From the "People" Archives:

by Eugene Hernandez

[Part two of this interview is linked at the bottom of the page.]

There are few people who have been on the front lines of indie film -- as captains of their own distribution ship(s) -- for as long as Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, Co-Presidents (along with Marcie Bloom) of Sony Pictures Classics. The company is in some ways the latest in a string of Classics divisions that began at UA and continued at Orion. Eugene Hernandez speaks with the indie mainstays.

In large part, Barker & Bernard's success within a studio framework inspired the current generation of IndieWood distributors, preceding Disney's purchase of Miramax, as well as the creation of Fox Searchlight, Universal's purchase of October, and the formation of Paramount Classics.

Yet, while a company like Miramax has grown tremendously in size during the 90's as the definition of independent film has evaporated and IndieWood has embraced production, Sony Pictures Classics has remained a steady source of indie acquisitions, auteur productions, and foreign films released in an often modest, but, according to it chiefs, always profitably manner.

indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez visited Barker and Bernard in their adjoining offices at Sony Classics' New York headquarters, and a few days later Tom Bernard called the indieWIRE office to offer Hernandez and Mark Rabinowitz few more thoughts on the subject at hand.

---

"The 'sex, lies, and videotape' mentality has really put an end to that independent small film that has something to say; there's only a few venues that it can play around the country and it's got to wait a long time to get in."

indieWIRE: Bingham Ray, John Sloss, John Pierson, Marcus Hu and others in our series have credited you guys with remaining true to your mission at Sony Classics and certainly while at Orion before that. Bingham credits your corporate parent with allowing you the freedom to be able to stay true to that mission, but given all the changes that have happened in the marketplace, what are the challenges you face in staying true to that mission?

Tom Bernard: Here's the deal. We created Orion Classics and started UA Classics. This is the business we've wanted to be in, distributing quality films around the world in a way that makes money for every movie, and to do it in partnership with directors and producers, the people who conceived the film so that they'll share in the profits. So we've always looked at the business as our own business. And one of the reasons that we've always stayed within a major company is that the volatility of the independent marketplace is such that if my company went out of business, the filmmakers and vendors wouldn't be able to get paid -- which if you go through the 80's there's about 200 companies that came and went, great independent companies and specialized companies that went out of business, some of the greatest.

And so being in the womb of a studio with the freedom to do what you want, we've always felt is the best place. We never wanted to go out on our own and have to be in a position where we'd have to compromise our money and the survival of our company for the people who were our partners, the filmmakers. So we've always developed a very good contract at the places we've worked to protect the freedom and the ability to have an independent spirit of the way we do business, in distributing the movies and creating the ads and just everything that we do. So we did that at Orion, we had that at UA, and we have it even at Sony.

You know, there was a first round of Classics divisions in the early 80's. UA Classics was the first one, and we had our mandate about distributing specialized quality movies around the world, [that were] director oriented, and we had some great success with movies like "Diva" and "The Last Metro." All the other studios looked around and said, "Jesus Christ we've got to have one of these. They have one, every studio's got to have one." And they had no idea why they had to have one or what they would do, but they had to have one, and they formed Fox Classics, Universal Classics. Anyway, we continued to survive, and we left and went to Orion Classics and all the other Classics divisions went out of business because they weren't a financially sound idea.

We started Orion Classics with Arthur Krim under the same principles, and again, to be cost effective in how we did business, we knew what our marketing plans were, we knew what kinds of movies we wanted to buy, and it was very successful for us and then Orion ran into financial trouble. And so we looked around in the 90's, because at the end Orion got killed by the studios -- it was the cost of doing business that just got too expensive, I think, too expensive to make pictures, too expensive to market them. Things were starting to change at that point. So we started Sony Classics. We shopped around to all the various companies, and we found Peter Guber and Mike Medavoy, John Dolgen were there, and they understood our vision and what we wanted to do and gave us a contract that insured the freedom to be able to do it. And they had Columbia Classics years ago, so they had been familiar with what the business was -- and knew that when it was Columbia Classics it was run very wrong and they lost a lot of money.

