Sparking curiosity

Gill's conclusion: "As simple as it sounds, it all comes down to a good story, well told." But for me, that's not just simple, it's too simple. The indie biz is full of people trying to make quality films. What this ignores isn't just that most films aspiring to quality don't end up achieving quality but that many quality films don't make money because their subject matter is too narrow or dark or solipsistic to find a sizable audience.

The real problem with the indie business isn't quality but discipline. We have a generation of filmmakers who feel entitled to make personal films at studio prices. (The poster boy for this would be Wes Anderson, a gifted artist who makes increasingly idiosyncratic cinematic sketches on a far-too-costly canvas.) We also have a generation of studio executives who've been willing to, essentially, use specialty films as a loss leader to launch their divisions. That's why "There Will Be Blood" cost $40 million plus and "No Country for Old Men" and "Babel" cost $30 million plus to make, which along with the untold tens of millions spent to run Oscar campaigns, made the films losing propositions.

If people in the indie world want to start making money again, they have to start treating their investment like a truly precious natural resource, not like Monopoly money. Discipline is not antithetical to art. The oldest and most consistently successful specialty division, Sony Pictures Classics, keeps making money because it resolutely, sometimes to a fault, never overspends on a film. When there is a bidding war, you can always find SPC chiefs Tom Bernard and Michael Barker running in the other direction.

Ditto for Fox Searchlight, which only acquires movies it knows how to sell. When my colleague John Horn recently wrote a story noting that Paramount Vantage had nearly 100 employees and had yet to make a profit, Paramount production chief (and Vantage founder) John Lesher called him and launched into a profanity-filled tirade. Instead of yelling at a reporter, Lesher, not to mention many of his indie film colleagues, should be doing some serious soul searching. The indie film business isn't going to get any better until filmmakers and studio executives stop their spending sprees and start making indie movies for a true indie price.