'The Visitor' proves indie film isn't dead

When I first saw "The Visitor" in the weeks leading up to the Toronto Film Festival last fall, I was moved by filmmaker Tom McCarthy's soulful account of a widowed college professor (played by character actor Richard Jenkins) who is spiritually reawakened by a chance encounter with an immigrant couple in New York City. (Go here to read why McCarthy felt compelled to make the film.) But when you see movies as a reporter, your reaction is always complicated. It's one thing to love a film, as a fan. But as cold-eyed industry observer, I thought--in an era where every specialty company is desperately hunting for the next "Little Miss Sunshine" jackpot--who will possibly buy a movie that doesn't have a name actor or any crowd-pleasing fervor?

Michael London, the film's producer, thought the same thing. Maybe that's why he's so astounded to see the film, now in its 13th week of release, still hanging around the Top 20 box-office leaders, long after the big studio releases that were in theaters when "The Visitor" made its early-April debut are long gone. You can say, what's the big deal, since those early April films--"Prom Night," "Street Kings," "Leatherheads" and "The Ruins"--all have made more money. But in the gloom-and-doomed filled world of specialty movies, where film after film has disappeared without a trace, "The Visitor" is a small ray of sunlight. Spurned by every established specialty division in town, never having grossed more than $1.1 million in any week of its release, it has quietly turned a sizable profit, nearing the $10-million box-office mark this past weekend, when it actually had the highest percentage upswing in business of any film on more than 100 screens in the country.

Why has "The Visitor" managed to survive amid so much horrific indie failure? And does it point the way to indie film rejuvenation and revival?   

A veteran producer of such films as "Sideways" and "Thirteen," London remembers the film's low ebb all too well. Buoyed by early reactions to the film, he went to Toronto thinking his new company, Groundswell, and its partner, Participant Productions, would have an easy sale. Even before "The Visitor's" credits had finished rolling after its Friday-night debut, London got e-mail and text messages from specialty division executives, all saying how much they loved the film. But as the weekend rolled along, the e-mails stopped coming. The phone never rang.

"By Monday, after all the specialty production guys had spent the weekend talking to their marketing and distribution people, they were paralyzed," London recalls. "We didn't get one solid offer. I was totally depressed by the wall of cynicism the specialty companies had about the marketplace. By chance, I ran into [Overture Films chief] Chris McGurk, who'd heard so many people say how much they liked the film that he congratulated me on having sold the picture. I told him he was wrong--we hadn't even gotten an offer."

That's how Overture, a start-up company, came to buy the film for $1 million, a price that’s looking better and better as time goes on. As London bluntly puts it: "If we didn't find Overture, a new distributor that needed movies, this movie would be on DVD right now. Everyone told us, 'We love it, but no one's going to go see it.' "

But why did everyone get cold feet? London believes the collapse of the specialty market has less to do with audiences abandoning well-made movies than indie film companies abandoning their core business model. "They just got out of touch with what people wanted," he says. "They got very seduced by movies like 'Juno' or 'Little Miss Sunshine' that could gross $75 or $100 million. It's like everyone took a hiatus from their core business, which is supposed to be all about: How do we grow something special?"

Anyone who's been to the recent round of festivals knows how bleak the sales picture is. Even films with top-name talent, including Steven Soderbergh's "Che," James Gray's "Two Lovers" and Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York," are still looking for U.S. distributors. The one big sale at Sundance was "Hamlet 2," an attempt at broad-based commercial comedy. The recent L.A. Film Festival was reduced to opening and closing its festival with wan big-studio fare. The malaise is everywhere.

Still, London isn't gloomy, in part because he has a movie that's attracted a small but loyal audience, largely thanks to lively word of mouth. "I have to admit that I was terrified when Overture picked us up," he recalls. "I mean, there we were, with a distributor that had never put out a movie before. But four or five weeks into our run, we started to feel the movie was taking on a life of its own. We'd get these crazy e-mails from friends or family, saying that everyone they knew was going to see the picture. When the grosses keep going up every weekend, you know something is happening."

"The Visitor" also had a little luck. It was never meant to still be playing in the middle of summer, but once it survived April and May, with no specialty division fare going up against the big summer studio releases, it suddenly had the indie market to itself. Overture has been careful with its marketing buys--I can remember London calling me one day, moaning about the postage-stamp sized ad Overture had taken out for the film in The Times. But Overture's belief in positive buzz had been rewarded. "They've done a great job," London says now. "The movie has struggled whenever they've tried to broaden it into smaller markets or more mainstream suburban theaters. But in terms of the top 150 art theaters in America, it's had a wonderful life."

But what's the lesson here? Is it really a success to have to spend four months of sweat and tears to get a movie to $10 million, when a big studio release can hit that mark on a Friday night? "The audience is still there," London says. "And if $10 million is the ceiling, then indie distributors will just have to adapt to a much smaller business model. There will still be brass-ring movies like 'Juno,' but the days when every distributor in town could chase after the brass ring are over."

London laughs. "I guess if this were the stock market, you could say we'd had a healthy correction. The days of chasing the big hits are over." 

Photo of Richard Jenkins, left, and Hiam Abbas in "The Visitor" from Overture Films.

 

Comments

[Suzanne Gallant]

Dear Mr. Goldstein,
I read with interest your column in Tuesday's LA Times about the Visitor. My take on the issue of the new interest in the movie "The Visitor" is as a result of my own experience. Let me say first that I live in the Conejo Valley and going to see a movie in LA, is something we almost never contemplate. So, when faced with the desire to see a movie, we are limited to movies in the Conejo or in the San Fernando Valley. Our first choice, based on the cost of gasoline and the time involved is local. Let me also say, that we are not of the demographic that most major movie producers target. Indeed, we are boomers, who are also on the cusp of the WWII generation. We opened our newspaper on Sunday, to find a movie to attend. Nothing at the multi-plexes within our driving radius interested us at all. Many of our friends had urged us to see "The Visitor", so we bit the bullet and drove to the Regency theaters in Camarillo to see it. It was as excellent as our friends had told us it would be.
For us, it is frequently a challenge to find a movie playing that reminds us of the kinds of movies that we grew up with; movies with a plot, without gratuitous violence, and movies that gives us something to talk about after the movie. I don't know what it would take to get those people who choose which movies to make to understand that the Boomer Generation and older, go to the movies, have money to spend to do so(even if we do take advantage of senior discounts) and are looking for quality entertainment.
I don't know if a column from you on the subject of Boomers and the movies would be something your paper would wish to print, or if the young Studio executives would even believe that making movies for a demographic different from the one that they have convinced themselves is the most profitable, but I am throwing the idea out for your consideration.

Thank You for Listening.

Suzanne Gallant

[Celanne]

I caught The Visitor when it was in theaters, and it was one of my favorite films of the whole year! Richard Jenkins from Six Feet Under was outstanding, and the message of friendship throughout the movie was very powerful. The Visitor will be released on DVD October 7th, and I definitely plan on buying it. If you haven't seen the movie yet, you can find more info here: thevisitorfilm.com

[Andrew Delaney]

A blog at Film Industry Bloggers goes into detail about making a movie for under $500,000 and how it can make money. The guy who wrote it, British feature director Richard Janes, says that Indie's are not dead... But the way in which studios got involved with them are...

Have a read... He even gives a budget and samples of how much indie movies have made....

www.FilmIndustryBloggers.com/thebritishfilmdirector