‘Greek’ producer takes a big, fat risk

At first glance, Paul Brooks doesn’t appear to be a wild-eyed lunatic about to embark on a crazed kamikaze mission. The 43-year-old London-born producer drives a VW Golf, wears sensible shoes and is happily married to his high school sweetheart. And yet, after spending the last decade running a tiny British distribution company and producing modest art-house movies, he’s about to do something really nuts -- start a new independent distribution company.

Without a studio system to funnel movies to theaters, the independent distribution highway is littered with corpses of companies that have gone belly up. So most old Hollywood hands are skeptical about the prospects of Brooks’ newly formed Gold Circle Releasing company. (He plans to make an official announcement today.)

On the other hand, these naysayers also thought Brooks was out of his mind when he put up half the money for an obscure romantic comedy with a no-name actress and a TV sitcom director that was promptly turned down by every studio in town. Finally, Brooks had to pay tiny IFC Films a fee to distribute the movie and agreed to pay all the marketing costs as well.

That obscure romantic comedy was “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” which has made $225 million and become the highest-grossing independent film ever. Brooks, who became president of Gold Circle Films in March 2001, shortly after “Greek Wedding” finished shooting, has no illusions that he’ll ever duplicate that astounding success.

“I’m never going to have another ‘Greek Wedding’ in this life or any other,” he said the other day.

“We caught lightning in a bottle. I know all about those skeletons of companies that had a hit right out of the box and [threw] it all away. When it comes to picking movies, I’m going to get as many wrong as I get right. I just hope the ones I get right will pay for the ones I get wrong.”

Movie distribution is a great game, if you’re a big studio. A colossus like Warner Bros. charges roughly 25% to 30% of an exhibitor’s rental fee as a distribution fee, which can be a huge profit center for a studio that releases 25 movies a year, many of them independently financed and paying their own marketing expenses. Because Warner Bros. has a steady product flow, it gets the best theaters and financial terms (the exhibitors and studios split the profits from ticket sales). Exhibitors treat big studios with respect, because there’s always a “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the Rings” franchise film on the way that the theaters desperately want.

Without that leverage, an indie distributor doesn’t get such good financial terms and often finds it difficult to collect its share of the grosses from exhibitors. Big conglomerates also have deep pockets, so an expensive flop won’t sink the studio. Smaller companies have a much narrower margin for error, which is why Movie Boot Hill is full of tombstones for Destination, Savoy, Triton, Stratosphere, Vestron, New World, Hemdale, Cannon, Skouras and other indie distributors that bit the dust over the last 15 years. Even top producers like Dino De Laurentiis and Jerry Weintraub failed miserably in the indie distribution game.

The economics of theatrical distribution are dreadful, which is why indie companies like Lions Gate and Artisan are so rare in Hollywood. Largely because of skyrocketing marketing costs, a theatrical run is often a loss leader for a movie’s home video release. None of the glowing media coverage of “Greek Wedding’s” success got around to mentioning the cold hard arithmetic: Even if the film ends up making $250 million, once you subtract the exhibitors’ take, Gold Circle’s distribution fee, marketing costs, interest and other fees, there’s only from $40 million to $45 million left to split among the profit participants -- if they can actually collect all of their rentals from the exhibitors.

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Having a hit like “Greek Wedding” is the showbiz equivalent of winning the lottery. If Brooks were a sane man, he’d quit while he was ahead and putter around in the garden of his Santa Monica home.

But, like so many other people drawn to Hollywood, he’s a gambler who enjoys the risk-taking that comes with the love of making movies. “I can’t think of anyone I’d bet on more than Paul,” says Gary Goetzman, the head of Playtone, the company that produced “Greek Wedding.” “He’s got tons of energy and has a fantastic understanding of the marketplace.”

Born into a working-class family, Brooks tried to land a job in the British film business after graduating from college, but he got the brushoff; he dismisses today’s British movie industry as “maggoty and pretentious.” He ended up making a killing in real estate, then losing it all in the big London property crash of 1991.

All along, he remained fascinated by film. He vividly recalls watching “The Last of the Mohicans” in a London theater, being “exhilarated by the magic of it and depressed that I wasn’t a part of it.”

He eventually got backing to finance movies from some of the people for whom he’d made money in real estate.

After making a series of small movies in England, he headed for L.A., where he worked as a consultant and executive-produced indie films, including the 2000 art-house horror film “Shadow of a Vampire,” before hooking up with Gold Circle, which is owned by Gateway computers co-founder Norm Waitt.

Brooks wants to distribute his own movies because he believes we’re entering a watershed moment in the film business. In recent years, indie producers have made lots of mid-range $40-million to $60-million films, bankrolled largely by money from European tax funds and pay-TV sales; Brooks calls it “funny money.”

With the collapse of the German stock market, most cash-strapped indie producers have cut back on production, giving Brooks access to material without having to overpay for it, plus control over how and when the films are released in theaters. As he puts it: “For the first time in a decade, there’s a level playing field for the kind of film we want to make, the $5[-million] to $15-million indie-multiplex film” -- in other words, films like “Greek Wedding.”

He is also convinced that moviegoers are in the midst of a burgeoning rebellion against homogenized studio fluff. In the last 18 months, audiences have embraced a diverse array of unconventional low-budget films, everything from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and “Monsoon Wedding” to “Monster’s Ball,” “In the Bedroom,” “The Good Girl,” “Barbershop” and “The Banger Sisters.” “There’s a sea change occurring in consumer tastes in every way of life, from films to cars to food,” he says.

“Look at the preponderance of style and food channels. They’re creating a better-educated consumer. The same thing is happening in film. People are going in droves to indie movies, because they want something honest and original; they want to be surprised.”

Brooks plans to produce or acquire roughly six films for distribution each year, all budgeted at less than $15 million unless he finds a partner to help share the risk. The new company will survive on a small staff, Brooks says, by outsourcing much of its work.

“It’s a very conservative financial model,” he says. “We’re trying to put all our money up on screen.”

Producer David Permut, who made a live Eddie Griffin comedy film called “Dysfunktional Family” with backing from Gold Circle, says Brooks has no delusions of grandeur. “People said Bob Shaye was a one-trick pony when he had his success with ‘[Teenage Mutant] Ninja Turtles,’ but look at New Line today,” Permut says.

“Paul is a very similar kind of guy. You always know where you stand with him. Paul drove his VW Golf before he had a hit and he’s still driving it after his hit. And he’ll run his company the same way.”

Gold Circle’s recent films, which include the Nicolas Cage-directed “Sonny” and “The Man From Elysian Fields,” haven’t enjoyed much success. The first film Gold Circle will distribute, in partnership with the Samuel Goldwyn Co., is “Poolhall Junkies,” a comic drama co-starring Chazz Palminteri, Rod Steiger and Christopher Walken, written and directed by Mars Callaghan. “I’m simply trying to wrap an elegant financial model around my instincts,” says Brooks. “If we give the exhibitors good movies, they’ll play them because they’ve learned that a $5-million indie movie is just as likely to work as a $40-million studio film.”

Brooks laughs. “On the other hand, five years from now I could be working as a landscape gardener. But I’m not scared of failing, I’m only scared of not trying.”

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Mea culpa: A number of readers have complained that last week’s column unfairly described “25th Hour” as having received “bad reviews almost everywhere.” They were absolutely right. The Spike Lee-directed film got a negative review from The Times, but the majority of its reviews were positive. In fact, according to one online survey of critic Top 10 lists, the film ranked No. 19 among all 2002 releases.

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“The Big Picture” runs every Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.