Yesterday I dropped off a DVD copy of my movie at the Sundance office on Wilshire and LaCienega (right across from the gargantuan Flynt Publications building, or "The Hustler Building" as I call it). People think that Sundance is in Utah but it is not, it is right in the heart of this here rathole, Los Angeles.
Although they select 16 features for the documentary competition from 600 to 700 entries, I calculate my odds as being much worse than that. Sundance programs 1) Big splashy premieres w/ big names 2) Sundance returnees and others who have developed a following at Sundance 3) Friends and family 4) Everyone else. Although the deadline was yesterday, much of the programming has already been done (although we proles aren't supposed to know this because then we might just give up hope). A feature I pulled focus on was accepted a month ago, to which I say, "Great, fantastic, I see you have an inside track, good on you because I do not." So there are those who have an inside track and then there are those who do not. The way I figure it, the slush pile isn't competing for 16 spots, they are probably competing for three or four.
So I do not expect to get in. Is this, E's Philosophy of Diminished Expectation, more fatalist (bad!) or Buddhist (good!)? Who is to say? The reality is that the whole business is rigged, just like life, and that it is not a democracy and nothing good ever comes from the slush pile. The whole point of the slush pile is making the proles feel like things are fair and that they have a chance in life, a chance of upward mobility. I worked on the New Orleans Film Festival selection committee one year (back when there was a NOFF) and the slush pile was a joke. I don't even think a lot of these films get watched.
My friends and I have been thinking about starting our own festival, the Culver City Film Festival (to be shown in R and N's living room), not to have a venue to show our films, necessarily, but to give us the proper blackmailing force with which to tempt staffers from other festivals (who are also filmmakers in their own right, everyone is a filmmaker don't you know). I'll program your short film if you get mine in, etc. A festival is also a good revenue stream (like screenwriting competitions). I don't think there are any festivals that run a loss in the world...certainly no writing contests. Now that I think of it, I'm going to start a poetry competition and charge $50 per entry! the winners will get published on my blog, how about that.
And then I'll watch the suckahs line up. And I shall get rich offa their dreams.
So here's to the Slush Piles of America. May you grow, undisturbed, higher and higher, until you blot out the sky.
2 comments:
Man, I thought I had a lock on this kind of bitter expression. Thanks for keeping me company.
As for the idea of the Culver City Film Festival, I say go for it. I love that kind of stuff. There's some kind of film festival that Trent Harris (of Rubin and Ed fame) hosts or co-hosts or something in Bicknell, Utah. I wonder if you can even find Bicknell on any but the most Utah-centric of maps. Culver City is, like, Rome or Venice compared to Bicknell. You could probably become part of the in-crowd by starting the CCFF. You go, Sleep!
You know I am a sucker for cliches, and one fits this quite well. It is not what you know, but who you know. True, true, true.
This is a GOOD thing too. Develop more and more relationships with people in decision-making positions of the film world. It will pay off. You might lose your soul to eternal damnation, but hell, you will be in the festival!
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