Where Did Authored Cinema Fail?

And how can we revive it before it is too late?

First, you may be asking “Why the hell is Ted using such a clunky term? “Authored Cinema”? Please!”. Okay, enough already. If you’ve been reading HFF, you know my preferred taste is “ambitiously authored with attitude”. That’s what I like but for this ramble, I am slimming it down.  Or rather I am actually fattening up because simply authored is more inclusive than the AAWA. Yes, “authored” stems from the dread auteur cinema made popular back in the sixties, but aims to shed most (not all) the pretension. Auteur has a stack ranking inherent in it: the curse of the “better than”. Authored is simply a distinct personal voice, aiming to say more about they who made it than the form itself. Authored cinema can stumble through any genre and doesn’t require excellence in execution. You just need to know that only one person could have helmed it, and without them it would have been something completely different.

Corporate cinema still produces authored work, as evidenced by BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER this year, just as Indie regularly delivers soulless, hackneyed work on a consistent basis too. Each sector frequently offers up the borderline fence sitters that we fail to see the trees through, either because of their shyness or because we’ve been blinded to a particular nuance. Some authored work does not reveal itself until we learn to look past the trends and make amends with the art – you need to see multiple examples of in order to track the code (or have the sort of critic who can place singular work in context of this world).

We’ve allowed the corporate behemoth to eat the authored soul alive, and now it is living on fumes without the proper life support. The dominant structures do not serve singular voices in any way whatsoever now, and truly only the strong survive. If you enter this labyrinth, you need both armor, an army, and tremendous reserves of amour – and good luck with that. There is a whole hierarchy of needs for creative people and one size does not fit all, be it in development, production, distribution, or access. The demise of the authored film is due to a failure to diversify our systems of creation and consumption, and instead mistakenly think that we could graft on to what was built and refined to serve massive pop confections and expect them to savor the flavor of transcendence.

Yes, this is yet another plea for the commitment to build yet another separate ecosystem. You may be asking yourself “Do we need a separate non-dependent independent ecosystem, a separate ecosystem that values the artist, and now a separate ecosystem for authored cinema? Can’t they all be the same thing?” Yes, they could serve all masters, for sure, but not necessarily. I believe in the importance of small things, of small differences. I believe people often mistake a piece for the whole. I believe people have lost the ability to recognize nuance. Seeing the distinction, particularly when it comes to goals, helps us design better systems. We don’t have to make it work for everyone. It is up to you to decide. But it will behoove all of us to see what is needed or at least helps us achieve our goals.

We were always making a mistake, selling our wares at the same shop where they distributed poison and daggers. We wasted fifty years of indie film in America not building a better mousetrap. I guess we can give ourselves a bit of a pass since for awhile we did have something the same but different. At least different enough. It is a probably a good idea to dig in and find that moment we missed. The one where we could have broken away and become our own thing.

It was working when we had all the indie distributors. It was working when the foreign sales model was getting the work financed – even without US distribution in place. It was working when there were diverse revenue streams that allowed success to have multiple opportunities. It was working when there were multiple media launches that allowed several bites at the apple of audience connection. It was working when the cost of living was low enough to pursue a life in the arts.

Perhaps those successes – or the semi-ease (in retrospect) of sustainability – is where it all went wrong. You’ve seen this movie before. The cop goes undercover as the drug dealer and soon is in too deep and getting high on their own supply.  We were snorting up our profits and refusing to see what was needed for the next stage, thus squandering our future. We never built the construct needed to effectively battle the predictable corporate tendencies of predatory pricing, market dominance, and overall anti-competitive ways. Yes, once we had government to protect us from such things, but that was back when us little ones mattered and it was government for the people and not rule by the dollar. Makes me wanna holler. Let’s get out of this mud.

In case you didn’t pick up what I was just throwing down: we had a moment and we missed it. Let’s not get fooled again. Let’s not make the same sort of mistakes that the studios made when they let the fox into the henhouse. We had a moment when we could’ve seen the opportunity before us and actually built upon it. We had an alternative system in place and we let it go and then they destroyed it. We had multiple sm/arthouse buyers in every territory. We had specialized sales agents catering to authored voices. We had independent community theaters in every market, with the potential to be organized into something truly powerful. We had a system that worked to squeeze every penny of potential. And we were a significant part of the cultural conversation. If you were a citizen of the world, you were talking about authored cinema.

If letting all that go was the first sin, the second one tore our skin off. And boy oh boy am I guilty again here. I must’ve been dreaming thinking streaming could be our salvation. Or maybe I was high. Or just as delusional as the next guy. Sure it could have been something else. It was the fairytale that turned out to be a nightmare. Whatever hopes we had for it, streaming currently truly diminishes the work, the value, the context, and the experience of authored cinema. Which means it also destroys the art and our ability to sustain ourselves.

If that wasn’t enough, we allowed streaming to destroy the only legs we had to stand on – international sales and theatrical distribution – which in turn meant the ruin of American Indie’s sole distinguishing characteristic from our international authored-forward siblings – the special sauce that so well complemented their state-supported cultural menu: our robust private equity sector.  Without international sales and theatrical, the FKA the film business no longer makes much sense for them to continue investing in. Pow. Pow. Pow. Three bullets to the foot. Hop a long Cassidy, time to move on.

