Real show business

Liza Foreman

• Last Updated: November 04. 2009 3:33PM UAE / November 4. 2009 11:33AM GMT

The American Film Market may focus on movies but the sales people there could just as well be dealing in used cars. Thos Robinson / Getty Images for AFM/AFP

On Halloween night, dressed-down ghouls and Michael Jacksons wandered the streets in Los Angeles in honour of one of America’s most celebrated nights of the year. Inside the Loews Hotel, the scene was fittingly ghostly. Dark windows glared down on the turquoise pool of this giant beachside haunt, which stood empty in anticipation of the 8,000 film executives expected here for this week’s American Film Market.

“European men parking Humvees outside of my house and smoking by the pool in black suits,” is how one member of the hotel’s gym referred that morning to the film types who gather here each year for the industry’s largest business gathering, where art, or what sometimes passes for it, meets commerce at the beach.

Then the hotel goes from holiday hangout to trade show turmoil, filled with brightly decorated booths, selling everything from high-end art pictures with high-profile casts to low-budget B-movies. Business, meanwhile, is often conducted to the backdrop of noisy horror-film trailers blasting from room to room. This stretches far beyond the original Oscar hopefuls seen at fancy art-house venues to anything that can make the bottom line sing. Despite the numbers trumpeted by organisers, the gym members have something to celebrate. For the first time in years, yoga is not cancelled. And their fitness studio has not been rented out to the market, they say: one small sign that the film business is feeling the pinch. The AFM has long proven a weather vane for such trends.

Organisers report that there are 445 films screening, including 73 world premieres and 311 market premieres. And although numbers are expected to be down from last year, come the close of the market, business prevails. “There are less studio speciality labels making and selling films but there is still a market for quality lower-budget movies, whether art-house, documentaries, genre films or foreign-language selections and they are still being made outside the system,” said Colleen Seldin of Locomotive Distribution. “Distributors and buyers are still looking for the blockbusters but it is definitely easier for them to take a chance on a smaller film or a genre film if the price is right.”

The good news is that the independents, who take centre stage here, are playing an ever greater role in making higher-profile films. This means that the star wattage seen in films here, always an advantage for sales, has increased over the years and is no longer just the province of the studios. Independent films selling at the AFM this year include Get Low, starring Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Robert Duvall; Unthinkable, starring Samuel L Jackson; Harry Brown, starring Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer; Within The Whirlwind, directed by Marleen Gorris and starring Emily Watson; Coach, starring Hugh Dancy, Liane Balaban and Mamie Gummer; The Last Flight, starring Marion Cotillard and Guillaume Canet; and Snowmen, starring Ray Liotta, Christopher Lloyd, Bobby Coleman and Doug E Doug.

Still, veteran showbusiness folk know that although the production of such films might mark a change for the independent film world of 10 years ago, big names aren’t enough to guarantee success. They also say the credit crisis isn’t the main problem. “The biggest problem isn’t financing. It is the films,” says Sam Goldwyn Jr, the head of Samuel Goldwyn Films and the son of Hollywood’s original independent, Samuel Goldwyn. He also notes that the 240-page catalogue of AFM titles contains many films from the Middle East and Asia. “There aren’t that many good pictures and there aren’t many American films showing at the AFM,” he says. “A lot of them are foreign-language films at a time when foreign-language pictures are having a hard time in the US. Although we haven’t had a problem, it is affecting sellers more. Buyers are expecting prices to drop.”

Seldin, who works on the sales side of the business, comments: “With less money to spend, buyers are being more selective. In the past, you might have one company buy your whole slate, but now buyers are cherry picking the right projects.”

