ARTISTIC LICENSING
Having a hand in three Oscar-nominated films this year puts Jennifer Long in an exclusive club.
Long, a New Jersey native, owns Film Art, a Hollywood-based company she started six years ago. The company represents about 400 artists, including such big names as Charles Arnoldi, Peter Alexander and Ed Moses. “I know every artist personally and I know what they have in their storage closets,” says Long.
No wonder, then, that so many top art directors and set decorators, including Kristen Toscano Messina of “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic,” and Karen O’Hara of “Cast Away,” look to Long to help them find just the right art for use in their films. “If someone comes in looking for large, dark, somber paintings,” she says, “I can pull 10 artists in five minutes.”
Last year alone, Long worked on 47 features as well as dozens of television shows and commercials. In some cases, she provides original artwork, or more often creates a digital reproduction from a transparency. Sometimes she simply facilitates licensing of a particular image. For rentals, Film Art typically charges 10% to 15% of a work’s retail value per week. Film Art takes 40% of that fee, gives 40% to the artist and spends 20% to advertise and promote its wares. Many film budgets allow between $8,000 and $25,000 for artwork, says Long. An extended shoot using a lot of pieces can easily hit $50,000. This may sound excessive, but she says it’s cheaper than buying and worth the expense because “well-placed artwork is like a good score.”
A few recent placements with which Long was involved:
* In “Traffic,” Steven Bauer, who plays a drug trafficker married to Catherine Zeta-Jones’ character, hides bank account information and the phone number of a hit man behind a reproduction of Rafael Coronel’s “Child With a Hoop.”
* In “Runaway Bride,” Richard Gere’s character, a journalist, places Post-it notes about Julia Roberts’ character, a story subject, on the frame of a reproduction of David Kroll’s “Crow.”
* In “What Women Want,” Mel Gibson, who plays an advertising executive on a mission to better understand the women’s market, tries on stockings in front of a reproduction of R. Kenton Nelson’s “Admiration.”