NY Times (7/27/08): “Twin Hopes: Satisfying Movie, Low Cost”
We’ve considered the unsettled state of affairs in the independent film world several times here, here, and here. Read all that back to back to back, the cumulative effect can be pretty gloomy. But then, as always, some creative filmmakers flit into view, promising to steer the boat away from the rocks and back out onto the high seas. In this case, it’s a pair of brothers, twins in fact, named Michael and Mark Polish in this fascinating article in yesterday’s NY Times. The Polish brothers have produced three movies — Jackpot (2001), Northfork (2003), and The Astronaut Farmer (2006). There’s no details on Jackpot’s budget or box office, but Northfork grossed $1,420,578 in box office while The Astronaut Farmer pulled in $11,003,643 with a reported budget of $13M. Okay numbers, but nothing to get too excited about, right? Read on:
To this end they established Prohibition Pictures in the spring with their longtime collaborator-producer Jonathan Sheldon, the financier-producer Ken Johnson (who has fully financed the first two Prohibition films) and Mr. Johnson’s producing partner Janet DuBois. The idea is a kind of rolling production that would keep key personnel, like their longtime director of photography, M. David Mullen; their sound mixer, Matthew Nicolay; and the assistant director, Andrew Coffing, in place from one shoot to the other. Prohibition expects to eliminate burdensome start-up costs by buying instead of renting equipment, for example, and having a production office always in operation. The result, the company hopes, will build a filmmaking momentum.
On this day in early July the brothers are close to wrapping “Manure”; “Stay Cool,” which will feature Chevy Chase, Winona Ryder, and Sean Astin along with Mark Polish, is in pre-production. Prohibition has six other scripts in various stages of development, Michael said. And the brothers will begin yet another film in February.
Mr. Sheldon said that private investor interest will probably bankroll future productions. “When you keep costs low, it’s enticing to people who want to be involved in the movies,” he said.
“Make movies for a price.” That philosophy has always been around, but whenever a new production group comes along, there is an almost inevitable pull toward bigger budgets. Just to name a few: Vestron Pictures, which had a big hit with Dirty Dancing (1987), then went belly-up in 1990, and Artisan Entertainment, the outfit which distributed The Blair Witch Project (1999). But the Polish brothers and their compadres seem hell-bent to stick to low budgets and cost-cutting approaches to filmmaking:
What is limiting, according to the Prohibition people, is corporate movie making. “Typically,” Mr. Sheldon said, “if you put this through the studio system, you’d be on each project for two years, if you got through the development stage. What we’ve done is create a company to make movies in a way we think is more cost-effective, speedier and isn’t frustrating to the artist.”
Meaning? “When you’re jumping through a lot of hoops to get a movie made, it can be negative when those hoops are artificial, when they’re not helping the picture, and it’s just some draconian system that you didn’t create.”
Institutionalized Hollywood has also abandoned a whole stratum of motion picture, Michael said: “The studios have really priced themselves out of a certain type of movie. They either want to make it for a limited amount of money, or they’ll go through the roof. We actually were in a meeting with a studio where they said: ‘You have to make it bigger. We have to spend more money. It’s this much money, and we have to make this much money.’ And we walked out thinking, ‘This isn’t a good business model anymore.’
They shot their next feature Manure in 27 days and plan to shoot the follow-up Stay Cool in 22 days. This sounds similar to the model we developed at Distillery Pictures as part of our plan to produce low-budget movies: 90 page script, one primary location, no more than 10 actors, 5 week shoot, stripped down crew. Our project Snowbirds is budgeted at $1.2M. There are even more radical approaches. We’ve talked with Peter Olsen and Josh Apter, the filmmakers who produced Katterskill Falls (2001) for $27,500. “Micro-budget” movies, they call them.
In the ebb and flow of movies, there are always filmmakers who make do with less, and sometimes more out of less (think Soderbergh with Sex, Lies & Videotape). Hopefully, Prohibition Pictures is successful and energizes the indie film world.