Distribution debates, 7/9.

"I've held off writing a post-mortem on The Nines, but now that everything is said and done, I should probably say and do it," announces writer-director John August. "The short version is this: the movie turned out just the way I wanted. The release of the movie was deeply disappointing." The "key lessons": "Sundance buzz is annoying and meaningless"; "Theatrical release is kinda bullshit"; "The DVD should have come out much sooner, maybe simultaneously"; "I should have paid a lot more attention to foreign"; "Without an alternative, everyone will just pirate it"; and a closing question: "Should anyone bother making an indie film?" Comments avalanche.

Updated through 7/11.

On the other hand, though, Jamie Stuart in Stream: "Theatrical alters people's perception. Theatrical makes it a real movie." Scott Macaulay comments: "[O]ne of the problems with the new day-and-date models is the lack of clearly understood metrics."

"The myth of the film and television industry being under the same burden that the record business once was is fueled by seeing everything on a macro level and not thinking for a second about the micro details," argues David Poland. "The devil is, indeed, in the details."

"How do we sustain ourselves as filmmakers and storytellers in this day of shifting film distribution systems?" DIY Days, July 26 in Los Angeles.

Meantime, the Auteurs have opened up their Garage: "Our ambition is to build a global filmmaking community."

And in somewhat related news, Ambrose Heron reports that "New York-based Palisades Media have acquired the library of Tartan Films, the former UK distributor which recently went into administration."

Update, 7/10: "Consider this Wired story more than loosely related to yesterday's back-and-forth on theatrical distribution," blogs Karina Longworth, "and maybe sort of possibly related to today's rampant speculation on Che. At the Television Critics Association conference yesterday, vertically integrated movie mogul Mark Cuban announced that he's going to start selling Magnolia's theatrical releases on HDNET's On Demand cable service - before they debut in theaters." And there's a followup entry, too, in which Peter Bogdanovich weighs in: "You know, I have a theory that one of the reasons younger people don't like older films, films made, say, before the 60s, is because they've never seen them on a big screen, ever. If you don't see a film on the big screen, you haven't really seen it. You've seen a version of it, but you haven't really seen it. That's my feeling, but I'm old-fashioned."

Update, 7/11: Danny Leigh gets a discussion going at the Guardian.

Posted by dwhudson at July 9, 2008 2:14 PM