And we showed them our business plan and how we went about our business and they were thrilled. So we started out with "Howard's End," and "Indochine," our two big pictures the first year. And "Howard's End" was unlike anything anyone had ever seen in the 90's; it was new. And the type of distribution pattern that we had on "Howard's End" was a shocking distribution pattern for that time. We opened it in Manhattan in one theater in March, and David Putnam had once said this about "The Killing Fields" when I was with him on a panel; they said, "How did you know what you were going to do?" And he said, "Well the picture would tell us." And we'd had a plan where we thought that "Howard's End" was going to play and it was going to be a big Oscar picture, and we didn't want to do the studio mentality release, which is go into 4-500 theaters for two months and it's over. So we expanded the distribution very slowly throughout the summer into September and we kept it alive, and as the year-end awards came we expanded it again, and expanded it again when the Oscars came and the Golden Globes, and it ended up playing into the next May and ended up doing $26 million.

The reason that's significant is that all the other studios took notice of what it did and they said, jeez, if they did $26 million, we probably could have done $50 million. We should have had it out on 1,000 screens and we should have been pumping the money in. But that type of distribution pattern doesn't work. If you look at classics like "Amadeus," it's the same pattern, and you have to really think it through. Now "Howard's End" is sort of a classic distribution pattern for the studios, "We'll do the "Howard's End" pattern." But what happened was, Disney said, we've got to have one of these. So they shopped around and said, we'll just buy Miramax. We won't have to start it up, because Miramax had shopped their company around to every studio and every studio looked at the bottom line and said, we don't need that. But Disney went ahead and [Jeffrey] Katzenberg saw the success of "Howard's End" and signed Merchant Ivory up to do "Jefferson in Paris." And as you saw the 80's progress, Fox Searchlight came into being, Universal decided they had to have one, so they somehow connected to Gramercy, and MGM is now trying to turn UA into a classics division, Paramount is creating Paramount Classics. Again it's that copycat attitude.

But I think what's different, and one of the things that has been the curse of this new "sex, lies and videotape" generation is that they have become mirror images of the studios. They are controlled by the studio distribution system, they are controlled by the studio creative system. So you look at Fox Searchlight and their head of distribution used to be a studio distribution guy. And everybody has come into this pattern of, "We'll release it like a studio, we'll go out with 300 prints, then we're going to go into television, then we're going to work up to 500, and it's like a steam engine rolling down the road and they're just not going to stop it and then when that doesn't work, they're going to move on to the next picture. And what's hurt us, and one of the things that's been the biggest challenges for us over the 90's is that the cost of doing business for us has been raised by companies like Miramax and Fox Searchlight where they have decided to spend money on the distribution of the pictures like studio money. And it's a sort of a hit mentality. We're going to release 20 and if one hits, it pays for the 20. Whereas our philosophy has always been every movie should be bought and worked to try to succeed, and be a financial success. And so it's a focus and it's a mandate.

And so when Miramax had "Cinema Paradiso" and you can put it in at any cost, all of a sudden the theaters said, "Well, Miramax is charging less for film rental terms, so if you want us to move it out to get your picture in, you've got to pay less terms." And filmmakers said, "Jeez, Fox Searchlight has a major television campaign for this movie, we want a major television campaign." I remember sitting in John Sloss' office one day when he had one of his clients, [Ed Burns, director of] "The Brothers McMullen," on the phone with him, and I remember John was talking to him on the conference call with the studio and he said, "What do you mean we made no money? We grossed $10 million!" And I said, "John, they spent $10 million to get the $10 million." So it's going into it like a business and what's your bottom line going to be -- the term is grossing up, or buying your box office. Maybe it makes some up in the ancillaries, but the filmmaker is not going to see a penny. So trying to figure out how to negotiate in the 90's waters of the studio mentality -- you know, a guy like Marcus Hu at Strand Releasing, he has the same mandate we do, and he has to struggle to stay there -- that's been the most difficult. I think one of the things that I found most shocking over the years was looking at the opening of Steve Buscemi's "Trees Lounge" and seeing a full page ad in the New York Times, and thinking, I think that money probably could have been spent more effectively.

iW: Are some of these types of things contractual now? "julien donkey boy" had a full page color ad in the New York Times when it opened.

Bernard: Shocking stuff. It's not in our contracts. You'd have to ask them why they do it. But that's been very difficult because a lot of the art theaters and places that would keep your movies on the screen for a long time have gone out of business. That's another problem that's gone on in this realm, is as the studios have tried to corrupt the independent world into making it fit into their peg, the theater chains have bought up all the independent art theater owners out there, so you have just a handful left. Lincoln Plaza with Dan Talbot who programs what he likes, and it works, and his audience goes there because it's him. You have Bob Laemmle in Los Angeles, who again when you ask, "Why are you playing that movie Bob?" "Because I like it." But Landmark Theaters is now a circuit of 120 screens. AMC has art theaters in Atlanta that are programmed, Reel Cinemas owns the art theaters in Dallas, Loews has the art theaters in Washington DC and Chicago. Hoyts has got art theaters in Hartford, but the fact is that these are now owned by circuits, so it's a circuit mentality where lowest gross each week is thrown off the screen. So if you've got a specialized movie, or a movie that needs to grow, or maybe it's not going to hit that monster box office but it's going to stay consistent numbers throughout its run, they're throwing it off as soon as another big movie opens.

