by Randee Dawn
(from MovieMaker Magazine)
Winged Migration
Five years ago, I was standing on line at a Sundance documentary screening,” recalls Docurama co-owner Steve Savage. “The movie was sold out, and that was amazing to me at the time—but not only that, people were being turned away and were disappointed. That was the inspiration for Docurama.”
What a difference five years makes. Half a decade ago, forming the only distribution company exclusively dedicated to documentaries for the home video market might have seemed a leap in the dark—but not today. This year's explosion of documentaries at Sundance proved what last year's box office had already revealed: Namely, that the successes of films like Spellbound, Capturing the Friedmans and Winged Migration were no fluke. The industry has begun to take notice. “When we started this thing,” laughs Savage, “documentaries were the D word. You'd never use ‘documentary' on a box if you were bringing it to the marketplace.
Now, the D word has become the B word—buzzworthy. Docs landing million-dollar deals at Sundance? Who would have thought. (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Metallica: Some Kind of Monster picked up a $3 million advance just for video rights; Morgan Spurlock says the money he's getting for Super Size Me! has “exceeded all my expectations.”) Audiences have clearly re-trained their thinking when it comes to movies, and buyers are responding. Even sensitive subject matter isn't keeping people away, says Eamonn Bowles, president of Magnolia Pictures, which released last year's breakout hit Capturing the Friedmans.
Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
“I thought it would perform on some level,” he says of Friedmans. What he didn't expect was a $3 million-plus gross (and counting) on a film about accused child molesters on Long Island. “It became the cocktail party movie of [last] summer,” he says. “That drove so much of the business.”
So what has changed? Has the quality documentary become the new independent film? The devil is in the details. Insiders point to various reasons, starting with the bankruptcy in traditional fictional storytelling in Hollywood. They note that creativity in fiction films has been exchanged for assured tentpole blockbuster success. “In the last 10 or 15 years, there's been a real vacuum in dramatic storytelling,” says George Hickenlooper, director of Mayor of the Sunset Strip. “Hollywood is selling the big spectacle, or ironic postmodern movies with nudge, nudge, wink, wink violence. Audiences haven't been able to relate to these characters on visceral, emotional levels.”
Audiences now know what to expect from movies, and so find themselves less entertained. “People want something with a tinge of unpredictability to it,” explains Savage. “The old Hollywood conceits keep recycling the same stories over and over again.”
Deriving narrative from real life, documentaries escape the pat, easy endings because, of course, real life rarely has them. That's why they're called “Hollywood endings.” “To the extent that I know what the story is, it gets far less interesting to me,” explains Errol Morris, who has been making documentaries since 1978's Gates of Heaven, and has always found theatrical distribution for his films. (He scored his first Oscar nod this year with Fog of War—and won.) “There is that element of the unpredictable, the unexpected in almost every film I've made. Capturing the complexity of the real world can be very powerful and dramatic.”
Winged Migration, Capturing the Friedmans and Spellbound made 2003 a banner year for nonfiction moviemaking, a trend that has benefited Docurama’s home video market.
One of Morris' early successes, 1988's The Thin Blue Line, redefined the visual language of docs by introducing reenactments and dramatic presentations of dry material such as court documents. “The film was considered heretical because of reenacted material,” remembers Morris. Yet nonfiction television and many recent films have now made that language commonplace. Conversely, documentaries have begun borrowing the syntax of Hollywood films to help create narrative, says Docurama's Savage, pointing to this year's Touching the Void. His co-owner, partner Susan Margolis, adds that American Splendor was an “interesting mix of documentary, fiction and animation.”
The lines haven't just been blurring on the theatrical screens. Though filmmakers may cringe at the admission, audience addiction to reality shows has had an enormous effect on the success of
long-form documentaries. Though it is a chicken-or-egg proposition—are docs popular because of reality shows, or vice-versa—the success of both is undoubtedly intertwined.
“Reality television is actually pretty constructed TV,” notes Ondi Timoner, director and producer of the film DiG! “But I think it's opened people's minds—and the industry's mind—to the idea that real life is perhaps stranger than fiction.”
“Capturing the complexity of the real world can be very powerful and dramatic.”
—Errol Morris
Technology also can't be underestimated: Documentaries are easier to make than ever, thanks to lower-priced DV cameras and home computers which can now serve as editing systems. “I was filming with spy cameras in 1995, when they were like $2,500. Now you can get them for $50 on the Internet,” notes Timoner.
Spurlock agrees. “Anybody can get a camera now; anyone can edit a film. You don't even need a lot of money, you just need time and sweat equity.”
