Today’s date - Friday, May 18th, 2007 - could strike a bit of terror in the hearts of theater owners.
It has nothing to do with being the day Shrek the Third and Spiderman 3 start duking it out for box office domination. Instead, it’s because of another, mostly under-the-radar release: Hal Hartley’s latest film Fay Grim, which stars Parker Posey and Jeff Goldblum.
Like Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble, this is a Mark Cuban-2929 Productions special that is being released almost simultaneously in theaters, on Cuban’s HDTV cable channel and DVD (next Tuesday). With theatrical and DVD release windows rapidly shrinking (this month’s DVD release of Music and Lyrics came less than three months after its Valentine’s Day theatrical bow), some distributors see a simultaneous release as the natural progression of things. But it scares the hell out of theater owners, who fear that people will shun the traffic and the parking hassles, plus the exorbitant admission and concessions prices, when they can see a film in the comfort and privacy of their own homes.
But how do the filmmakers themselves feel about it? Does it rob them of the thrill of seeing their work on the big screen, for which they produced it in the first place? Not at all, according to director Hal Hartley, whom I asked about the release process during a one-on-two interview (Parker Posey sat in as well) with FilmStew at a recent Los Angeles press day. First of all, when you have Cuban’s HDNET films behind you, there’s a bigger budget than most indies can access.
“I think that’s good,” Hartley suggests. “Because these guys seem to think they can make money doing that [releasing it three different ways at once], and it’s really hard to distribute a film. I say more power to them. If they can make more money, for themselves distributing my film, I’m all for it.”
Hartley also notes that he’s excited about the opportunity for his film’s enhanced exposure. “It’s going to premiere simultaneously in 25 different cities, on one day, and you can also watch it in high definition on the HDTV channel and a couple days later the DVD will be all over. More people will get to see it, and quickly, all at the same time. In the olden days, like two or three years ago, some people in Kansas might not get to see the film until six or eight months after people saw it in Los Angeles and New York.”
The question is, will people in Kansas want to see his film at the same time as their fellow film lovers in New York or Los Angeles? My answer: I don’t even think people in New York or Los Angeles will want to see it. It’s the ten-years-later sequel to Hartley’s Harry Fool, for which Hartley won the 1997 Best Screenplay Award at Cannes. It’s really tough to remember the details from the first film, but Hartley claims you don’t need to.
“I don’t think you need to see the first film,” he insists. “There’s confusion, but a lot of its comedy has to do with the fact that Fay is confused about things, and trying to get a bearing, and you have to just go with that.”
Wait a minute…did he say comedy? The film, described as an international espionage action thriller, is so dark, confusing, monotonous and passion-free, it’s difficult to know if you’re laughing at the film or with the film when those few isolated snickers escape you. The dialogue is reserved and dispassionate to the point of being stilted. I envisioned Hartley coaching his actors, “You’re showing too much emotion! I want you to sound more as if you’re reading those lines!”
The film revolves around Fay, whose husband, Harry Fool, disappeared ten years ago, and whose brother, a famous author, has been imprisoned for supposedly helping him. Fay now must go on a globetrotting adventure, involving European spies and fight attendants, among others, in order to find Harry. It’s hard to care about or follow whether she finds him or not, but I will say this for Fay – she wears a killer black coat, sort of Matrix meets Underworld.
For now, I think theater owners can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Films like Fay Grim are not going to steal any business, no matter how they’re released. Even the title is unattractive. If the folks at HDNET want to set as precedent or start a revolution, they’d do well to pick more provocative material.
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