pieces that ran at the Daily (They didn’t build their sales model for you and An open reply) and the similar outpouring of naysayers that followed former Miramax President/current The Film Department CEO Mark Gill’s speech at the Los Angeles Film Festival (Yes, The Sky Really Is Falling) reinforces the notion of two overlapping realities—that, firstly, truth is critically needed but, secondly, such truths will nonetheless be systematically rejected by those who need them most.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, exhibitions