Docs also have the advantage of audience acceptance when it comes to rougher edges, notes Mark Urman, head of distribution for ThinkFilm, which released Spellbound. “The human eye is now trained to redefine what a cinema image can be,” he explains. “It's harder for people to accept the digital image and brackish lighting and herky-jerky camera movement in a fiction film, but they will from a documentary. I've seen [documentaries] that work enormously well, that were made with the sort of camera you'd give to a 12-year old and a lavalier mic.”
Still, notes Spellbound producer Jeff Blitz, “I think the success of documentaries recently has had less to do with qualitative shifts in the making of docs or audience appetites and more to do with the fact that distributors are now willing to spend real marketing money to let audiences know how terrific these films are.”
Lars Ulrich takes center stage in Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)
He's in good company with Urman, who believes docs are the best buys out there—but who insists ThinkFilm has no plans to go exclusively into the doc distribution business. “At this moment in time, [docs] are the best projects that present themselves. They seem to be the most sellable, have the most ancillary prospects, they're most critically acclaimed and present the optimal combination of prestige, individuality and comfort for us.” Docurama's Savage, on the other hand, admits they might consider expansion into theatrical distribution: “There's such fire in the box office that it means that may be an area that's logical for us to migrate toward.”
There are now more outlets for docs than ever before. PBS is no longer a moviemaker's likeliest territory—although even PBS might find a revitalization if recent plans by Comcast to launch digital video-on-demand channels for public TV fare go through.
HBO has long financed and aired documentaries, notes VP of programming, Nancy Abraham. “From the very beginning [of the network], HBO has been commissioning, financing and producing documentaries. We didn't want to ignore projects just because they hadn't originated with us. If they are great films, or we feel they have a place on the network, then we are happy to get involved.”
Kevin MacDonald directs Touching the Void (2003)
Additionally, The Sundance Channel airs docs frequently, devoting a 12-hour period once a week to airing nothing but. “We wanted to send a message to the documentary community that we have been here and continue to be here and are committed to documentaries that don't have a home,” explains Paola Fuchero, senior VP of film programming. Plans for an all-doc Sundance Channel have been in the works since 2002, but launching, she says, has been problematic.
In the meantime, other outlets have presented themselves. Netflix has partnered with Docurama's New Video to identify films which might not get distribution otherwise, and makes them available to their subscriber base. Titles such as Davis Guggenheim's The First Year and Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco's Daughter from Danang have all come out on Netflix First, which takes on the expenses of creating and authoring the DVDs, then returns the digital files to the filmmaker. “What we get out of it is that our customers value discovery,” explains Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix, which can target movies to a very specific audience. “I can identify at least 25,000 people in our database who'd want to see Daughter From Danang,” he notes.
All of which means it's a new world for the documentary moviemaker—and those who want to capitalize on the phenomenon. “There will be permanent implications here,” says Nancy Buirski, founder and executive director for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. “Filmmakers are learning to make documentaries with a more narrative style, and they're beginning to understand what makes a documentary compelling to a mainstream audience.”
“At this point in time, docs are the best projects that present themselves.”
—Mark Urman
And yet, notes Blitz, “Real filmmakers aren't influenced much by trends or fads. The mainstreaming of docs won't shift one bit the kind of movie I aspire to make.”
With increased attention will likely come greater budgets and higher expenses for distributors, but more money won't spoil filmmakers, says Berlinger. “Documentaries have always been the bastard child of the movie industry. Now we're starting to get a little respect. And if a documentary can make $50 million, that would be a positive development.” He notes that with indie films now costing $30 to $40 million, a vacuum has been pleasantly opened. “If the Miramaxing of documentaries were to happen, it could only be a good situation. That means more nonfiction product would come into the theaters.”
There are elements of the increased attention that worry some—Buirski frets that “documentary filmmakers have always been driven by the story they need to tell, not the marketplace. Some of them are going to be a little bit torn now by the need to satisfy marketplace demands, and I hope it's not going to affect their ability to tell the story they want to tell.”
That kind of concern, however, is likely a long way down the road. And moviemakers are still battling some of the same concerns they always have. “Even the now legendary Michael Moore will still tell you that every film is a struggle to get funded; every film is a struggle to get distributed. They live very modest existences,” says Sundance's Fuchero. (She's right—Oscar nom or not, Morris took time off from a job filming a commercial to speak to MM.) “A modicum of perspective is always a good thing.”
Urman believes that this is no passing fancy in filmgoers' taste. “There's no turning back. Hollywood can give us romantic comedies, they can give us thrillers, they can give us family dramas, but they just can't give it as well, as edgily or as challengingly as documentaries can.” MM
