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From the "People" Archives:
by Eugene Hernandez indieWIRE's conversation with Geoff Gilmore continues... indieWIRE: A lot of iW readers are, other than the industry, what I would call first-time filmmakers, or pre-first-time filmmakers. But clearly not every one of those films makes it into a Sundance or even a solid regional film festival. And I'm wondering what you think is the state of the world for that segment of people and the environment that they're starting out in now. Because you're seeing their work and you're not able to -- or wanting to -- accept it all. Geoffrey Gilmore: That's a really good question, because there's such a sense that people have that we're responsive to filmmakers that have some reputation and not responsive to the first time feature makers, and yet, when we look at the number of first time and second time feature makers in the festival, and certainly in the last couple of years, we have like 60 or 70% of the festival is still first-time and second-time feature makers. And I haven't done the assessment yet this year -- I'll do it at some point when I have time [laughs] -- and the fact of the matter is we may be slightly lower this year, but some of the filmmakers that we have in the festival are filmmakers who aren't first or second time feature makers, but many of them are filmmakers who even though this might be a film that's a second or third feature, are not necessarily established filmmakers. They're not necessarily someone who's first feature launched them into a very high profile career. And again, that just gets back to the maturation of this world. As an example, we have a filmmaker in competition called Marc Forster, who did a film called "Everything Put Together" and I believe, and I'm not sure I'm right, that this is his third feature. And the other two features that he's done -- I'd seen one of them which I remembered very distinctly -- and I remembered the other one. But both basically disappeared with very little trace. So one can talk about Marc Forster as being a filmmaker who's not a first-time filmmaker, but he's also a filmmaker that is actually still completely unknown. And so we find ourselves in that situation a lot, where even for filmmakers that are first-time filmmakers, there used to be a sense that real talent shows itself on its first work, and I always go back to a story that I think was being told by [Peter] Bogdanovich or someone....But they were talking about John Ford, who had made 22 films in the silent film period before he made "The Iron Horse," and "The Iron Horse" was the film that made his reputation. And yet, this was the 23rd feature of his career. And this is back in the 20's, well before the 80+ features, decades of work ahead of him. But somehow, the sense of independent filmmakers is that we have to force them to be not only successful, but somehow brilliantly successful in their first effort. And I'm not sure that we're going to find that's more of an exception to the rule than it has been the rule. Those filmmakers that emerge in a blaze of glory with their first work, they'll be there, but there's also a lot of filmmakers who will really, in some sense, need that opportunity to work to find their own voice, their own directorial touch. That's something that I encourage people to do as much as I possibly can, which is to work. Get your films made, if you can be part of getting them out, get them out. If they get out, fine, but continue to work and find yourself a situation where you can make whatever it is you have to make, even if it's sometimes not a feature film. You know, to find a way to develop your talent. And that's something that we very much deal with in encouraging the new filmmakers at this point to continue to work. Because it's an obviously incredibly difficult, competitive, not just marketplace, but filmmaking universe, and I go back to what we just said -- if ten years ago we looked at a couple of hundred features, and now we're looking at 1,000, just the numbers alone are obstacles that people didn't have to face. And it creates a great deal of anxiety for people.
