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'Indie' Films Go Mainstream: More Movies With Art-House Appeal Are Ending Up at Mass-Market Cinemas

Posted on: Saturday, 25 March 2006, 12:00 CST

By Michelle Theriault, The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham, Wash.

Mar. 25--Michael Falter wanted "Capote."

It seemed like the kind of film the audiences of the Bellingham art-house movie theater, The Pickford Cinema, would dig: quirky, slightly highbrow "indie" fare.

Instead the film's distributor, Sony Classics, decided it would play at Sehome Cinema 3, owned by Regal Cinemas. It doesn't surprise Falter, who manages the theater and makes programming decisions.

"If there is a chain in town, their leverage is more than one screen, it's the hundreds of screens that they might carry with them."

Tennessee-based Regal Cinemas, which also owns movie theaters at Sunset Square and Bellis Fair, operates 6,273 screens at 558 locations in the United States.

In contrast, the Pickford has a single screen and 88 seats.

In a world where a gay cowboy love story makes $82 million at the box office, as "Brokeback Mountain" did, art houses now have to compete with chains for the fare that used to be their bread and butter.

And that's after creating an audience for indie films that eventually grew large enough - and mainstream enough - for major studios to make money of such movies.

"We kind of created our own monster in a way," says Falter.

Art-house audiences and mainstream audiences rarelt mixed. Usually, the films that did well at small indie theaters and big Hollywood summer blockbusters were like oil and water, or "Clerks" and "Armageddon."

Not anymore. Now, big Hollywood studios have boutique divisions - like Disney's Miramax - that are embracing indie sensibilities. This year's Best Picture nominees were almost all considered indie films.

The boutique divisions once catered to art houses, which were more likely to play the edgier fare they produced, Falter says. Now, they need to make more money - which means deals with chains to get films onto thousands of screens.

That's one reason why Falter wasn't able to bring "a long list" of films he wanted to the Pickford.

"I felt 'Capote,' which I saw last year in Toronto, was a Pickford movie," he says.

"Capote is an example of a film that had great reviews and great buzz, so the distributor, (Sony Classics), tried to capitalize on it and pushed for many more screens than a film like that might normally have."

Not that Falter didn't try.

After a hard-fought battle, Falter did get "March of the Penguins," another crossover indie hit, for the Pickford

If it makes money, "Hollywood will co-opt anything it can co-opt," says Ken Eisen of Shadow Distribution.

His Waterville, Maine, company is dedicated to releasing unusual films to art house theaters - titles include "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" and "The Beauty Academy of Kabul." As a rule, they won't have a Burger King toy tie-in, stars appearing on the cover of Vogue, or the massive budget or marketing machine that goes along with big studio films.

Still, Falter says he doesn't feel like David battling Goliath.

Pickford audiences love documentaries, says Falter, who has made a point of bringing films like "The Fog of War" and "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" to the Pickford. Falter already is gearing up for his next battle. He thinks the next big indie film will be "Little Miss Sunshine," which sold for more than $10 million at Sundance and is generating a buzz.

He wants it for the Pickford.

"That will be a fight. We'll see who wins."

Reach Michelle Theriault at 756-2803 or michelle.theriault@bellinghamherald.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham, Wash.

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Source: The Bellingham Herald, Wash.

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