You don’t get points for the good movie no one went to see. Pretend for a moment you have an endless amount of money to make any movie you want. What would it be? An action film? Romance? Comedy? Who would direct? Who would star? Pretend I came to you with a film directed by James Toback (Tyson) starring Alec Baldwin and Neve Campbell in something of a politically-inspired erotic Middle Eastern adventure inspired by Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Last Tango in Paris in which there’s the promise of exploratory sex. How much would you be willing to pay to help fund that film? Better yet, what would it take to get you to fund that film?
While navigating the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Toback and Baldwin took such an idea to a variety of investors, both foreign and domestic to get the proposed film off the ground, while also taking a look at the Cannes Film Festival itself and what it means to cinema. Included in the process are interviews with directors from Bertolucci to Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Roman Polanski; stars including Ryan Gosling, Jessica Chastain, Berenice Bejo and James Caan; and several industry executives and producers from Jeffrey Katzenberg, Mike Medavoy, Avi Lerner and Universal’s Ron Meyer.
In essence, Seduced and Abandoned has gathered all the pieces necessary to explore the world of filmmaking today, the names you’d need in your Rolodex to help get a film off the ground. And with all of this comes the frustration mixed with hope, disappointment and a realization as to just how hard it is to get the money you need and maintain your original vision.
What you’re probably going to begin by saying is, “Well that idea they’re trying to sell isn’t great, or at the very least a hard one to pitch.” Well, that’s sort of the point. The idea needed to be just enticing enough to encourage conversation in an effort to show you how something that could be very interesting could become something more mainstream and salable to a wider audience. Then again, it’s not like the plot actually matters.
Without even knowing the crux of the film, one financier says, “It will have comedy of course” and another suggests introducing submarines since audiences relate Baldwin to either “30 Rock” or Hunt for Red October. Coppola adds to that saying, “The only way I can get money is if I want to make a gangster film.”
Avi Lerner, producer of such films as The Expendables 2, Drive Angry and the recent Conan the Barbarian remake admits he doesn’t read scripts and while Toback and Baldwin talk with him he struggles to remember who Berenice Bejo is (and I’m not positive he wasn’t just playing for cameras when he finally “remembered”). As for the pitch from Baldwin and Toback, he points to a poster for a recent film of his, Playing for Keeps, in which Gerard Butler is surrounded by Jessica Biel, Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Judy Greer. Baldwin laughs, “So you’re saying I have to fuck four women in a hotel, not just one.” Lerner smiles, “Maybe five.”
For the film their looking to make it becomes clear the $15-20 million they were hoping to get is unattainable as $4-5 million seems to be the most consistent number thrown around. One financier says, “There is no middle ground. Either really big or really small.”
Toback suggests to Campbell early on, he wouldn’t make the film without her, yet suddenly the prospect of getting even more money should he give Campbell a different role and cast the likes of Gosling and Chastain becomes promising. To go along with that, the idea of instead of moving the action from Iraq to New York, with the psychology of coming home from the war torn region as opposed to being in it sparks even more interest in the potential financiers. Meanwhile, foreign investors suggested filming in territories such as China and Russia and casting stars from each region to help bolster international sales.
The business of film producing is front and center and getting the money is clearly a major hurdle each and every director, from Scorsese to Polanski, suffers from.
I’m reminded of the recent news that Scorsese’s next film will be his passion project Silence, a film set in the 17th century as two Jesuit priests face violence and persecution when they travel to Japan to locate their mentor and to spread the gospel of Christianity. Obviously a film targeting a smaller domestic audience, but the international prospects may be a bit higher as Scorsese has landed The Amazing Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield alongside Ken Watanabe and Japanese actor Issei Ogata. It took the film ten years to get off the ground.
Speaking with Polanski, Baldwin asks how easy it is for him to make a movie nowadays. Polanski replies saying it’s easy once the money is in place, but getting the money is the hard part.
The quote I posted at the top of this review actually came from Universal Studios President Ron Meyer reacting to what he calls a misquote when he said, “We make a lot of shitty movies. Every one of them breaks my heart,” back in 2011. He says he was speaking in a more general sense in terms of the industry as a whole, not just Universal. Yet, in Seduced and Abandoned he says you can have a really good movie that doesn’t make anything and a really bad one that makes a killing. So, when he says, “You don’t get points for the good movie no one went to see,” doesn’t it stand to reason making bad ones everyone does see is the Universal motto?
One quote I absolutely loved came from James Caan talking about the films he’s offered today and he starts off the sentiment saying, “You have to do shit–” only to correct himself, “Not shit…” It’s an example that says as much as Seduced and Abandoned opens the door to the behind-the-scenes action of film financing, there is still posturing and PR going on.
This is how we arrive at today’s films, films made by committee, something everyone can “enjoy”, an idea as absurd as it sounds. You’re never going to get everyone to like your movie, but what the studios are aiming for now, is to make sure everyone doesn’t hate their movie. It’s these middle-of-the-road films that don’t break any new ground but they do make a lot of money.
The industry has changed considerably as the numbers for Johnny Depp‘s most recent indie features were compared to the numbers from the Pirates franchise, and as someone points out, at one point last year we had a superhero movie (The Avengers) up against a board game movie (Battleship). This is Hollywood today.
The veil is slowly being lifted and Seduced and Abandoned is yet another documentary opening up the secretive world of filmmaking to its audience. While the equipment necessary to make films is becoming cheaper and crowd-sourced funding is gaining in popularity, the process of funding a film as we see here is going to continue and it’s going to continue to be hard for many of your favorite directors. I just wonder when the vanilla film productions we’re getting today are going to finally stop interesting the masses and force Hollywood to change once again.
