Beauty and the Bitch

Things have gone so well for so long, that I knew, just knew there was a rough patch looming. The home team’s winning streak ends, the wine goes dry, and the sun eventually stops shining.

I guess there is no point in creating a blog like this if you aren’t going to report the good and the bad. This entire filmmaking process is one of extreme emotions. You struggle to get the ideas out, and that struggle hurts. You finally get those ideas out, and that flow of thought is satisfying. You no longer doubt yourself. You could be, you should be, YOU ARE A FILMMAKER. The project takes shape on page and you work as hard as you can to see it through to screen. Schedules weigh you down, finances, scenes you thought made sense don’t make sense anymore. Then it happens. Suddenly it seems to start breathing, taking on a life of it’s own. The project is up on it’s own two legs and not only is it walking, but it is strutting like disco’s back.

You have a finished product, and you screen that product for an audience. People respond. They tell you their feelings, and those feelings match up with your reasons for making the picture in the first place. The timing is spot on. Your vision has gone from one small idea to one very big screen and life could not be better...... Then it’s festival time.

You come to the realization that you truly don’t have a name to push to these selection boards. Not one to be recognized and certainly not one to be sold to their ticket buying public. There is always that hope against hope. Good filmmaking shall overcome. Then you step back, take a look at your local multiplex, or the thousands of one star Netflix pariahs that you come across daily while building your que, and you know that is just not the case. Not the case at all.

I received rejection letters this week from Sundance and Slamdance. Neither was unexpected but neither failed to disappoint either. As I mentioned, there is always that hope against hope. You talk to yourself over and over from submission to notification and you whisper to yourself a bunch of soothing maybes and possiblys, but you know what happens in the end. If you’ve got no press, you get no selection. Seems to be that simple. You can spend a great deal of energy blaming festivals for their politics but in the end you have to take a long look at your film, and yourself. First off, “Does the film fit into the festival?”, and secondly if it does, “What do I do to push it in?”

So here it is: I am taking full responsibility for my rejections from these festivals. I rushed these submissions out without having any sort of gameplan. I am not saying that if I had a plan I would have gotten accepted to two of the most prestigious festivals in the states, but I would have given myself a better chance for sure. It all comes down to promotion that should have been done, that wasn’t even considered at the time. I think I was too busy patting myself on the back for successful screenings and one audience award. I should have had a press kit for Mamma tattooed on my back when I finished the film but instead, I had no press kit at all when I sent out those submissions. When you make a film there is no time to slow down. There is the need to be a oneman studio and to be honest, my marketing department was not only closed but was never open in the first place.

So that’s off my chest and quite a relief. Take it from me, it is easier to blame yourself for your films shortcomings than some invisible festival heads or theories that exist about an industry that no one can quite figure out.