Making a Better Batman

Ted Balaker: Hi, I’m Ted Balaker with Reason.TV. Today, I’ll be speaking with
Clay Epstein. Clay is a Consultant and VP of Sales and
Acquisitions for the The Little Film Company which represents
two new films appearing at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Helen, starring Ashley Judd is a woman battling depression, and It
Might Get Loud, a rock talk that features Jimmy Page, Jack White
and The Edge

So let’s talk about one of the films that you represent, the featured
doc, It Might Get Loud. Tell me a little bit about that.

Clay Epstein: Yes. It’s been a lot of fun working on -- and it features Jimmy
Page from Led Zeppelin, Jack White from the White Stripes and
Rock and Tours and The Edge from U2. And the concept was to
pay or much to the electric guitar and they chose three of the most
influential and respected electric guitars that last through
generations. So you watch this film and you get such a -- you gain
such respect for how the three compliment each other, how they’re
different, how they write music, how they use electric guitar
differently, how they perform, what their guitar means to them. I
mean it is a gift to the fans of rock music.

Ted Balaker: A lot of people think that, they say “Oh, the film industry that’s
01:18 improve because people are always going to want to escape
their day to day. What do you say to that?

Clay Epstein: I say that the next Spiderman movie in the franchise and the next
Batman movie in the franchise, the next James Bond movie in the
franchise were such improved. It’s ever to improve. But any other
movie outside of those big huge blockbusters we can watch at
home with their surround sound on a nice big screen TV at our
own time for a cheaper amount of money. So what’s now calling
us to go to the cinema to watch these other films when it’s still is
expensive to distribute the movies, to get them on the cinema and
to advertise the movies, so you have to weight those costs against
what’s it worth.

Ted Balaker: Are you saying that films that are kind of these outliers are little bit
corkier, they’re not part of -- they’re not based on the comic book
character. Those are the ones we might be seeing last off, is that
fair to say?

Clay Epstein: I think so. I think we already are. We’ve grown in a marketplace
where releasing you know small independent interesting filsm,
alternative films outside of the main type of blockbuster films there
was a business for them, and that business are shrunk
tremendously so.

Ted Balaker: But if you do have and detest their films are still out there and you
got this interesting concept that proactive versus reactive, can you
explain what that means?

Clay Epstein: Sure. Well, it I though about this because my mother said to me
there’s no interesting films for me, for my demographic and I said
well, man I don’t like to argue with my mother but I said I’m not
arguing with -- I’m not disagreeing but you -- there are movies for
you but you have to go find them and this brought me to thinking
about the proactive audience member compared to the reactive
audience member. So one way to think of this is you want to go to
the movie theatre. What are you going to see, I’m going to open up
the paper, I’m going to turn on the TV and look at commercials
and I’m going to go on to you know a cinema movie side of
films.com or something similar and whatever is listed that’s my
choice. But that’s not necessarily your only choice there might be
some real independent cinemas around town., there might be
movies that are self-distributed online that you have to go look for
so being reactive is allowing the big huge monopolizing
marketplace and distributors tell you what to watch, right? I’m
being told what to watch, I can watch Dark Knights, Spiderman,
movies similar to that. That’s what is being told to me, billboards,
TV commercials, and nothing else exist but there is something else
that exists but you have to go and find it. You have to go proactive
to find it and it work for the music, it change the music business
because before the internets and 04:11 and iTunes et cetera we
were passive music listeners, you turn on the radio and whatever
song was on the radio that’s what existed. And you go into a music
store and whatever CDs they had is the only thing that existed.

Ted Balaker: Are there some common in the States that filmmakers would be
filmmakers make?

Clay Epstein: There’s a lot unfortunately. The number one type of genre that new
filmmakers like to do is the number one type of genre that
audiences and distributors are negative to and that’s drama. But if
someone ask my advice I would say well pick a genre and pick
elements to put into your film satisfy your artistic visions at the
same time have elements that an audience are friendly to. And that
would be something along the thriller genre action is tough on a
small budget but it’s been done successfully but so was comedy so
was romance. And that I may have said somethings that seem a bit
negative in the marketplace and in movies in the whole I am
incredibly optimistic on the future of movies both studio and
independent and a lot of studio films are being directed by
filmmakers that came from the independent world. I mean The
Dark Night director was an independent filmmaker.

Ted Balaker: Yeah, that’s very interesting because you see that and that
probably -- it probably would have been successful regardless
because of such --

Clay Epstein: But it’s much better, it’s a great movie.

Ted Balaker: Exactly, it’s just a better film.

Clay Epstein: It’s a great movie.

Ted Balaker: It was knowing right?

Clay Epstein: Yeah, Christopher, it’s a great film because it has a filmmaker
that6 understands and came from the essence of intimacy and
performance and creativity and he was resourceful and his talents
crossed over to a bigger parchment perhaps but it worked and it
worked wonderfully and if we had had the independent world we
never would have had such as wonderful Batman movie. So I’ve --
you know I pay tribute and respect to both.