So here we are, the makers and purveyors of authored cinema, still at bat, but we’ve got two strikes against us, but hopefully the two other strikes woke us the fuck up. The system will destroy us unless we take action. Before we whiff for the third time, we need to get a wee bit mindful to our predicament.

This where I pretend to be the batting coach. Hey batter batter, our stance is off. Widen and ground. Look where you want it all to go. Time to get unified. Sometimes it is best not to swing for the fence. Sometimes the best strategy is just to keep getting on base. There are enough of us that if we just go back to making this a business of singles, we can get back in the game.

What once was – or could have been – the global infrastructure for authored cinema has been way off balance for far too long. Be it stateside, or anywhere else in the world, we have been putting all our eggs in the wrong basket.  We need to diversify. You know how the state-run capitalist authoritarian powers use their economic heft to make others ignore their sins? So what if they have internment camps, we need to access their markets? So what if they limit people’s freedom, break treaties and commitments, silence opposition, or anything of the like – we need to access their markets. That’s bullshit.

We don’t need their markets; there is enough without them. We just need to not be dependent on them. Authored cinema needs to learn that lesson. You know that story how China blocked the sale of Australian wine? Or the one about how they blocked the sale of pianos made in the Czech Republic because they dared to send a representative to Taiwan?  Vicious tactics yes, but not enough to defeat the opposition when they had the sense to diversify their markets and sales. Authored cinema needs to be like those wine merchants and piano makers, stat. It is time to look beyond the markets that we’ve relied on for so long and do something entirely different.

Authored cinema has relied on our ability to get production financing but the neglect of marketing dollars and infrastructure support is going to bury it – unless we change our behavior pronto. We’ve known for 25 years that we need to budget for marketing, but one never does. We keep dreaming that each film is the exception to the rule and because our media sells the success stories that are really just the 1%, we keep dreaming the same fantasy. The logical and prudent thing to do would be to have 10% of any film’s budget to be for marketing. Mind you, that is not the money you will need to market your work; it is just the money you will need to produce the initial plan and materials needed to raise the balance. Unfortunately, though, we have not built the infrastructure that would allow of us to go out and get that job done too. And the truth is, most of us probably couldn’t anyway if we tried, because it is not our skill set or even the playing field we should be on. We need new allies. We need a plan to build them. But that is nowhere near as hard as it is to make a movie well, so we’ve got that.

A double check is needed here. Once again, you picking up what I am throwing down? I’m saying instead of putting our money to fund films, we have to spend in two other stores. The first is the superstore of marketing, or at least the launchpad to that rocket boost. The second is a whole new spanking suit. Or rather the sort of Dapper Dan adaptation.

We need to start to invest in the operational improvements that will make the ecosystem for authored cinema something entirely different. So you see that allocation? One third production, one third marketing, one third ecosystem fix. Then we will start to have some roads in place that we can really drive on. But remember if you don’t know where you are going, you will end up somewhere else (HT Yogi B).

I’ve got bad news for some of you here though. This may be the place where we separate the lovers from the dabblers. You have to be in it for the long run now. I’ve said it before: if you don’t truly love movies, please quit right now. If we are doing things right, if we see the north star, we have some years of struggle before us. Rome wasn’t burnt in a day. I hate to say it, but it will not be profitable right away, but I know it will still be worth it.

So that is the question: can we forgo immediate gratification, and instead build something that is sustainable and has true long term benefit. Recognizing the system that we are in, as well as the system that is in us, are there enough us willing and able to delay satisfaction in the present in exchange for a better future. We sure haven’t proven that with the way we’ve addressed things like climate chain, but maybe we are learning. Or our children are smarter. Or at least the young will learn from the mistakes of The Olds. Cinema gods, please help us now or all hope may be lost! 

This is where we are now at: if we don’t pivot, soon there won’t be a dancefloor. Poof! And if you can’t dance, there’s not going to be the revolution you wanted. So what are the steps to this brand new dance? What’s the kick ass move? The stunner? Take a deep breath because it is going to be a long term that we are underwater. We need to build a proof of principle. It is a new dress. And it is not like the old dress. Remember what John said (or rather sang): “You say you'll change the constitution. Well, you know: We all want to change your head.You tell me it's the institution. Well, you know: You better free your mind instead’.

That is to say, I think we have to start with a non-profit plan. And it has to be a collective action. A little self-sacrifice for the common good. I think most of us have it in us. Most of us will wait to snack if we can get more later, right? Well maybe not, but I am ready to get down to it, so long as I am not alone. Let’s build it better together today for a better tomorrow down the road.

There are other ways to make money then selling ourselves to the GlobalStreamingPlatforms. Take the eggs out that basket. Spread it out. Develop new streams. Imagine there is no heaven, above us only sky. We will get into the nittygritty of what that all looks like as we walk down that path together. I know I am not the only one.

Special thanks to Effie Brown who when we had a conversation at FilmNorth Filmmaker Forum graced me the phrase I just made liberal use of (you picking up what I am throwing down?). I did Ms. Brown. I am indeed.