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Distribution Taking It to the Screen

The other day I got an e-mail from a long-ago film student of mine. It was an invitation to the premiere screening of Holy Cow - the sequel to his comedy short about two inept security guards. The viral blurb went like this: "Outfitted with a two-man cow costume and more enthusiasm than brains, the perilous pair stake out a farmer's field to apprehend a group of elusive cattle-thieves." A colorful poster attachment announced three consecutive screenings at a local pub. Admission was free, but the beer was not.

Although this was a contemporary and snappy DIY movie marketing campaign, I was struck by the throwback of this invitation to the pioneer days of motion pictures, before there were theatres to show them. The road-show era of film exhibition was a time when itinerant showmen bought the films outright, took them on tour and screened them wherever they could mount a projector and a white sheet - in fairground tents, department stores, opera houses, museums, churches - and yes, even in saloons.

More than a century later, finding an audience continues to be the engine that drives moviemaking in all its forms.

Blockbuster marketing machinery aimed at bringing audiences to the big screen is the distribution turf where the big boys play. But there are more and more examples of DIY filmmakers finding captive audiences and the requisite four walls it takes to mount and show their films.

Four-walling simply means you find a theatre, rent it and show your movie. Depending on the deal, you will likely pocket the receipts and the theatre will keep the concessions.

A filmmaker might resort to four-walling because the film needs to score some reviews in order to qualify for the Academy Awards or because a movie deal with a broadcaster is contingent on the film's prior theatrical release.

Or, it could be that exhibitors find the film a risky investment because they're afraid nobody will come to see it, and the filmmaker turns to releasing it himself. This is exactly what Tom Laughlin did with Billy Jack, the 1971 box-office phenomenon. Laughlin wrote, directed, produced and starred in the cult classic about a soft-spoken loner who explodes into a one-man fighting machine when he sees injustices perpetrated on the helpless and downtrodden. Laughlin was unhappy with the way Warner Brothers handled the release of his anti-war opus, so he promoted it himself and rented theatres all across the country. The $32.5 million it earned put Billy Jack in the Top 100-grossing pictures of all time. Before Billy Jack and its 1974 self-released sequel, The Trial of Billy Jack, the tried and true approach to finding an audience for a new release was to hold test screenings in select theatres, usually in a single region or market. After Laughlin turned Hollywood's marketing and distribution model inside out, the studios followed suit by releasing new movies in thousands of theatres on the same day in markets all across the country.

Laughlin is remembered as a self-distribution pioneer and risk-taker who was ahead of his time when he thumbed his nose at the powerful studios. The four-walling success story of Billy Jack is now ancient movie history, but, more than thirty years later, do-it-yourselfers are no longer debating whether it's a good idea to find your own screens for your movie.

Contemporary DIY movie maker and "cinematic provocateur" Caveh Zahedi put it this way in a 2006 Filmmaker interview: "Why should a distributor take half the revenue just because they made a few phone calls that I could have made, designed a poster that I could have designed, cut a trailer that I could have cut, and sent out screeners that I could have sent out myself ?"

It's no secret: The DIY filmmaking crowd is adopting the same kind of thinking that goes on in the world of indie rock, where artists have realized that, by controlling all aspects of their work, they no longer need to rely on a major-label recording deal to make a living from their music. Using a web presence, they are taking charge of their own concert promotions, taking their music on the road and selling their CDs, not only in the lobby, but also online.

And that's what one do-it-yourself filmmaker did with her labor of love - find an audience by taking it on the road.