WHEN a movie studio hires "Training Day" screenwriter David Ayer to pen a script, he doesn't worry about getting paid. But it has been 18 months since producer Philippe Martinez bought Ayer's movie "Harsh Times" at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the filmmaker is still awaiting the $2.2 million Martinez acknowledges he owes him.
That bills-past-due story line plays out with several other people doing business with Martinez's fledgling movie company, Bauer Martinez Studios.
When he arrived in Hollywood from Europe a year and a half ago, the French-born Martinez said he would revolutionize independent film. With a purported war chest of $200 million, he pledged not only to finance but also distribute a slate of filmmaker-driven movies. While studio-owned specialty film labels were succumbing to bottom-line calculations, Martinez said his company would be driven by a love of cinema.
In addition to buying "Harsh Times," Bauer Martinez developed and produced "The Flock," starring Richard Gere, and "I Could Never Be Your Woman," starring Michelle Pfeiffer. The company signed "Die Hard's" John McTiernan to direct the $50-million Hayden Christensen action movie "Crash Bandits" and said it would spend $850,000 for the adult film comedy "The Amateurs," starring Jeff Bridges.
Those, at least, were the stirring headlines. The reality has been far more contentious and interesting.
With numerous scheduled and then abandoned release dates, most of these new Bauer Martinez movies haven't seen the light of day. The few that were released into theaters promptly flopped. In addition to owing Ayer $2.2 million and "The Amateurs' " producers at least $850,000, Martinez acknowledges that the firm has left unpaid bills at film labs, public relations firms and movie marketing companies. Faced with a cash crisis, Martinez says, he cut the staff by two-thirds.
Martinez says his company nearly had to close its doors, and he doesn't dispute that because of the cash shortage a number of people weren't paid. But he says all but one of the company's mothballed movies -- "The Amateurs," whose future remains cloudy -- will come out soon.
"People have a tendency when they have a problem to close the tent and get out of town," Martinez says, adding that in recent weeks he has been able to overhaul his company's balance sheet and has two new financing deals to get back in the game. "We're still here. And we have learned all the possible mistakes not to make. Now we know what we can and can't do."