---

"The people you meet have changed a lot, it's a whole process now. When is the last time you met an independent filmmaker from the past that has an ICM agent, a manager, and you talk to his people before you talk to him?"

So what it's done in the 90's, the "sex, lies, and videotape" mentality has really put an end to that independent small film that has something to say; there's only a few venues that it can play around the country and it's got to wait a long time to get in. Places like the Film Forum or the Quad or maybe Landmark's NuArt or the Music Box in Chicago, there's just a handful of places and the guys only going to get a week's run. Whereas in the past, these pictures could have run for 4-5 weeks. [With] "American Movie," we've gone to war with a lot of theaters to hold it on the screen, and we have, but it's been very difficult, whereas in the past it would not have been a problem. We'll never sell out a relationship with a major studio chain to get a picture placed in the right theater. And that we don't have a Dimension line, and we're not taking "Waking Ned Devine" or "The Full Monty" to a thousand screens, means that we're not at the mercy of the major circuits. So that if I had a "Scream 2," and I went to AMC and said, "Jeez, I need 2,000 screens to open today," they'd say fine, but when you go to Atlanta you can't play the independent art theater; I want it in my theater. And the same with all the other circuits.

So we kept our integrity by not having to do that, and over the years the way that we've been able to get a large number of screens if we need them is the heads of most of the major circuits are people we grew up with in the 80's that were bookers or journeyman guys who have risen to the top of the chains. So we can get on the phone with any of those guys and have access to those theaters without having to make a sell-yourself-to-the-devil deal 5 times a year. When we need it, it's there. So that's been difficult, getting into the theaters. But we've done it because of our consistency.

It's a unique situation; we buy what we like. And if we don't think we can make it work, we don't want it. When we buy a film, we look at it like, "What theaters are going to have it and who's the audience, can we make it work, can we figure out how to market the movie?" When we solve those problems, that's when we go after a film. If we don't have an answer, we don't want it.

iW: Are you any less likely now to take a very good movie like "American Movie" that's going to be smaller and maybe a fight to keep on screens in certain cities?

Bernard: It depends on the film. You take a shot at it. A movie like "Whatever," it didn't work financially as we wanted or would have liked but we took a shot at it because we liked what it had to say and thought it would work. That's not a factor. If we think we can make it work, we're going to go for it. What I found in the last several years, and another thing I've seen because of the "sex, lies and videotape" lottery win so to speak, is that independent filmmakers have changed dramatically as a group. There's always individuals that are unique.

iW: In terms of their expectations or in terms of the types of movies being made?

Bernard: In terms of their motivation for making films, in terms of the kinds of movies they're making. And what I mean by that is that I find that this is a very fashionable business to be in. It's like getting a band and let's get in the record business, so it's, "We'll make an independent movie and we'll get some money from some relatives and we'll go to film school and maybe we can make a lot of money and hit it big." And I think that's a lot of the motivation for people to get into the music business, they want to hit it big. And I think in the 80's people had something to say and they wanted to make a movie about it and get people to see it so they could see their message and express their ideas and what their feelings and ideas were, for whatever their cause or whatever they wanted to say, and the rest would happen. And I think there's a much more calculated callous, cold viewpoint of independent filmmakers today of, "What can we make that's going to make a lot of money, what kind of stars should we get so we can get that million-dollar Sundance deal, and then we can go to Hollywood and make real big Hollywood movies." And I can say this because over the last decade, Sundance has become more and more of not a film festival for narrative films, but a market. And the filmmakers approach it that way.

They come in here and you ask a filmmaker, "What do you want from your film?" In the 80's, people would say, "It's a film that has a cause and I need a certain audience to see it, and I want to be sure that it's distributed in a way that has integrity and it plays in theaters that have an audience that I made it for." The guy in the 90's says "I want a million dollars for my movie," and he has his three financial guys in there, and they're talking terms of the deal. After you see it at Sundance, you can line up at the back of the theater and take a number and meet his ICM or William Morris agent who's cutting the deal. And to me, that's just an amazing thing. And what happens every year when you go to a place like Sundance, is there's the headline movie. Last year it was "Happy, Texas," a calculated movie with some stars that the filmmaker was very up front about. He said, I made this movie to come to Sundance, and make a lot of money.

iW: He had a whole process for making a deal.

