John August on lessons learned distributing The Nines
John August, director of The Nines and also a screenwriter with a great blog, has written a really candid, useful post, partly in response to Mark Gill’s comments, about what he learned about distribution after his experiences with The Nines. Read his take on indiefreude and why acceptance to Sundance does not mean that you’ve made it and there’s money in the bank. He also makes the important point that there is much success to be found in Gill’s 99.9% failure rate for indie films:
We need to ask, “Failure for whom?” Even a movie that doesn’t earn its budget back will likely make money for its distributors, once you factor in video and TV sales. More crucially, a good indie film generates future work for its stars and filmmakers. So there’s a lot of success to be found in that 99.9% failure.
He finishes with this:
My advice? You should make an indie film to make a film. Period. Artistic and commercial success don’t correlate well, and at the moment, only the former is remotely within your control.
If I had to do it all over again, I would have made the same movie but completely rethought how it went out into the world. I would have challenged a lot of the standard operating procedures, which seem to be part of an indie world that no longer exists. The Nines would have likely made just as little at the box office, but could have made a bigger impact on a bigger audience. Ultimately, I think that’s how you need to measure the success of an indie film’s release: how many people saw it.