PART V
Buy the book from
Amazon.com
DISTRIBUTION
FINDING A DISTRIBUTOR
Finding a distributor is easy, finding an honest distributor is a
whole other thing!
There is no end to horror stories film makers, directors and producers
tell about being taken by dishonest distributors. There never was a
more crooked business invented by man!
I could write a whole other book on distribution con games. In fact,
the only book I read on distribution, its author treats the whole
subject on the basis of what a producer has to do not to be cheated.
And in the final analysis, according to this book, one could easily
draw the conclusion that no film is ever distributed without the
producers getting cheated from, say, 30% to 100% of their share!
Rather than tell you about the thousand ways a distributor can cheat
a film maker or producer, I'll cut to the chase instead: distributors
have to cheat producers in order to survive!
Now you're saying, "He's lost it altogether!" But, wait, let me go on.
I went to a film market once, and I had an old movie of my own that I
was trying to test the waters with. It was my first attempt at
distribution. I was frustrated by the slow returns on my previous
movie, which was handled by a middle-sized distribution company.
I also took a couple of other projects along, from producers who were
not lucky in finding a distributor. (You can imagine how much luck I
was going to have!)
And to make matters worse, one of these projects was in script stage
and the other one was not answer printed yet (I did have a video of the
rough-cut though.)
I took my place in the market and started negotiating with buyers.
Buyers come from 150 international territories to these markets. I was
so anxious to sell something, in order to cover my market costs, that I
found myself at one point offering my own finished film as a free-bee
just to pre-sell the other two! It was very ironic, as I caught myself
short -- even the buyer was stunned -- what was I doing? Give my own
film away for free, just to get a deposit on the production of another
producer's script? What was I supposed to do with the deposit, give it
to the producer and wait for him to make a movie, deliver it to me for
distribution and then collect my distribution fee? Meanwhile I was to
give my own film, that I had toiled on for over a year, to this
distributor for nothing? I, the distributor, was gonna cheat myself,
the film maker! Why, it had to be that way! How else was I going to
succeed as a distributor and pay my market participation fees? Film is
just a commodity, it doesn't matter whose film you're selling, your own
or somebody else's, right? I was getting ready to screw myself!
Go ahead, laugh, laugh!