From the "People" Archives:

by Anthony Kaufman

They won Sundance. They won San Francisco. They won Santa Barbara. They won DoubleTake. Jonathon Stack and Liz Garbus received major awards at each of these festivals for their even-handed and inspirational look at the inmates of Louisiana's Angola prison aka "The Farm." But rather than find themselves with the backing of a major or even minor distributor, Stack and Garbus decided to go on their own with self-distribution. After landing at New York City's Film Forum for a two week run beginning today, the doc team will take the film not to indie exhibition houses across the country, but schools, prisons, and other specific target audiences. Their decision to take this path is not a simple one and the complexities involved with video, television and theatrical rights would make any filmmaker's head spin.

Stack and Garbus spoke to indieWIRE about the intricacies of distributing docs, specifically the Catch-22's that many doc-makers find themselves trapped in. Between possessive front-end broadcasters, video-hungry theatrical distributors and Academy Award eligibility, the work of these filmmakers has only just begun.

indieWIRE: Tell me about the self-distribution odyssey that you've now embarked on. I hope that you can speak frankly about the choices and decisions you've made?

Jonathon Stack: You have to look at the marketplace for documentaries and understand the way they are funded, and the way they need to be handled and rolled out. You're going to a place like Sundance and it's very different for a feature film, it's like your birthplace. For a documentary, it's more like a culmination, in the sense that it's the highest recommendation you'll get.

A good many of the films that were there this year have already had distribution in some way via their funding. Because the nature of the way documentary gets funded is through distribution. There were some independent filmmakers, but the reality is -- if you're a producer and you're in the business of surviving and earning a living making documentaries -- just to put it in crude mathematical numbers here -- if I go to the Discovery Channel with an idea and I look them in the eye and I sound inspired -- in theory, for the worldwide rights, I could get $300,000. But if I go there and I've got the film shot in the can and I say I got this thing, would you be interested in looking at the footage? Maybe I'd get a $120,000. Let's just say I finished the film and I go there with a finished product and I just want to license the rights. Maybe I'll get $50,000.

Liz Garbus: Like at the end of Sundance. . . If you're one of those successful Sundance films and you don't have a distribution deal, you're big hope is to sell to Cinemax or P.O.V. -- you're getting around a $100,000 for that. Whereas if you sell to HBO on the front end, there budgets range from $500,000 - $800,000.

Stack: So what happens is. . . your final place for a documentary, ultimately, of any significant money, is television. In between that is a theatrical release, of whatever level you can get if you're lucky. So we're in a position where we went to Sundance, won the award, everything should be telling you -- if a documentary film should make a theatrical release, this should be one of those that can do it, that can break through. You'd think so, right? . . . The truth was that a lot of people were interested. Everybody called to see the film. We were like flavor of the month.

iW: And this was people from as big as . . .

Stack and Garbus: Miramax.

Garbus: Stratosphere, 7th Art and everybody in between. Fox Lorber, October. . .

Stack: Everybody saw it and everybody liked it. But you know what the bottom line was -- if they ever looked into it, if we had actually got into the nitty gritty of what compromised rights I had already to deal with in terms of having presold territories and markets, they never would have put any money into a theatrical release, because -- I learned the word while I was in this process called -- cross-collateralization, which means they're going to invest in a theatrical run with an understand that the recoupment possibilties for a documentary in the theatrical market is small, but what they're hoping to do is raise the value for the TV market and raise the value for the home video rates, so it has something that has real legs. So what happens is, why would anybody put money into the theatrical release of a film, to raise the value for something that they don't own?

Garbus: It came down to the home video deal essentially -- that was basically what was standing between us and going with a distributor.

Stack: They probably would have been okay with just broadcast, but you have to keep in mind, all the TV rights were sold already and that's a big chunk of money.

Garbus: That's a big chunk of money, however, everybody knew that going in. And A & E was working with us very favorably -- they were holding off the broadcast.

iW: And that's who had rights, who helped finance the film initially?

