Going Up Against the Big Guys

The $2-million romantic comedy “Cherish” from Fine Line Features doesn’t have a big-studio summer movie marketing budget, and Marian Koltai-Levine hasn’t had the six months her big-studio counterparts have to plot its release.

Instead, Koltai-Levine, Fine Line’s executive vice president of marketing, “seeded” the specialty market: She screened the film extensively for magazines with a two- or three-month lead time and booked “Cherish” into regional film festivals like San Francisco and Seattle, aiming for a movie fan audience that would start positive word-of-mouth.

Because of the film’s 1980s setting, Koltai-Levine planned promo screenings with radio stations and dance clubs around the country, to simultaneously encourage more word-of-mouth and the playing of the film’s soundtrack (to be released on New Line Records). There were “teaser” ads in college newspapers, timed for before the end of the semester but still close enough to the release date to be fresh in students’ minds.

Right before “Cherish” opens next month in New York and Los Angeles, and later in other major cities, Koltai-Levine will send the film’s stars, Robin Tunney and Tim Blake Nelson, across the country to appear on film festival panels and be interviewed by local television and print media. Then, if the film breaks through and goes into multiple urban and suburban runs, Fine Line will bolster the expansion with a flash of cable TV commercials.

In what’s been called a franchise summer for moviegoers--another “Star Wars” installment, sequels to “Men in Black” and “Austin Powers,” for example--it’s easy to overlook the fact that there is an eager audience for independent movies such as “Cherish.” But there will be plenty of such films, more than 30, released during the season. The reason is the same as for the major studios.

“There’s a block of about 10 weeks in summer that can’t be beat,” says Jeff Lipsky, president of Lot 47 Films, which is releasing two digitally shot films: “Some Body” and “The Fast Runner.” “College students are out of school, working people are on vacation, everyone has more leisure time.”

In addition to higher-profile breakout releases like last year’s “The Others” and 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project,” smaller companies have had consistent success with specialized fare in summer, going back to the early ‘80s with “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and more recently with films such as “An Ideal Husband,” “Trainspotting,” “The Opposite of Sex,” “The Deep End,” “Sexy Beast” and even foreign-language movies such as “The Red Violin” and “The Closet.”

According to box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations, in the past five years, non-studio movies have regularly chalked up between 7% and 10% of overall ticket sales, achieving the top end with blockbuster titles like “Blair Witch” or “The Others” that are released in more than 1,000 theaters.

Not only do these films fill a gap for an upscale adult audience, says Michael Barker, a principal in Sony Pictures Classics, “but the critics are starved as well. That’s why it’s always been a good time for us.”

Because they are not competing with the studios’ meatier Oscar-caliber films, which are primarily crammed into the last six weeks of every calendar year, summer independent releases have consistently been able to stand out with reviewers and linger in the memory long enough to garner mention on 10-best lists at the end of the year (“Buena Vista Social Club,” “The Deep End,” “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”) as well as Oscar attention (“The Full Monty,” “Sexy Beast,” “Spider Woman”).

The combination of critical and box-office success also has begotten greater interest from star names eager to give themselves over to material that doesn’t require special-effects acrobatics. This year some of Hollywood’s biggest names will be appearing in “small” movies: Julia Roberts in Steven Soderbergh’s eagerly awaited ensemble comedy “Full Frontal”; Robin Williams in “One Hour Photo”; Jodie Foster in “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys”; and Gwyneth Paltrow in “Possession.”

Independent distributors say they don’t fret much about what studios are doing in summer, since those movies are mostly aimed at teenagers and the family audience. The rare exceptions include the erotically charged “Unfaithful” and the Tom Hanks drama “Road to Perdition.”

“The behemoths have nothing to do with us,” says Mark Urman, head of distribution at Think Films. “We’re the underdogs 52 weeks a year. The trick in summer is not to compete with ourselves.” He points to the recent simultaneous release of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and “Enigma,” which did stronger business than anticipated, knocking “The Cat’s Meow” out of its prime New York theater after only two weeks. It’s not that “The Cat’s Meow” wasn’t doing well; the other films just did better.

Because the small cadre of top theaters for independent films is in constant demand, distributors juggle their schedules to jump in when a film fails or drop back when a surprise hit emerges. That kind of flexibility requires long-range planning, since independent movies are only intermittently advertised on television (and then it’s primarily on specialty cable channels like Bravo or A&E;), according to Koltai-Levine of Fine Line.

