From left, director Steven Soderbergh of 1989's ''Sex, Lies, and Videotape,'' with actors Laura San Giacomo, Andie MacDowell, and Peter Gallagher at this year's Sundance Film Festival. (Getty Images Photo / Andrew H. Walker)

First an Intro by Mitch Santell

My Great Uncle Alfred Santell was a teenager when he started in the film business back in 1914. If anyone had told him before the end of 1929 that the stock market would crash and would this would bring in a global depression, he might have said, "your nuts."

Now fast forward 2008. The decline of the film business I believe started in 2008 with the writer's strike. It has continued to shift as more and more studios are going on line. Studios can no longer afford to pay a single actor 20 Million Dollars when you could make five to ten pictures for the same amount.

In looking at the film business now, I so admire Steven Soderbergh for his willingness to take action and risk. His most recent film he is releasing on DVD at the same time he is putting it in movie Theaters.

Now onto our article which was originally written by Ty Burr at the Boston Globe.
PARK CITY, Utah - Two decades ago, a young, unknown filmmaker named Steven Soderbergh arrived in this mountain resort town with his first movie under his arm. The 1989 Sundance Film Festival transformed him into an overnight star of the American independent film movement; the critical and financial success of "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" established Sundance as the the white-hot center of the alt-movie universe.

Twenty years later, the festival has cooled to an uncertain ember, reflecting a business model that is slowly but surely dying. Soderbergh arrived at Sundance 2009 with a rough cut of his latest film, "The Girlfriend Experience," which follows an upscale Manhattan call girl as she negotiates a bleak new economic era. Like the film's New York City, the Sundance that Soderbergh returned to was a chastened affair. Night may be falling on the land of "Little Miss Sunshine."

The economy is in tatters, and the indie film numbers aren't adding up. A number of specialty distributors closed shop in 2008, and the big buys of last year's Sundance - "Hamlet 2," "American Teen," "Choke" - proved a bust when they were released at lower altitudes. Park City lodging was down 10 percent during the 2009 festival; the corporations kept their tents and gift bags at home.

While some films sold this year, the action was muted and the figures didn't stagger the sensibilities.

As if mirroring this uncertain landscape, few of the movies at Sundance 2009, which wrapped yesterday, connected with audiences or the zeitgeist. There were films that were well received - the dark "Sin Nombre" and the rollicking "Rudy and Cursi" from Mexico, the blaxploitation goof "Black Dynamite," an inner-city melodrama called "Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire," which won both the Jury and Audience prizes for Dramatic Film when the awards were handed out Saturday night. There were more movies, however, that felt like business as usual, and business isn't what it used to be.

All of which begs the questions: Whither Sundance, and whither the American independent movie? In some senses, the festival returned to its roots this year. Hollywood star vehicles like the Richard Gere police drama "Brooklyn's Finest" and "I Love You Phillip Morris" (Jim Carrey playing a true-life gay con man as if he were Ace Ventura) were derisively received, while offbeat items like "Push" and the truly bizarre "The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle" (man gives birth to fish) prompted excitement and head-scratching. If you were seeking Big, you were disappointed. If you cherished the small, there were rewards.

Still, no film became the film - the one you just had to see at Sundance - even as, ironically, last year's festival was vindicated on Thursday when the 2008 entry "The Visitor" and Grand Jury Prize winner "Frozen River" received acting nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.By far the festival's most galvanizing onscreen moment was the inauguration of President Obama. On Tuesday morning, crowds clustered around TV sets; deals and panels came to a halt, and the screening rooms of Park City were mostly empty. How could mere movies compete with a reality this historically and emotionally resonant?

By contrast, the coming-of-age comedy-drama - a genre pioneered and perfected at this festival - is showing its age, and if you're looking for what ails Sundance, Greg Mottola's "Adventureland" offered dispiriting evidence. Based on the filmmaker's college years and set at a tatty amusement park, the film is amusingly written and has the necessary hip oldies on the soundtrack, yet it says nothing that dozens of previous coming-of-age movies haven't already told us.

At least "An Education," a glossy drama set in 1961 London that won the World Cinema Audience Award for Drama, introduced a new and buzzed-about star in the thoroughly charming person of 23-year-old Carey Mulligan. The British actress also appeared in the death-in-the-family drama "The Greatest", while "You Won't Miss Me," starring Stella Schnabel (daughter of painter/director Julian) and France's "Unmade Beds" spun grittier, less easily resolved, and more satisfying variations on the coming-of-age formula.

And, as usual, the documentaries were superb. Year in and year out, Sundance's nonfiction offerings are richer, truer, and more provocative than the narrative features, and a strong 2009 slate of environmentally minded documentaries like "Crude" (Amazon Basin damage), "The Cove" (dolphin depredation), and "Dirt: The Movie" (what it says) was balanced by other sharp observations. "Afghan Star," an unexpectedly touching look at a war-torn country potentially transformed by an "American Idol"-style TV show, was one of the few Sundance films this year that drew cheers from its audiences - and, on Saturday night, an Audience Award for World Documentary.

Yet the question hung there in the blue Park City skies: How do you sell a movie like "Afghan Star" or "The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle" in a hard new world? The festival's most crowded industry panel was not coincidentally called "The Panic Button," in which seven of the specialty film business's leading lights - including Soderbergh - argued over where it was all going.

Sony Classics copresident Michael Barker insisted that "There are silver linings here," citing "Frozen River" as proof that the process works. Focus Features head James Schamus, taunted by moderator Geoffrey Gilmore as "the fool that bought 'Hamlet 2,' " grinned, took it, and said, "If [the movie] came along this year, I'd do it again."

Yet there was a growing realization not only that the rules have changed but that they may not have been very good rules in the first place.

