"'Spotless Mind' director [Charlie Kaufman] worries for future of film"

Writer-director Charlie Kaufman offers a few thoughts re the current state of movie-making:

"I think it's a disaster out there," says Kaufman, who established his own style of story in such films as Adaptation, Being John Malkovich and his directing debut, last year's Synecdoche, New York.

"I don't think the mid-range movie is going to exist anymore," he says in a phone interview from his California home. "Movies are going to be blockbusters or really, really tiny budgets. And the tiny-budget movies have a very, very hard time getting distributed.

``All the places that distribute those movies have closed down. . . . There were avenues of exploration and experimentation that existed prior. I don't know what that means for me.

"I think we're going to be left with just more and more versions of Batman. It is a function of the cost of these things and it is a function of a lot of fear. People don't think of (movie-making) as a form of expression, but as a form of business."

I hope Charlie is back to his bearded look because I'm not so sure it's a good idea -- him mixing with razor blades just now.

"I made a movie this past year that didn't do very much business," he says. "The movies I'd done before, none of them were financial blockbusters, but people made their money back, a little profit, and there was some award prestige attached to them. All that stuff that keeps interest in financing them. But I think all that's going away.

"I'm not creating a product. I'm not making a car or a can of beans, I'm trying to express something. . . . In a way, trying to do something that's a bit of an antidote to what this popular art form has become. The fact that I'm not making superhero movies or spy thrillers doesn't seem to me like a flaw . . . this business has been reduced to one story over and over again."

The movie he's referring to is Synecdoche, New York (2008) which per Box Office Mojo grossed $4.275M worldwide. With a $20M production budget plus P&A costs and lagging DVD sales, the movie will almost certainly end up in the red -- no matter how creative the Hwood bookkeepers are.

Since Kaufman both wrote and directed Synecdoche, New York, it's understandable how he might be in a rather negative state of mind given the movie's box office performance. And goodness knows, there are plenty of reasons to be depressed about the state of movies nowadays -- cough * Viewmaster * cough / hack * Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen * hack.

But if there's one unalterable fact about the movie business, it's that it's cyclical. In fact, right now much of the buzz going around is about Paranormal Activity, a movie that cost $15K to produce. To wit, a recent Financial Times article:

After a summer bursting with expensive box office flops, a film made for a paltry $15,000 and starring an unknown cast is shaping up to become one of the year’s surprise successes.

Paranormal Activity, a horror film in the mould of the Blair Witch Project, has been selling out midnight screenings in a handful of US cities and looks set to become a bona fide hit when it is released across the US by Paramount this month.

The positive buzz surrounding the film is in sharp contrast to the negative reaction afforded several big budget releases this summer that flopped at the box office. As Hollywood studios tighten their belts, the lower budget film could be a sign of things to come [emphasis added].

"Lower budget film could be a sign of things to come." Wouldn't surprise me at all if within 2 years, the indie-film / specialty movie world has come back with a vengeance.

In fact, when I get the time, I'm going to post something about successful low-budget indie/specialty films and see if we can identify key narrative elements that they share. Maybe there are some 'universal truths' we can identify to help steer the writing of those type of stories.

Until then - back away from the rusty razor blades!

H/T to rfuller24 for the Kaufman link.

H/T to Tom Peterson for the Financial Times link.