“It requires a lot of patience and preparation,” she says. “Cherish” debuted at Sundance in January and will open in theaters on June 7. Once it opens in major cities, “we have a two-week window of opportunity,” she says. If the film hits, it can expand throughout the summer like Fine Line’s summer hit last year, “The Anniversary Party.”

The advantage of having high-profile performers in independent movies, according to Barker, is the ability to command attention from the mainstream megaplexes in some areas, in addition to the specialty chains. By Memorial Day, he hopes to be playing “13 Conversations About One Thing” (with Matthew McConaughey) next door to the new “Star Wars.” If audiences connect with John Sayles’ “Sunshine State” (starring Angela Bassett and Timothy Hutton), opening in late June, it could attract viewers in major cities who can’t get into “Men in Black II” over the Fourth of July weekend or prefer somewhat more challenging fare.

Unlike the major studio movies, opening-weekend grosses for most specialized-audience films are not as important as the second and third weekends, which demonstrate whether the movie is catching on through word-of-mouth and has the ability to broaden outside of New York and Los Angeles to other major cities. The lucky ones, the “crossover” films, can gross $5 million, the indie benchmark of success (comparable to $75 million to $100 million for a studio film), because those movies cost about a tenth as much as the average studio film (including marketing) and rarely play in more than 100 to 200 theaters. “The specialty films that do [well] in summer now have the chance of doing even better because there are more theaters willing to play these movies,” says Mark Gill, West Coast president of Miramax Films.

Besides having the right star or name director, a fresh or alternative concept can be a key ingredient in reaching that goal. Because the major studios labor to create movies that are repeatable or fodder for spinoffs, the playing field for independent movies is wider.

There will be, to be sure, the regular spate of serious dramas like the Sundance prize-winner “The Believer,” about a Jewish neo-Nazi youth; the ensemble dramas “Sunshine State” and “The Safety of Objects,” starring Glenn Close; the stylistically daring “Gangster No. 1”; and “One Hour Photo,” starring Robin Williams as an unbalanced photo developer.

Stylish period pieces like “An Ideal Husband” have worked well in the past and there will be more this summer. In addition to “The Importance of Being Earnest,” there’s an adaptation of A.S. Byatt’s novel “Possession,” which offers parallel romances in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the Napoleonic-era comedy “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” starring Ian Holm.

While most studio summer movies are aimed squarely at the male audience, the independent world is offering films with strong female appeal.

Miramax is releasing not just sophisticated period pieces like “Earnest,” but also “Tadpole,” a comedy about a young man with a taste for older women--”the kinds of movies my mother or my wife would want to see,” Gill says.

Because the studios are offering little in the way of romance this summer, the indies are jumping into the breach with films such as “Lovely & Amazing,” starring Catherine Keener and Brenda Blethyn, and more dramatic romances like Miguel Arteta’s “The Good Girl,” starring Jennifer Aniston. Other female-skewing titles include the British film “Me Without You,” about a 30-year friendship between two women.

As with “Cherish,” the romantic comedy “Pumpkin,” starring Christina Ricci, hopes to attract younger women. And there will be several other movies that could lure the younger generation away from a steady diet of “Scooby-Doo” and “Austin Powers” and toward somewhat meatier fare. There’s director Roman Coppola’s drama “CQ”; and for those prone to punk-rock nostalgia, “24 Hour Party People”; and the comedy-drama “Igby Goes Down,” with Claire Danes, Amanda Peet and Kieran Culkin. There’s even a family film, “Little Secrets.”

Foreign films have been enjoying a renaissance lately with such recent hits as “Amelie,” “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and “Monsoon Wedding,” which have been slowly eroding the barrier against subtitled movies, and not just among aging baby boomers. Encouraged by the breakout summer performance of “Run Lola Run” in 1999, independents will offer such movies as Paramount Classics’ German import “Mostly Martha,” about a fastidious chef who is softened by romance. The hope is that the films can tap the same viewers who found “Chocolat” and “Babette’s Feast” appetizing. The epic Indian film “Lagaan,” an Oscar nominee that was released earlier this month, carries hopes of building momentum as the summer progresses. Later on, the French comedy “My Wife Is an Actress” will be released.

As in any summer, only the strongest eight to 10 films will survive the indie competitive heat. But they’re likely to be movies that are talked about long after the latest studio franchise film has evanesced.

Richard Natale is a regular contributor to Calendar.