Staying Under Wraps in Search of Elusive Buzz

As the Sundance Film Festival 2000 opens this week, the people who acquire films for distributors like Miramax, Fine Line Features and Fox Searchlight find themselves in exactly the same position as last year--with one crazy-making difference.

This year, like last year, precisely 89 of the festival’s 115 feature films are for sale (the 26 others already have distribution). But this year, unlike last year, filmmakers have kept many more of the available films under wraps, holding fewer advance screenings for even the best-known distributors and closely guarding the rare videotape copies in circulation.

What’s going on? Industry sources say filmmakers are reacting to the perception that last year the films that fared best were those that were held back. Few people had seen “The Blair Witch Project,” for example, before it premiered at a midnight screening last year (it was purchased by Artisan Entertainment the next morning and went on to bring in $140 million). By comparison, tapes of “Happy, Texas” had been circulating for weeks before the 1999 festival, and while it did sell (to Miramax, after a protracted bidding war) it was later re-cut and fared poorly in theaters.

“I’ve always advised my filmmakers: Do not let the tape out of your possession. This year people are actually listening,” said Jeremy Walker, a New York-based publicist who helped the “Blair Witch” creators, Haxan Films, navigate the Sundance frenzy last year. “My experience is that acquisitions people all talk. If one has seen the movie ahead of time, you can bet their competitors will know.”

“You only get one chance to make a first impression,” said publicist Mark Pogachefsky, whose Los Angeles-based firm represents more than a dozen festival films this year. “You want your movie to be seen the way it was meant to be seen: in a theater, with an audience. You’ve got to be Venus on the half shell, coming forth full grown and in bloom.”

This year, a lot of filmmakers seem to have figured that out, opting to let genuine anticipation build buzz about their work. Hardly anybody has seen opening night’s “What’s Cooking?”--British director Gurinder Chadha’s portrait of four L.A. households preparing for Thanksgiving that is considered one of the hot films on the market. And even publicists and producers’ reps--the sales agents for films--report they’ve had to beg just to see some movies they are considering representing.

“Last year, on any given film the five big reps had seen it. But not this year,” said Rosanne Korenberg, vice president of acquisitions at 20th Century Fox. “This year, the filmmakers are being really strict--sometimes not even showing films to the directors’ agents. And [tapes] are not showing up in places they routinely show up.”

“Cassian is keeping a tighter lock on all their stuff,” agreed a Los Angeles publicist, referring to indie super-agent Cassian Elwes, the head of the William Morris Agency’s independent film division, who will be selling six Sundance entries this year. “People are saying, ‘Can you watch this tape and send it back to me within four hours?’ I’m like, ‘No, I can’t.’ ”

Walker cited a specific tightfisted filmmaker: Miguel Arteta, who directed the micro-budgeted 1997 film “Star Maps” and whose follow-up feature--”Chuck and Buck”--is at Sundance this year.

“I worked on ‘Star Maps’ with Miguel--he’s like family,” said Walker, who said that, nevertheless, Arteta has kept a vise grip on his new movie. “I’ve seen the movie twice. The first time, I sat with Miguel in my living room. The second time, when I wanted to screen it for my staff, he sent a tape to a friend. She came over, showed it and took the tape back with her.”

The result of all this secrecy? At the minimum, it has added to the angst of film distributors intent on nabbing the best films of the festival. Linda Brown, a publicist at Indie PR, said distributors are so eager for an advance look at “Punks”--an African American romantic comedy about a gay photographer that Brown swears has been shown to no one--that some are beginning to play hardball.

“I had a very direct, sincere conversation with one studio rep who wanted to see ‘Punks’ early,” she recalled. “He called and said, ‘I know you want more business from us.’ I said, ‘Is that a threat, or a bribe?’ ”

“Any time there’s less information, the atmosphere is a little more pregnant, a little more charged,” said Mark Ordesky, president of Fine Line Features. Ordesky stressed that in the end, reconnaissance doesn’t seal a deal.

“I can speak to this personally from my experience with ‘Shine’ [the Australian film, acquired at Sundance, that Fine Line distributed in 1996]. The key things there were our relationship with the filmmaker and with the sales agent, the meetings that occurred in the months leading up,” he said. “Ultimately, our job is more than getting [advance] tapes. You’re convincing people to believe in you and your company as a distribution outlet. If you can’t do that, you could be the best tape infiltrator in the business and no one would care.”

Fox’s Korenberg agreed, adding that particularly in the case of videotapes, you don’t always know what you’re seeing.

“At the end of the day, seeing a bootleg tape can really throw you off. There can be 10 and 20 versions of a film out there and, even though we’re used to seeing films in progress, we can’t know what improvements they’re planning on making,” she said, declaring the drought of tapes this year a “fine” development. “We’ll see the films in their best condition: finished.”