Studios Take a Shine to Film--After the Fact

Australian producer Jane Scott still has the “hit list” of 39 movie companies, agents, distributors and other potential investors that turned her down in the pursuit of financing for a modestly budgeted movie nobody wanted to make.

None of the industry’s leading independents who pride themselves on offbeat fare, including Miramax, Fine Line, Samuel Goldwyn Co. and Sony Classics, were willing to take a risk on making the $4.5-million “Shine.” The movie has since become a classic Hollywood success story, and those companies later would fight over the finished film’s distribution rights.

In what became a legendary tale out of last year’s Sundance Film Festival, where the movie debuted, Miramax co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein nearly came to blows with a “Shine” representative after learning the domestic rights had been sold to a competitor, Fine Line Features.

Directed by Scott Hicks and based on the real-life story of child prodigy and classical pianist David Helfgott, the movie has won multiple festival awards, is nominated for seven Oscars and has grossed close to $50 million worldwide, with much of its overseas release still to come. Several industry observers say it could earn an additional $50 million.

“Shine” is a considerable hit in its native Australia, where it has been playing in theaters for seven months and has sold more than $6 million worth of tickets--considered sizable in that country for a serious drama.

Hicks, who lives in the small southern Australian town of Adelaide, says that because of its Oscar nominations, the film “still has a lot of life to go” in Australia.

“It started out as a hit, and now it’s a sleeper,” says Hicks, referring to the fact that new moviegoers keep discovering the film. Having just picked up the top prize from the National Board of Review in New York last week, Hicks and Scott are ecstatic about the reception the film has received.

The accolades are particularly sweet given the filmmakers’ struggle to get their movie made.

“We moved from one expression of interest to another, and no one would commit,” says Hicks, a 43-year-old, award-winning documentarian who first decided to make the film after reading a newspaper article about Helfgott about 10 years ago, when the pianist emerged from obscurity to perform publicly again.

Intriguing to the director were Helfgott’s reemergence after suffering a mental breakdown in his early 20s and his complex, tortuous relationship with a domineering father.

The behind-the-scenes toil of patching together the financing for “Shine” illustrates the real-life drama of getting inexpensive movies bankrolled in an industry that is obsessed with big-name stars, top directors, turbo special effects and mega-grosses. It also underscores how difficult it is for movie companies to identify ideas with strong potential.

“It’s true,” says Ruth Vitale, president of Fine Line, acknowledging that her company (a division of New Line Cinema) declined to finance the movie. “It’s the typical Hollywood story. Films like this go under the radar all the time. As I’ve said before, Hollywood would never make a movie like this in a million years . . . there were no discernible sales tools” like stars or a proven director.

Though Hicks had a celebrated career as a documentary filmmaker, he had directed only two low-budget Australian features, both of which faded quickly.

Potential investors “wanted to know who I was,” said the director, who personally developed the script for four years before bringing his close friend screenwriter Jan Sardi on to the project in 1990.

“It was Jan’s draft which gave me the calling card to cast who I wanted,” Hicks said.

When he felt Sardi’s script was ready, Hicks went to the Australian Film Finance Corp., the country’s leading movie financier, which requires there be “commercial interest”--that is, a significant portion of the budget--committed from outside financiers before it will subsidize a project. The director then approached Scott, who produced “ ‘Crocodile’ Dundee II” and had worked on “ ‘Crocodile’ Dundee,” “Strictly Ballroom” and “My Brilliant Career,” to help secure backing. When they made their initial approaches to investors, Hicks said, “they all came up with the same responses: ‘great story, great characters, but who the hell could possibly play the part?’ ”

In Hicks’ mind, there was only one person--noted Australian thespian Geoffrey Rush, whom he describes as a “40-year-old stage lion in Australia, but a complete unknown in film.” Though Rush himself “never thought he was cut out for cinema,” said Hicks, “he was perfect for the role.” (Rush has since won a Screen Actors Guild award and is nominated for a best actor Oscar.)

The other thing Hicks was certain about was wanting a “rock solid” Australian distributor, having had terrible experiences on his two previous features. He chose Ronin Films, a boutique distributor of art-house movies, because “they demonstrated an ability to handle the material.”

The producer said it was important to take Hicks along on her money-raising crusade because “I always felt the director is the strongest element in the persuasion process.”

Consequently, the two traveled around the world--”twice,” says Hicks, who said that the general response they received was, “We’re not interested, but we’d really like to stay in touch.”

Over two years, there were some false starts--including one with a small German distributor that dropped out--which were “great disappointments,” recalls Scott, who twice during the long process had mortgaged her own house to stay afloat. Finally, in 1994, the producer hooked up with Ernst Goldschmidt, whose Paris-based company, Pandora, showed bona fide interest.

Goldschmidt was in Australia because Pandora was financing a movie when Scott contacted him. He was interested in the story Scott pitched to him in his Sydney hotel room and was impressed with Rush.

“Ernst expressed interest, but it wasn’t as easy as that,” recalls Scott. “It became the dance,” she said, referring to some difficult long-distance negotiations on the phone. At one point, the producer said she received a fax from Goldschmidt at 2 a.m. Australia time saying, “I’ve read your proposal, and we can’t do business.”

Scott called him immediately.

“I proposed a slightly modified deal, and we got back on track, but it was a terrible negotiation . . . we argued about big points, little points,” she said.

Goldschmidt also remembers Scott as a tough negotiator.

The executive was skeptical about a director whose work he was unfamiliar with. But when Hicks flew to the Toronto Film Festival to meet him, Goldschmidt said, “he was so persuasive about the story and so interested in Helfgott’s life and fate, I saw fire in his eyes, and it was a decisive meeting.”

Pandora finally agreed to put up about a third of the budget and acquired worldwide rights to the movie with the exception of Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Scott then got three Australian government agencies--Film Finance Corp., South Australian Film Corp. and Film Victoria--to commit.

But, she said, “we were still short quite a hefty amount”--a couple hundred thousand dollars. Scott was under pressure to make the film’s start date of April 1995, and by early that year, she “still didn’t have the money in the bank.”

Scott had been hounding the BBC to kick in money, but she was met with resistance. Finally, she said, programming executive Alan Howden “grudgingly agreed to come in,” but by the time negotiations closed, “they dropped the amount of money” originally discussed.

Scott said she then had to persuade the Film Finance Corp. to increase its investment.

“And I had to raise two bridge loans out of Australia,” she added. “We clinched the money in the eleventh hour.”

After Pandora sold “Shine’s” domestic rights at Sundance to Fine Line for about $2.5 million, the company, said Scott, sold every major territory within 48 hours, including to Disney, which bought a chunk of Europe and other territories.

Between its domestic and foreign sales, “Shine” brought in more than $10 million--more than twice its cost--before the film hit theaters. As it turned out, not a bad investment.

And not bad career moves for Rush and Hicks, both of whom are represented by the powerful Creative Artists Agency and are being heavily courted by Hollywood.

“You suddenly have big success and it’s like you’ve just been invented,” said Hicks, who worked as a filmmaker for more than 20 years. “It’s been incredible.”