Departments
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Week of 10 September 1999 |
Vol. III, No. 5 |
Feature Article
Filmmakers shooting for online hit with indie comedy
By David J. Craig
Many filmmakers spend years trying to land a studio deal that will put their movie on the silver screen.
But when Sam Sokolow (COM'91) and Rob Lobl (COM'92), cowriters, producers, and directors of the dramatic comedy The Definite Maybe, were greeted with slammed doors years ago when courting film companies, they assumed the business end of their art without missing a second of the action.
"A lot of what you're able to do in this business is dictated by what other people are willing to do for you," says Lobl, 29. "Miramax and the other independent companies didn't offer us anything. So we decided to bypass them."
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From script to screen
The two met nine years ago over a game of pickup
basketball at BU. Sokolow, then a third-year film student,
and Lobl, a sophomore planning a career as a journalist,
became fast friends and writing partners.
After college, both men took jobs as television production assistants: Sokolow in New York, Lobl in Los Angeles. Determined to make it as filmmakers, they set out to milk their unglamorous but well-positioned jobs for all the connections they were worth.
"I was literally getting coffee for Ned Beatty," remembers Sokolow. "But we knew it would take a huge network to make a movie, so we got jobs that introduced us to people we needed to know."
The pair finished the script for The Definite Maybe in 1993 and began hunting for a studio to turn it into a film. But with no experience or famous names attached to their project, and insisting that they direct and produce the work themselves, even small independent films companies refused to help them.
"Every single little door was slammed in our faces," Sokolow says. "Nobody was going to just buy our script and let us make a movie with their money."
But perseverance and resourcefulness paid off. In 1996 Lobl showed the script to television and Hollywood actor Bob Balaban, for whom he had worked as an assistant, and Balaban liked it so much that he agreed to take a role. Other well-known actors, among them Terri Garr, Ally Sheedy, Roy Schneider, and Al Franken, soon followed.
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Independent filmmaker Rob Lobl
(COM'92) directs actor Dan Patrick in The Definite
Maybe.
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Sokolow and Lobl still couldn't land a production deal, but the involvement of established actors earned them enough credibility to persuade others to lend them the cash to pay for a movie crew and filmmaking equipment.
The Definite Maybe was filmed in 20 days in April 1997 at 43 locations in Manhattan and the Hamptons for less than $100,000, raised in "couple-thousand-dollar chunks," Sokolow says, from college buddies, former employers, and business acquaintances. Real estate mogul Bill Rundin and ad man Jerry Della Femina both lent their homes in exchange for cameo roles.
Amazingly, the filmmakers say, compared to raising money and making sure trains ran on time around the movie set, directing film shoots with the likes of Balaban and Garr was the least stressful aspect of the project.
"The fact that the actors had enough confidence in our script to show up gave us the confidence to point them in the direction we thought the picture should go," says Lobl, who now designs Web sites for a Dallas ad agency. "It was the experienced stars who made us feel the most comfortable."
Next stop, cyberspace
By all accounts, Sokolow and Lobl produced a gem
of a first movie. The Definite Maybe made the rounds of
independent film festivals, reaping positive reviews and
awards, including Best Picture and Best Director at the 1998
New York Independent Film and Video Festival. But no
distribution deal resulted, and Sokolow and Lobl, both still
determined on film careers, began to fear that their movie
might never reach a wide audience.
"When you win a major festival and hear the audience laughing and enjoying your movie, but you can't get any kind of deal, you realize the industry isn't very friendly to filmmakers," says Sokolow. "We see so many great movies made by people who have mortgaged their lives to make it, but the only ones who will ever see it are the 200 people at the festival."
As frustrated as they were with the film industry, Sokolow and Lobl weren't about to give up on The Definite Maybe. Having heard that Amazon.com was about to include independent films on an offshoot of its Amazon Advantage site, they raised another $3,000 to produce VHS videocassettes and get their film on the Web site, where it became available for purchase on September 1. They also hired iFilm, an online company that markets independent films, to show a trailer for their movie on the Internet and to link viewers to Amazon Advantage.
"Some filmmakers keep doing the festival circuit, and two or three years down the road they might get some kind of deal," says Sokolow. "But Miramax might change all your music, cut out 20 minutes, or play with your punch lines. Every filmmaker is afraid of that. And then this opportunity came, and it seemed too good to pass up."
Coco Jones, senior vice president of marketing at iFilm, believes that the Internet will democratize the independent film industry, because it makes the work of filmmakers who insist on retaining artistic control accessible to film audiences.
"The prospects for skipping the traditional distributor and going directly to the retailer are real," Jones says. "I know filmmakers who are dead broke but are getting their movies out there. The Internet could change the way a very small number of film companies have been able to bottleneck the industry."
Sokolow, who now pays his bills doing freelance production work in New York, and Lobl are still optimistic that their film will make money. Two weeks ago their story was told in the New York Post, and Sokolow says Time and Vanity Fair have since called for interviews.
"This is all a huge gamble, and we're figuring it out as we go," he says. "We might change the way filmmakers reach an audience, or we might not. But it's worth the shot because this is our passion."
To view a trailer for The Definite Maybe, visit www.iFilm.net.