Indie Films No Longer Penny-Ante Affair : Movies: Higher grosses reflect increased marketing savvy of independent companies, many of which have hired executives seasoned at major studios.

When “Pulp Fiction” surpassed $100 million at the box office this week, it represented a milestone of sorts for independent film companies.

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“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “The Mask” and “Dumb and Dumber” have made more money, but those independently produced films were more in the profile of studio productions: high-concept, mass-market.

Indeed, no independent film with such modest initial expectations has soared as high as Quentin Tarantino’s stubbornly iconoclastic Oscar winner, which cracked nine figures about six months after its release. But then, no one thought “The Crying Game” would hit $65 million, “The Piano” $40 million or “Much Ado About Nothing” $25 million, either.

Industry experts say these grosses reflect the increasing marketing sophistication of independent film companies, many of which have hired executives seasoned at the major studios to oversee their historically low-to-the-ground sales efforts.

In the past, a common complaint was that independent marketing and distribution departments were never able to fully exploit the popularity of the occasional break-out film. Studio marketers pointed to films like “sex, lies and videotape,” which grossed $25 million, as a movie that could have taken in twice as much with a studio hard-sell.

“Indies faithfully represented what a movie was about to the public,” says Mark Gill of Miramax, who previously headed the publicity department at Columbia Pictures. “But that’s not what I call selling.”

The complaint is heard less these days, in part because independents are themselves spending more--even its independent competitors complain that Miramax “bought” “Pulp Fiction” to $100 million through a renewed TV ad push after the film copped seven Academy Award nominations. (Gill says the money was well spent, since “Pulp Fiction” has grossed an average of $3 million a week since the nominations were announced in mid-February.) The film ended up winning one Oscar, for best original screenplay.

“Working at a studio, you learn how to put up the biggest tent,” Gill says. “Only at Miramax, they’re trying to do the same thing on much less money.”

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“You used to be able to take out an art film with newspaper and maybe some radio ads on a classical station,” says Richard Bornstein, who recently returned to the Samuel Goldwyn Co. after a stint at Paramount. “But those rules no longer apply. When art films like ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ gross $25 million and ‘The Crying Game’ makes $65 million, you’re in competition with every movie out there. You have to buy television.”

These executives say the studios taught them the meaning of the word waste . “I like the idea of working on smaller budgets,” says New Line’s Chris Pula, who worked in the marketing departments of 20th Century Fox films and television.

With the sophistication acquired in their studio tenures, independent marketers say they can now produce as slick and potent a commercial spot as any studio. But instead of relying on expensive network televisions buys, independent TV advertising is heavily concentrated on cable--MTV to the youth market, BET to African Americans, Nickelodeon to kids and Lifetime to women, for example--according to Gramercy Pictures’ Steve Flynn, whose studio boot camp was at Orion Pictures.

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While marketing costs for independents are escalating, Pula says they’re not rising nearly as fast as those incurred by the major studios, who buy ads on expensive prime-time network shows even though viewership has seriously eroded in the past few years.

Pula says they also continue to “waste” money on outdoor ads (he calls them “vanity ads” to satisfy producers), expensively made theatrical trailers and double-truck newspaper ads well into the run of a movie. Marketing costs are $14 million for the average studio movie and $25 million to $30 million for a blockbuster. A major hit independent movie--$25-million gross and above--usually represents a maximum $3-million investment in marketing. “Studios make $50 million to lose $30 million,” Gill says.

Tom Sherak, who heads distribution at 20th Century Fox, says, “Studios have to try many more approaches because there are more creative people involved in the process.” That can result in what he terms “so-called waste.”

Studios have always been known for spending more to reach more people, he says. “Is that right or wrong? The wonderful thing about marketing is that everybody has an opinion and nobody’s wrong.”

Television advertising augments, but does not replace, the independents’ time-honored TLC approach, nurturing films into the market and fanning the publicity flames weeks and sometimes months after movies have opened.

“We start out much earlier than a major studio, four or five months before a film is released,” Flynn says. “Because we don’t have a large staff, we use our field agencies more so than ever.” And while the major studios are more concerned with publicity in high-profile, high-circulation publications--Time, Newsweek--the independents rely heavily on alternative publications.

Independents also work at the kind of Barnum & Bailey-type of publicity gimmick that the Madison Avenue culture at the studios frown upon--city buses spray-painted as in “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” or capitalizing on the controversy over a threatened NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Assn. of America--although that trick is getting a bit hoary, marketers admit.

Even head-to-head, studios don’t do much better with certain kinds of films than independents. A period piece like “Much Ado About Nothing” was a hit with a $25-million gross for Goldwyn, which will do similarly well with “The Madness of King George.”

Columbia’s “Remains of the Day” grossed slightly more than $30 million, but was less profitable because it cost more to make and sell.