'Visitor' just won't leave

That's how Overture, a start-up company, came to buy the film for $1 million, a price that's looking better and better as time goes on. As London bluntly puts it: "If we didn't find Overture, a new distributor that needed movies, this movie would be on DVD right now. Everyone told us, 'We love it, but no one's going to go see it.' "

London believes the collapse of the specialty market has less to do with audiences abandoning well-made movies than indie film companies abandoning their core business model. "They just got out of touch with what people wanted," he says. "They got very seduced by movies like 'Juno' or 'Little Miss Sunshine' that could gross $75 or $100 million. It's like everyone took a hiatus from their core business, which is supposed to be all about: How do we grow something special?"

Anyone who's been to the recent round of festivals knows how bleak the sales picture is. Even films with top-name talent, including Steven Soderbergh's "Che," James Gray's "Two Lovers" and Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York," are still looking for U.S. distributors. The one big sale at Sundance was "Hamlet 2," an attempt at broad-based commercial comedy. The recent L.A. Film Festival was reduced to opening and closing its festival with wan big-studio fare. The malaise is everywhere.

Still, London isn't gloomy, in part because he has a movie that's attracted a small but loyal audience, largely thanks to lively word of mouth. "I have to admit that I was terrified when Overture picked us up," he recalls. "I mean, there we were, with a distributor that had never put out a movie before. But four or five weeks into our run, we started to feel the movie was taking on a life of its own. We'd get these crazy e-mails from friends or family, saying that everyone they knew was going to see the picture. When the grosses keep going up every weekend, you know something is happening."

"The Visitor" also had a little luck. It was never meant to still be playing in the middle of summer, but once it survived April and May, with no specialty division fare going up against the big summer studio releases, it basically had the indie market to itself.

Overture has been careful with its marketing buys -- I can remember London calling me one day, moaning about the postage-stamp-size ad Overture had taken out for the film in The Times. But Overture's belief in positive buzz had been rewarded. "They've done a great job," London says now. "The movie has struggled whenever they've tried to broaden it into smaller markets or more mainstream suburban theaters. But in terms of the top 150 art theaters in America, it's had a wonderful life."

What's the lesson here? "The audience is still there," London says. "And if $10 million is the ceiling, then indie distributors will just have to adapt to a much smaller business model. There will still be brass-ring movies like 'Juno,' but the days when every distributor in town could chase after the brass ring are over."

London laughs. "I guess if this were the stock market, you could say we'd had a healthy correction. The days of chasing the big hits are over."

--

This item and others can be found on the Big Picture blog (latimes.com/thebigpicture).