They have plenty of choice. Among the 311 films making their market premieres at the AFM are Chloe, directed by Atom Egoyan and starring Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried; Down for Life, starring Danny Glover, Snoop Dogg, Elizabeth Peña, Jessica Romero and Kate Del Castillo; Creation, directed by Jon Amiel and starring Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Northam and Toby Jones; Dorian Gray, starring Colin Firth, Fiona Shaw, Rebecca Hall and Ben Barness; Glorious 39, starring Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Julie Christie and Christopher Lee; Life During Wartime, directed by Todd Solondz and starring Ally Sheedy, Paul Reubens, Charlotte Rampling and Allison Janney; Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, directed by Don Roos and starring Natalie Portman, Lisa Kudrow, Scott Cohen and Charlie Tahan; Mama, I Want to Sing!, starring the singer Ciara, Billy Zane and Lynn Whitfield; Mao’s Last Dancer, directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Kyle MacLachlan, Joan Cheng, Chi Cao and Bruce Greenwood; and Saint John of Las Vegas, starring Steve Buscemi, Romany Malco, Peter Dinklage and Sarah Silverman.

Beyond the boundaries of the AFM, these independent players are feeling the pinch in different ways. Says Richard Guardian, the president of Lightning Entertainment: “We’ve been impacted on several fronts. On the sales side, many of our distributor clients have had their lines of credit impacted by the financial crisis, with many seeing those credit lines reduced at varying levels and some seeing some of their lines simply closed down. This has affected both the distributors’ ability to honour contractual payment terms and dates, and their acquisition activities. This obviously impacts sales agents’ projections and cash flow and cash-flow forecasts. Many of these distributors have also had their own cash flow impacted by the effect of the credit crisis on their clients – television broadcasters, DVD wholesalers and retailers, DVD distributors and cinemas. All of these pay late because of their ownt issues, so the distributor to whom we license is paid late, who in turn pays us late.”

Lightning Entertainment’s films selling at the AFM include The Irishman, a true-story gangster film written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, starring Ray Stevenson, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken; and Coach, a romantic comedy starring Hugh Dancy, Liane Balaban and Mamie Gummer, directed by Will Frears.

“In the short term, the crisis is extremely trying and is certainly going to impact companies with tight cash flow in a very significant manner, and the landscape of the independent business could change drastically. In the long term, it may turn out to be good for the business, with a greater focus on costs at all levels, from production to sales to marketing, and will certainly make all of us look at both finished films and upcoming projects with greater scrutiny and attention to commercial potential,” adds Guardian.

Says Stephen Margolis of the UK-based Future Films: “Basically the effect has been that there isn’t as much money going through the system which has meant that not as many films are being made. This is not such a bad thing, because, in fact, the excess of liquidity has meant that too many films had been made for the market to cope with, coupled with the distributors themselves also having their own credit squeeze so that prices for films have fallen, giving the films’ financiers significant challenges.” There have been other effects too. “Given that there is less money around and that pre-sales are harder to come by, this has meant that there is a downwards pressure on budgets and we have to say to producers and directors, ‘Do you want to make an $8 million film or not make a $10 million film,’” says Margolis.

“Financing of new productions has been severely curtailed by the lack of available credit, especially from traditional banks,” says Kirk D’Amico of the Los Angeles-based Myriad Pictures. “Cast costs and production costs have come down. Also production has gravitated to those locations which offer substantial incentives, such as Canada or Australia or states such as Louisiana, Michigan and New Mexico.”

Beyond the business of sales, there is a full programme of conferences which can be just as colourful as the films at the AFM. Witness Faye Dunaway mid-conference two years back raising her hand to ask questions about a new camera. Running in tandem with the event is the AFIFEST, which will screen 23 films that are represented at the AFM.

Launched in 1981, the AFM is produced by the trade association, the Independent Film & Television Alliance, which represents producers and distributors of independent films and television. More than $800 million (Dh3bn) worth of deals are expected to close this week, they say. “I am hoping from AFM for some sign that the film market is coming back,” says Margolis. “By this I mean that while, for the last year or so, little or no business has been done at film markets; there are signs that distributors are coming back and starting to buy things. The prices remain flat, but at last there is activity.”