Members of the striking Writers Guild of America report that while they will attend the Sundance Film Festival, they do not plan to demonstrate. Instead, they will be doing what most festival attendees enjoy doing: watching movies, attending parties, and braving January’s ice along the way.
The buzz surrounding Sundance and the writers’ strike — that the strike will inflate the price that studios will be willing to pay for films — has been overstated, according to industry insiders.
“I keep hearing people say that the strike will affect Sundance because movie theatres need movies – that they need to fill a hole in the commercial schedule,” says Howard Rodman, the screenwriter behind “August” and “Savage Grace,” two films that will screen at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. “I certainly hope there will be a feeding frenzy and I understand the theory, but it’s a little overblown.”
According to Rodman, big studios abandoned their job of making “interesting films for adults” long ago, leaving the task to independent filmmakers. He says the larger production companies are far more interested in films that are guaranteed to be blockbusters, he says and though Sundance films have broken the mold and achieved commercial success, historically speaking, there have only been a few.
“Some (studios) will be looking for that crossover film like ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ or ‘Juno,’ but I just think it will be a film-by-film kind of thing,” he says.
Rodman anticipates the strike over the writers’ compensation for Internet content will continue throughout the festival. Writers may not be picketing, but Rodman expects it will be an issue on everyone’s minds.
“We’re fighting for our lives here. The difference between cable and the Internet gets slimmer every day – it’s all going the way of new media,” he says. “It’s been (more than) 34 days now since producers left the table and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about how we get them back.”
John Cooper, the festival’s director of programming, says the festival is always a buying frenzy because the films are already made.
“I know there’s been some speculation, but to tell you the truth, I haven’t really sensed a panic in the film community,” he says. “The festival has always been a place that’s perceived as a place to discover movies and talent.”
The only difference this year, perhaps, is that more talent will be available to attend screenings. “I think a lot of actors aren’t working, so I think a lot more will be able to be there in support of their films,” Cooper says.
As for whether this year’s festival will be successful, time can only tell. Cooper says the success or failure of the festival can only be determined after the last week of January, when the films are released in the general marketplace. “We won’t know whether films will sell for more money – that’s what happens at the festival,” he says. “There have been years where films have seemed to go for really high prices and there are other years when films I thought would sell, haven’t sold. The success of a film and its sale relies on so many things and trends in the marketplace and what’s making money more than anything.”
He notes many films from last year’s festival are only beginning to be widely released: “How She Move,” about competitive Canadian hip-hop dancers, is only now starting to show in theaters; “Teeth,” a dark comedy about the myth of vagina dentate, opens will be widely released this week; and “Son of Rambow,” a comedy set in England during a summer in the 1980s, which Variety magazine reported sold for $8 million, has yet to make its commercial debut.
“It takes a long time,” Cooper says. ” The first step in that, the first you have anything to measure a festival’s success by, is what films sell, and I hope they sell. I hope a lot of films sell. I hope that the buyers are excited by the films and spend a lot of money on them. Redford always says this, but filmmakers making back their money is good news for everyone.”