Bernard: And he did, he got a lot of money, and his picture died. And the year before was "The Castle," and then there was "Spitfire Grill," maybe "Shine" was the exception to the rule. But there's that sort of mentality, "I'm going to go to Sundance, I'm going to create a buzz, I'm going to make a lot of money." And the messages from the movies, a lot of them don't work. A movie like Neil LaBute's "In the Company of Men" came to Sundance and everyone hated it. This was a guy who was making some statements, he had something to say, he was a tremendous filmmaker, and no one bought the picture. We bought it afterwards when we figured out how to market it. The people you meet have changed a lot, it's a whole process now. When is the last time you met an independent filmmaker from the past that has an ICM agent, a manager, and you talk to his people before you talk to him?

iW: There are a lot more movies being made now by the specialty divisions of bigger companies, and they're acquiring a lot less movies. What does that mean for the marketplace of acquiring films when you guys are the only big company that seems to be doing it consistently?

Bernard: What's changed for the 90's is that we've had to be much more aggressive with stuff we've liked and buy it at a much earlier stage. And it has paid off.

In the 80's maybe a third of our movies were bought at script stage, now [many] of our movies are bought in script form or we will make them in script form. We made "Winslow Boy" with David Mamet, we just made a Brazilian picture, "Bossa Nova," with Bruno Barreto, so we're in the business of making movies now, and we're in the business of reading scripts. It's become much more competitive, and we're a director-oriented company, so when we go after a script, it has to be connected to a director. We don't do development. So we'll acquire films, we'll go both ways, so our mandate is still to do that.

iW: When you're buying a script, it's probably from a more established filmmaker?

Bernard: Yeah, but a movie like "The Governess" which was Sandra Goldbacher's first film, we looked at her short and we liked the picture and we made it. It depends. What I think you have to look at with the other companies is what is their mandate. Is the way that they've figured out how to make their "classics division" fit into the company. Is it really just something to feed the ancillary markets around the world from the international side of the company so that they are going to make movies and plug it into international deals and make sure they are things that are compatible with what they have in the other countries. You'd have to talk to Russell [Schwartz], but Gramercy made pictures, and I think it was pictures that were selected by PolyGram for them, and that's what I heard the mandate was, and it was part of this big international machine, as is Searchlight. I think they make those movies and they want them to fit into the international machine; that's the way they do business.

iW: What are the expectations from your corporate parent?

Bernard: Well, the bigger corporate thing is we need to make money. We said, "We're coming to you and we want to make you money," and every year we've made money. And we make money because we go after every picture with the intention of making money with it. We don't have the hit mentality. It's a much more long-term kind of viewpoint of the business. Another thing that I think has changed in the 90's is that the structure of a lot of these companies has been set up like the studio. You've got someone who tells the head of marketing to do this, and tell someone to tell someone to tell the head of marketing to do this, and to tell someone to tell someone to tell the acquisition guy to do this. So the people that are really in the front lines in the marketing and distribution of these pictures a lot of times didn't have a hand in the acquisition of the pictures, and they've just got to deal with something that's been thrown at them. So they may not have a feel for it, they may not have the same kind of emotional connection to it.

An acquisitions person may be buying it because it's a hot item, but they have no idea how it's going to translate into the marketplace because they just don't have that kind of experience. And it seems that all these different departments are very fragmented. Whereas one of the things that we've always tried to do is keep our company small enough that Michael and I have a hand in the marketing and the distribution and the acquisitions, because I think that if the head of the company isn't in touch with the marketplace -- you know, I can tell you what's going on in Denver -- it's having that feel for the marketplace and what's working and what's not. It's just trying to be more innovative to keep up with the times and the marketplace, because the marketplace changes every month. And if you aren't there in part of it, I think you suffer. Theaters get hot, theaters get cold, critics change, weather patterns are a factor; it's odd stuff. But still being able to do that and being able to communicate to the filmmaker [and] have them be part of the marketing process. I can't think of a trailer we've made where the filmmaker had a look at it and doesn't recommend a scene that might be better than a scene we have that makes it a better film. There's a journeyman group of guys that just know this stuff that for some reason aren't a part of these companies. You know, a guy like Bingham has got a sense of history of the business, Ira Deutchman's got a sense of history of the business, but they're in other lines of work.

The conversation continues on page 2...