I know a tremendous amount of people seem to think that the way to overcome that is to make the most commercial film possible. And in fact, what we seem to feel is more true, is to make the most original film possible which is the film most likely to be commercial, rather than the work that is derivative, rather than the work that seems familiar. So filmmakers who have broken through with originality, with audaciousness, you end up feeling, "Oh my lord, we've just had the opportunity to look again, to go into a process of discovery." And I don't feel that process of discovery is any more closed now than it was then. But I do find a lot of filmmaking which is not particularly audacious and not particularly in a sense where people really set a high standard for themselves. It's not particularly far-reaching. The quality overall of the independent work has, I think, increased as an overall standard, meaning that there's an essential quality to the production value, oftentimes the casting process has been done more carefully, that the script was more carefully considered, and there were more experienced people around them that could offer aid, that could help shape their work. So we did find work that was not as immediately awful as we might have found a decade ago, but that doesn't mean that the opposite isn't true either, that we don't immediately find work that's as audacious or creative. indieWIRE: I spent a lot of the last few years moderating panels about new technologies and digital developments, and I'm wondering how you imagine Sundance or the general festival experience changing over the next decade as a result of some of the things we're starting to get a taste of now, the internet and electronic cinema, etc.? Gilmore: I think it's going to change because I do think that one of the things the internet opens up, both from the process of production as well as from the aspects for potential new distribution avenues or other kinds of broadcast or other ways of allowing work to find audiences -- we're going to see a lot of other models develop. We're going to see incremental changes, not a sudden wave, but incremental changes for the next couple of years. And I think those are changes that we've experienced over the last couple of years, and I expect those incremental changes to continue in that way. It's a possibility that ultimately those incremental changes will build into a sudden big wave at some point, but it certainly is something that hasn't happened yet. And in part perhaps it hasn't happened because the models haven't been there, because the number of people who look and try to focus on what they're going to produce as trying to not simply copy someone but emulate what their financial successes are, haven't appeared yet. And as that begins to appear, we're certainly going to see, I hope, an even broader based set of opportunities for new filmmakers. And ideally a market that, as many people talk about in the present marketplace, the hole in the marketplace that exists now, the difficulty of getting unknown films into the marketplace who have to compete with much better known, better financed independent films, will find possibilities that I'm quite sure will help stimulate and encourage people to work in film and media production in a way that's very innovative. It won't simply be a set of commercial models, but it really will go back to the sense of experimentation, and even for that matter almost kind of "counter production," making works that represent alternatives, that really are self-consciously alternatives to things that people really don't feel fulfilled with that are already out there. And that I hope will stimulate even more production in that vein that will ultimately build up the aesthetic possibilities for this kind of production and for its reception. Because it's that reception of course that we're all depending upon.
There's an awful lot of people who have said that regardless of the fact that independent work has evolved tremendously over the last ten years, that the audiences have not evolved as rapidly with it. And part of that problem still gets back down to the crush that independent faces in a very competitive and difficultly defined marketplace, one that's dominated almost wholly still by studios. And so those opportunities arguably will help develop that audience, and by developing that audience, again I really think you start to build alternative structures which allow for, I hope, a breadth of production and a breadth of creativity that ultimately ideally bodes very well. indieWIRE: What would you see Sundance's responsibility or role in embracing that? Gilmore: I think we've talked a lot about it. We're showing digital projection this year, but I think that's a minor first step. I think a lot of it will continue to be our openness to certain kinds of work. And by being open to work, one of the things that we also have to reconceive is, for instance: How Sundance as a festival, as an institution, deals with the 'Net. What kind of work we do. How this work is accessible to people. And the importance that I still think Sundance has in helping develop those alternatives that I was referring to earlier, helping to develop audiences -- that I think one doesn't really have to develop, one really only has to bring them to water. There's clearly a lot of people out there who are very dissatisfied with what they're being given -- without condemning other kinds of production. I've always had a great admiration for what Hollywood does as an industry and think that it's craft and it's production values are second to nothing you'll ever see. I love classic Hollywood film and I don't necessarily view these things in opposition to each other. But I very much feel that what we do need however is the opportunities for new creative voices to emerge, and that's what we're all concerned about. I know you're very concerned about it, and we've continually talked about how we can help develop that, which will allow those new kinds of filmmakers, and more than that, the new kind of work that they bring to bear, to have an opportunity to be seen and more than that have an opportunity for support. Not to just be made and then never find any kind of outreach, but to build a cyclical industry in the same way that the independent industry has built itself up. That's not to say that the industry we're in has reached any pinnacles of success that it needs to look back upon and say how proud we are. But I do think that we do ourselves a disservice by looking at this as simply something that has cycled back to a point where we were at the beginning. And I really think that the impetuses of independent film, and even its kind of iconographic power for new artists, for new filmmakers, is really important. That filmmakers don't sit here idly. It seems to me that many young filmmakers and filmmakers-to-be don't sit here trying to dream of themselves being necessarily just the next Steven Spielberg, but that they now have other models and other kinds of filmmakers to pattern themselves after or to emulate. And those represent a much richer and I hope more vital film culture.
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