Indie Film

Writer-director Robert Rodriguez recently returned to his Alma Mater, the University of Texas at Austin, for a casual conversation moderated by his former professor Charles Ramirez Berg.

One of the central topics of discussion was El Rey, the national cable channel that Rodriguez will unleash in 2014 with help from Comcast. He has been traveling the country to promote the in-the-works outlet, which is designed to give Latino filmmakers a much needed public airwaves boost. From the Austin360.com report:

Latinos will make up a third of the U.S. population by 2050, according to census estimates, yet, Rodriguez, joked, there was a dog channel before there was one like El Rey…

Rodriguez said the cable channel will be cutting-edge, underground and imbued by an indie sensibility. He has already had multiple conversations with Hollywood stars such as Benicio del Toro and Michelle Rodriguez, who have expressed interest in collaborating with El Rey on original programming.

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

FishbowlLA was in attendance Thursday as Whitewater Films kicked off its third year of bi-monthly back patio panels in Santa Monica with a sunny lunch hour discussion of “The Shifting Landscape of Independent Film.” Manning the barbecue as usual was company founder Rick Rosenthal, while Indiewire editor-in-chief Dana Harris returned for another rotating stint as panel moderator.

Dustin Smith, vp of acquisitions and business affairs for Roadside Attractions, kept things lively with a number of jokes and direct exchanges with the other panelists. He recalled for example that by flying in Jennifer Lawrence from London for a Q&A, he was able to keep Winter’s Bone screening at the Arclight Cinemas Hollywood for a critical early third week. He also had lots to say about the state of “S-VOD” dealmaking with Netlifx; as the streaming service focuses more on episodic TV assets, he recently encountered his first outright rights renewal rejection (Goodbye Solo).

Deborah McIntosh, a member of William Morris Endeavor’s global finance and distribution group, addressed the exciting new distribution arm of client Tim League, co-founder of Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse. She also touched on the agency’s imminent plans to release an independent feature exclusively on Facebook.

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California-based Christian Post reporter Alex Murashko caught up with David Wood at the tail end of the March 21-25 K.E.Y.S. conference in LA. The topic of conversation was Wood’s ambitious movie project The Resurrection.

Some in the Christian filmmaking community are referring to the planned feature as “God’s sequel” to Mel Gibson’s 2004 smash The Passion of the Christ. Wood and a team of five other producers are starting to put the word out to churches about the project and hope to crowd-source the entire $40 million budget:

A “Spiritual Producer” is described as an individual who has donated a minimum of $25 or more to the not-for-profit, pledged to pray for the Resurrection project, spread the word (i.e. via Facebook, Twitter) and/or committed a serious capital investment in the project with a financial return…

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By somewhat sheer happenstance, the Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg has been thrust onto the Inside the Actors Studio beat.

After Martin Sheen heard “through the grapevine” about the film journalist’s fondness for The Way, an indie drama made with and by son Emilio Estevez, the 71-year-old actor invited Feinberg to his Malibu home. The result is a nearly two-hour videotaped conversation about Sheen’s life and times.

What’s so great about this video is how raw it is. With a spectacular rock-landscaped pool in the background, Sheen is free to reminisce without any of those annoying cut-away shots  so common at Hollywood junkets, of the interviewing journalist nodding or smiling.

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Juntoboxfilms.com, a collaborative film studio and social media platform, gets its name from the American Revolution days. “Benjamin Franklin formed what he called the Junto Society, which consisted of a diverse group of people committed to self-improvement, their community and the aid of others,” senior vice president of digital Rachael McLean tells FishbowlLA. “This is the inspiration behind the name of our company.”

Helping lead this namesake, public-voted 21st century indie film revolution will be Oscar winning actor Forest Whitaker, who was formally announced today as company co-chairman. Inspired by social gaming technology, juntoboxfilms.com will invest a total of $2.5 million in five films this year. They are also hosting a special pre-SXSW digital mixer at their offices in Santa Monica tonight, in partnership with Digital LA.

“We are currently privately funded by individual investors,” McLean explains. “All films are different with the budgeting requirements. The funding will be distributed depending on what the actual film is and the story, that way we aren’t locked into a set amount [per film].”

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You may have never heard of the Cacophony Society, but chances are you’ve heard of events created by the group or its members, such as SantaCon, Burning Man, and the Urban Idiotarod. Chuck Palahniuk was a member, and the group’s antics provided the inspiration for Project Mayhem in his book Fight Club. The society, which was founded in California in the mid 1980s, had a profound cultural impact that went far beyond the local art scene – they still hold SantaCon every year in Tokyo, fer crissakes.

So when this fishie headed down to Santa Ana this past Saturday for the screening of Jon Alloway‘s new documentary film, Into The Zone: The Story of the Cacophony Society, and corresponding art exhibit, we expected to see the plenty of press covering the event. But no.

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Some extremely sad news has been shared by the San Francisco Film Society. The organization’s recently appointed 57-year-old executive director Bingham Ray, a beloved titan of the independent film world, passed away this morning at a Utah hospital following a second recent stroke suffered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival last Friday. He leaves behind a wife and three children.

From today’s heartfelt SFFS website announcement:

“The board of directors and staff of the Film Society are stunned and deeply saddened by the untimely death of our executive director. We at the Film Society and the entire film community have lost far too early an energetic and visionary impact player who has helped shape the independent film industry for decades in so many important and valuable ways,” said Pat McBaine, SFFS board president. “He shall be dearly missed. Our deepest sympathies and condolences go out to Bingham’s family and his legions of friends and colleagues all over the world who loved and respected him.”

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Film Independent, which puts together the LA Film Festival as well as the annual Spirit Awards, announced today they were taking the usual step of naming two presidents of their organization. Film Independent senior director Sean McManus and director of artist development Josh Welsh were both promoted and will help run the organization jointly. The pair are taking over for Dawn Hudson, who left Film Independent in June to become the CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

McManus has been with Film Independent since 1998, as has worked as senior director for the past six years. Welsh, meanwhile, has been running the organization’s various labs and development programs for the past decade. He also, according to the press release, moonlights in an alt-country band called Meatyard. They have an artsy video featuring sad mannequins if you’re curious.

Never mind that West Hollywood journalist Cary Harrison, the person at the center of a recent Patch item about 2007 indie film Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, lives in an apartment once occupied by Marilyn Monroe. In the case of this article’s slant, Google could have turned out to be the reporter’s best friend.

Patch contributor James F. Mills frames Harrison’s upcoming January 9 free Internet stream of the film, and planned accompanying interviews on his radio show, as a newsworthy event. But in the article comments, long-time sci-fi journalist Michael Hinman clarifies that the movie–featuring Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig–is anything but “rarely seen:”

I think it’s great to see some interest put into this production, which I thought was pretty top-notch, to be honest. But I think the story is a bit misleading to suggest that the only way you can see this film is at a Star Trek convention, or through this gentleman’s website.

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This qualifies as an extremely smart organic move. Sophia Savage, a staff writer for Anne Thompson‘s TOH! Indiewire blog, is readying her directorial debut with a little help from Kickstarter. Her dramatic short will be filmed this coming January at a gorgeous Topanga Canyon location, and currently gets tipped on the fundraising site with an impressive eight-minute video.

Inspired by real events, Empyrean will tell the story of a daughter who returns home to help care for her terminally cancer-stricken father. Dual resident Chayse Irvin, a Vancouver native, will handle the cinematography chores, while the paternal role of Jimmy will be played by veteran actor Sonny King.

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