Garbus: Yes. They came in right at the beginning and they had broadcast and they also had non-exclusive home video. But in the end, their home video distribution arm is a very powerful, effective arm. And for any theatrical distributor to compete with A & E over video was just suicidal. So what's their financial gain there? Is it theatrical? Come on, let's get serious. You get great reviews. Variety says, "Hoop Dreams" blah, blah, blah, but they're still not making money. So they're going to make money in home video. And so, from the beginning, the deal we had made with A & E precluded theatrical distribution, because it was a documentary.

Stack: There is a learning curve in all this. We've been doing this for awhile, but things keep changing. I had gotten the non-exclusive rights, which turned out to be fortunate in many ways, because they wanted all video rights. So we held back on something -- we said, if you can do it, we can do it.

Garbus: Thinking we might want educational rights.

Stack: Whatever. For political reasons, more than any kind of great financial thing. It was kind of interesting, because a lot of times they're really not going to do very much with video. In this case, having won at Sundance, A & E all of sudden had more interest in the video rights, because it was now something that they did care to hold on to. And they put in extra money, paid for a print and they helped with things that they normally wouldn't do. And so we had those rights, and as we tried to get things going [with distributors], getting past that first level of interest to clinching a deal, little by little we sort of realized that's not necessarily going to happen and that's okay. Now how are we going to do something else. We had several goals in mind. One, let's do what we got to do to make it Academy elligible. . .

iW: What do you have to do?

Garbus: To play at a theater in NY county or LA county for two consecutive weeks prior to broadcast. We did it.

Stack: It's one thing to be eligble, it's another thing to be nominated. So, clearly, being eligble is not enough. So we had to come up with a strategy and the strategy works on multiple levels. One is, we have to, at least, be in NY or LA and we're going to need to be at a significant place and gratefully, Film Forum accepts the film, takes it. They're a beautiful platform for independent documentary filmmaking. Let's be honest -- probably the only one of any significance in New York, maybe in all of America.

Garbus: And extremely savvy about promoting the film. They're just great.

Stack: We really don't have the money to get it for two days in the Music Box in Chicago where you have to invest money in buying ads, and this and that. So, not really being distributors in that way, and having limited resources, we made a decision. Let's pull whatever resources we have, let's focus on areas where distributors wouldn't normally go. I believe that ultimately if we've covered our bases in reaching the LA and NY audiences, which you need to reach, and then the rest of it, is what kind of media gaze do you get? Build up attention, so it has a greater possibility of an Academy nomination. Let's go an alternative route -- we're out there deeply committed to getting our film to the places where they don't normally get, and build a bigger audience that way.

So we went out to a place called the Puffin Foundation, a progressive foundation in New Jersey, and the guy saw the film and impressed by it and asked, "What can I do?" And I said, you know, "it's so labor intensive" to do this grassroots distribution. "Can you just give us a fulltime staff person, just to do the calls, to do the mailings, to keep on top of it?" You make a film, you care deeply about it, but you're broke. You can't give it as much attention as you want. You can't even answer every letter that people write. And it's really nice, now I have somebody who makes sure those little things. . . having this person in place, we're starting to create these little grassroots endeavors. Now having put this piece together and finding grassrooots sorts of places so that it can happen in, it can be church groups, it can be schools, it can be departments of educations or it can go big or it can go very small with individuals who are involved with prison issues. Then I think, you put these two pieces together, person working, go find some corporate sponsorship, go find some individual organizations. . .

iW: How has seeking corporate sponsorship for this second stage been working out?

Stack: Part of doing grassroots work in some ways is you plant seeds. I see this career and this work, the political part of it, it's a long term thing. So I can't tell you and I don't necessarily care, that if I go into the door and they speak to me, and they say, "this isn't quite right for us" -- I don't walk away disappointed, because I believe we're building relationships two, three, four projects down the road, so I have no negative feelings. So if you ask me how it's going, I think it's going great.

I'm keeping it focused to a few real things. For obvious reasons, it seems to me that the energy is being really focused on Lousiana, obviously, the film is from Louisiana, and that's meant that there's just been an unbelievably positive response to the film there. But more than positive, an important response, a pro-active response, and because of that, I've realized that's where our work needs to be focused. That's where we need to put our energies. So now I'm thinking, focus on Louisiana, get it into every high school in Lousiana, and insure that there's a viewing when it airs on September 8th and 9th and that it will really spark something in that State where we've planted enough seeds.