NOTES FROM HOLLYWOOD: PART 9

Reflections on the Journey to Make a Feature Film

The photo above is aspirational. 

Kind of. I mean, I was there. The photo doesn't lie. But just so we're all on the same page about film festivals, you need to know that 13,016 films were submitted for consideration to the 2024 Tribeca Festival. 103 features were selected. The competition for a spot to screen your film is fierce at a preeminent festival like Tribeca, with less than a 1 in 100 chance that you'll get your moment on the red carpet.

Of course I didn't fly to New York for the red carpet. I was at the festival to learn. We screened WRESTLING JERUSALEM at a dozen film festivals back in 2017-18, but I had never attended a festival to swim in the waters of the independent film industry. It was enlightening. Tribeca was founded in 2003 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff to give independent filmmakers a place to help find their audiences. It quickly became an important industry marketplace for distributors, a vital network for filmmakers, and now with expanded programing, includes exhibitions, gaming, audio storytelling and live performances.

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If you don't know this about me, I love New York. My dad grew up in Brooklyn and I feel at home in the city. I saw ten films in the five days I attended the festival and half as many panel discussions and industry events. Most interesting and helpful to my film were two panels, one on the “pitch” and one on distribution. The pitch session was about pitching an idea for a project that hadn’t been made yet. I asked about pitching a project that was near completion. Since I’m an industry outsider, I’m interested in how we’re going to get attention in the field. It’s not going to be enough to simply submit our film to festivals and hope for the best. Not with 1 in a 100 odds. "Good question", the panelists said (after congratulating me on nearing completion on my first feature as a writer/director. Actually, the room of participants erupted in a little cheer when I said I was just finishing my film. These filmmakers all know what a climb it is to make a feature). The recommendation was that we use all the materials we’ve already put together for our earlier pitch--and we have plenty--and tailor it now for the path towards our audience. Makes sense to me.

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This recommendation was connected to what the panelists at the session on distribution said. Again, we’re talking about independent film, not studio films that have a pipeline to distribution baked into their projects. Distributors, like Giant Pictures or Tribeca Films, want to work with filmmakers who will be partners in finding audiences. Get your film out there while you’re working on finding a distributor. Show distributors that you have an audience base and that you know who they are. This is exactly what my producing partner Sara Schwartz Geller and I did with community screenings of WRESTLING JERUSALEM in 2017-18. We ended up screening the film in 65 cities across North American, Europe and Israel. That's more cities than a small film will get from a theatrical release, that's for sure. A distributor then picked us up and got our film on Amazon, APPLE TV+ and a few other platforms. The entrepreneurial spirit is key to finding audiences for independent film. And the panel I attended affirmed this approach.
 
AMERICAN SOLITAIRE, with its story of a veteran of the U.S. Army trying find his place in civilian life when he comes up against the complexities of gun violence in America, has a range of audiences we’ll be looking to connect with: veterans groups and gun safety groups run the gamut of political affiliation and approach and there is a wide range of organizations for us to partner with. The film will speak to a wide cross-section of audiences. I met a few distributors after the panel who invited me to send them info on the film, which alone made the trip worthwhile.

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It was fun to be at a number of world premiere screenings and see the filmmakers up there in front, proud, with actors (some famous, some not) and crew, talking about making their films. I saw a film starring Steve Buschemi and one starring Margaret Cho. It was terrific to see the range of style of filmmaking as well as budget. Most exciting was being at the world premiere of SABBATH QUEEN, the documentary my friend Sandi DuBowski made about my other friend, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavi. (At the premiere with family friend Oscar, left). 21 years in the making, this film tracks Amichai’s journey from his orthodox Israeli family, where he is part of a lineage of 38 generations of rabbis, to his embrace of his queer identity and exploration of drag, to leading his own community in New York, Lab/Shul, for the experimentation and reinterpretation of Jewish story and ritual. If you’re in the Bay Area, the film will be the closing film of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (where we premiered WRESTLING JERUSALEM). 

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Well, I said I’d share the teaser trailer with you. But I had too much to report on the festival. I will. Soon! I’m headed to LA this week to shoot two more days. "Pick-ups", we call them. Some interstitial scenes that I need to connect some narrative threads and finish the film.

Thanks for joining me on this journey.