Everyone agrees that the standard models of indie theatrical distribution and exhibition are broken; everyone at Sundance and in the industry is grappling with how best to replace them.

Some are even sure they have answers. Consultant and panelist Peter Broderick touted a brave new world of "hybrid distribution," controlled directly by the filmmaker that combines website direct sales, video on demand, Internet and TV deals, cellphone distribution - and, yes, a theatrical release when and if necessary. Much of this is already in place, Broderick pointed out, and, in some cases, has proven successful. What look like microprofits to a studio can be extremely macro to an independent director.

The most unsettling thought, though - the real game-changer - is that the movie theater audience may have gone away for good. Said panelist Mark Gill, head of the independent production company the Film Department, "My son doesn't care what format [a movie] comes in. He cares how fast he can get it and if it can come to where he is."

That may be the hardest lesson to take in at the close of Sundance 2009: That everything learned in the past quarter-century means absolutely nothing going forward.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movies.com.

The producer credited with helping to launch the careers of Vincent Ward and Jane Campion says he would sell his films for $2 on the internet if it would get them to fans when they wanted them.

John Maynard wants New Zealand to pioneer an iTunes-like system for movies - getting films out quickly and cheaply on the internet to stop people turning to illegal downloads.

The Australasian producer, who has worked on two movies each by Ward and Campion, said the growth of iTunes had slowed illegal downloads of music. This week he told the Screen Production and Development Association (Spada) conference New Zealand could lead the world by adopting a similar model for films.

"It could happen in New Zealand - it's one of the few places in the world I know that can change very, very quickly culturally," he said. "I would rather sell my movies for $2 a download and make it available to its audience" than have people steal them.

In April, the Motion Pictures Association representative in New Zealand - Tony Eaton of the New Zealand Federation Against Copyright Theft - recommended Hollywood studios create a New Zealand website for legally downloading movies to reduce internet piracy.

Yesterday, Mr Eaton told the Spada conference that more than a third of the $6 billion film studios lost to piracy in 2005 was from illegal internet downloads.

He said the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace had been illegally downloaded 3.2 million times - before its New Zealand release.

Until recently, the federation's focus has been on pirated DVDs. Demand for movie downloads in New Zealand has been stunted by slow broadband speeds. But it is expected to increase when broadband gets faster.

Sony Pictures New Zealand general manager Andrew Cornwell said music downloads were easier to sell because they downloaded much faster than films.

There is a huge battle brewing between film producers, ISP's, Copyright Law and the consumer. Hopefully, the consumer will win.

For many North Americans, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire will be the first slice of cinema sampled from the location of the world’s largest film industry.

The city formerly known as Bombay, India – Mumbai - is home to Bollywood, a massive film industry that cranks out twice as many films annually as Hollywood. But it is only courtesy of a 52-year-old Englishman that a Mumbai movie is finally connecting with the average North American movie fan, via film festival acclaim, critical raves and growing Oscar buzz. "[Mumbai] is just coming at you the whole time and you can't control any of it," says Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle of the world’s fifth most populous metropolitan area during a recent interview with FilmStew in San Francisco. "You can try. You can futilely try to control it and you'll end up with rubbish." "What you've got to do is just embrace how out of control it is and how impossible it is apparently to find a pattern in anything, but if you do trust it, there is a pattern there," he continues. "It does work. Against all the odds, it does work and you will find it eventually. The country gives it to you back eventually.” “You start work, and you think, 'We're never going to get this. We're never going to get anything done today.' By 4 o'clock in the afternoon, you've got everything you've ever wanted."  


The story of a teenager from Mumbai's slums who makes the most of an appearance on the Indian edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Boyle's heartfelt drama (co-directed with local Loveleen Tandan) has been creating a stir ever since its world premiere at August's Telluride Film Festival. It went on to win Audience Awards at the Toronto International, Chicago and Austin Film Festivals and has been nominated for six British Independent Film Awards, including Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Independent Film. Harrow native Dev Patel, who received a British Independent Film Award nomination for Most Promising Newcomer, plays Jamal, the 18-year-old accused of cheating when he gets to within one answer of winning the quiz show. Boyle's original plan was to cast all of his actors in India, but he ran into trouble when it came to casting Jamal. Not that the young Indian actors he saw weren't good actors. "But they are all built like bodybuilders," Boyle reveals. "If you want to get on in Bollywood, you have to look like a hero. You've got to be able to take the shirt off and kind of like dance in the waterfall in Switzerland. They all looked wrong. I didn't want anybody that looked like that." It was Boyle's 17-year-old daughter who clued him to Patel, a co-star on a favorite TV show, the British series Skins. "Dev plays a comic character in it. He was good and he looked dead right for me. He was kind of nothing looking, not particularly handsome, a bit scrawny, and I kind of liked that look. And I met him, and he was cool," Boyle recalls. In the film, Jamal faces arrest and even torture when the powers that be decide that there is no way that an uneducated Mumbai "slumdog" could possibly know so many correct answers. The only way to clear himself is to tell his life's story, the source of his knowledge springing directly from hard experience. It was those twin conceits of the game show and personal history revealed and taking on nearly epic proportions that enthralled Boyle when he first read Beaufoy's screenplay. "I love the idea of India, that it was portrait of India that was clearly changing,” he explains. “It’s such an extraordinary culture and history and yet it's clearly changing all the time. Those are things I responded to, that I jumped at." "I've always wanted to make a film about seeing a person age," he adds. "Normally, it's done, they're 80 and they're on their deathbed and they're reminiscing, and they're trapped by their memories really in a way. But he's 18 and he's got a fistful of memories, and they set him free really, because he's got his whole life in front of him really. I loved that fact, that was quite kind of radical, and I thought, quite cool. I'd never seen that before."

Each and every day we will do our best to point out the deals, dreams and trends affecting the film and entertainment business.