04 Feb

Posted at 14:14h in Film Fundamentals
Low budget indie movies are hot. That is supposedly the message from the recent Sundance Festival, where distribution purchase records were being set. Titles were being grabbed at $2.5 million (Fruitvale),  $4 million (both Austenland and Don Jon's Addiction), and finally hitting the grand jackpot of $10 million for The Way, Way Back. Are they sure this was Sundance? Sounds more like a sweepstake being worked by Ed McMahon. But hey, it's a great boom for a few indie filmmakers. The question is: Does this help the indie business? It certainly suggests a resurgence of interest in medium budget movies. Take for example The Way, Way Back. It's not really low, low budget. It was directed by the two guys who previously scripted The Descendants, which means that they are not exactly newcomers. (If you count TV, they've been around for a while). It's designed to be a slightly quirky, mildly feel-good, low key crowd pleaser. In other words, it is the kind of movie that mainstream Hollywood use to make on a more regular basis several decades ago.  

28 Jan

Posted at 07:22h in Outside Looking In
In spring of 2000, I moved to the northern France city of Lille to spend a semester abroad. At that point, Internet usage hadn’t really penetrated French homes—only 10% of the French population used the Internet (in the U.S. at the same time, between 45 and 50% of American adults were online). My host family didn’t own a computer, nor did any of the other families that hosted the American students in my group. I had a laptop in the U.S. but didn’t bother bringing it with me. If I wanted to use the Internet, I went to the cybercafé in the center of town. I rarely spent more than half an hour there. It was full of smoke, and the slightly sour smell of the adolescent males who filled the place in the afternoon to play video games online. The French keyboards were also a hindrance to electronic communication. The positions of the A and Q were reversed, as were the W and Z.

24 Jan

Posted at 07:17h in Outside Looking In
The student was irate. "I wasn't told what time we were supposed to meet, that's why I was late. No one gave me that information" She was referring to a visit to the Pompidou Center. I was the logistics coordinator for study-abroad in Paris for her university. I'd scheduled a group visit, but she was half an hour late and ended up missing it. "That's weird," I said. "I sent out a message to everyone a couple of days ago with all the meeting information." "Well, I didn't get it," she said. I checked my Sent mail. Her name was in the list of recipients. I pointed to it, feeling the small thrill of self-righteousness as I awaited her apology. I should have known better. "Oh, you emailed it," she said, in a tone that implied I might as well have strapped the information to a carrier pigeon. "I don't really check my email that much. You should have Facebooked me."

24 Jan

Posted at 07:13h in Film Fundamentals

Gun violence in movies and media is a hot topic. Just ask Robert Redford, who devoted part of his opening address at the current Sundance Festival to this issue. In his address, Redford frames the question in terms of social responsibility. Questions concerning sex, specifically sex...

13 Jan

Posted at 21:02h in Film Fundamentals

Legendary film editor Dede Allen was once asked by a student, “Who is your agent?” Allen's reply was quick. “I don't have an agent. I have a lawyer.” Not a bad answer, though it works best if you are Dede Allen. Most people could use an agent....

03 Jan

Posted at 17:33h in Film Fundamentals

It may be a new year, but we are still limping through the same old battles. At least, that is one reaction I had to Ted Hope's recent additions to his original list of things that are currently wrong with the indie film business (The...

29 Dec

Posted at 18:18h in Human Capital
The morning of September 5, 1995, I was reading the Chinese paper in my kitchen in Hong Kong. This was the second day of the Fourth Annual Conference of Women in Beijing. The opening events were front page news. And this was not unusual for the Chinese press, to be giving extensive coverage of a global event staged for the first time in Beijing. But, I was stunned.

26 Dec

Posted at 14:25h in Film Fundamentals
Ted Hope is a visionary film producer but anyone who talks about 75 or 100 bad things in the Indie Film Biz (today's blog) or any other industry makes me feel hopeless. For one thing, I only love good films. I don't make them. If I don't know how to make them, I certainly don't know how to unmake what doesn't work. Unless those things happen to intersect with my world, finance. Then, it's much easier. In finance there is only one problem: valuation. And only one reason why valuation becomes skewed: asymmetries of power or information, which, in the long run, are the same thing.

23 Dec

Posted at 15:28h in Credit Spectrum
Luigi Zingales teaches finance at Chicago Booth. It is not exactly a secret that Glenn Hubbard was his research collaborator in the run up to the presidential election, or that Zingales was positioning himself for an economic advisory role for Romney before he lost the election. Nevertheless, he's a lot smarter than Hubbard, and seems sincere. Right before the election, he went on a speaking tour to promote his book, A Capitalism for the People. I read it after attending one of his speaking events for Booth alums in NYC. In my opinion, it is the best of the worst of Chicago thinking. What is good and true in Zingales’ book is his discussion of how power interests have corrupted our market economy. I particularly liked his analysis of why anti-trust law is important in the chapter “Crony Capitalism American style.” Not that it enforces the laws of micro-economics and keeps marginal pricing competitive, but that it allows firms to grow to be mega firms who can bend the state to their will. His observation is subtle, astute and hits the mark. The poverty of his analysis shows up on p. 156 in his explanation of why competition does not cure predatory lending: most people do not pay attention to their finances, he says. From there, his argument takes a “right turn.”