One of the principal reasons we started The Festival Rag was to create a platform where the voice of the truly independent filmmaker could be heard.

For our first issue we wanted someone who had been in the trenches and succeeded. We wanted someone who had struggled and continued because the struggle was also the reward. Turns out we were looking for Ben Coccio, director of Zero Day. We approached Ben, asked him to write a first-person account of his "success story, the ups and downs." He replied immediately, said he'd love to.

A week later, there's a message on the Rag's voice mail of the fast-chatting Coccio.

"Hey it's Ben... And I, uh, hmmm... I'm enjoying writing this piece for your magazine but I feel like I'm taking the approach that you might not want to use, and you might not find helpful for your readers.... But I've been thinking about it and I feel that all filmmakers do it so differently. I mean, filmmakers get to a point where they've made a film, take it to festivals, and try to get distribution. The thing is, sometimes it has nothing to do with effort, or nothing to do with luck, even. It's weird but... But I think I have some other things to say..."

Below, the other things Ben wanted to say.

When it comes to the terra incognita of independent film, I will start by saying a good movie is a good movie. I am no fan of hair shirts, and I have never felt that budget - one way or the other - should be a factor in someone's appreciation of a good picture. If a big budget does not a good film make, then shouldn't it follow that a good movie made with little money is in no way holier than a good movie made with a lot of money?

I admit that a limited budget, like a limited palette, stretches the imagination and forces the filmmaker to chart a new course. But I have to be honest, after two years of navigating through everything myself in a rickety dinghy, I'm about ready to sell out and buy a huge yacht with a G.P.S. - if only someone would give me the opportunity.

Zero Day was my attempt to explore Columbine. It was shot on video with a first person narrative conceit as a collection of video diaries made by the killers-to-be over the course of a year while they plot and then execute their massacre.

When I set upon the course of the first person, Blair Witch-esque structure, I knew I was sailing into dangerous waters. Many friends warned me that it was a cheap, schlocky approach - that Blair Witch-type films had worn out their welcome with audiences, critics and cineastes, and that the comparisons could hurt my film. I didn't care. Obviously, limited resources forced my hand somewhat, but most importantly, I felt convinced that the method fit the madness to a tee.

I have noticed in the past few years that cinema has been exploring a neo-neo-realist ideal. Dogme 95, David Gordon Greene, Peter Sollett, and yes, Blair Witch, just to name a few indie examples, spell out an interesting trend. I'm not sure what exactly it means (let film students of the year 2026 figure that one out), but I think it has something to do with this generation of filmmakers being so profoundly influenced by filmmakers who were so profoundly influenced by Italian Neo-Realism, the French New Wave and the like. I think it also has something to do with growing up in a culture steeped in media self-consciousness. It's not enough now, it seems, to have a movie feel real in its staging of events - it has to have the trappings of something we would watch on TV, something that actually is real.

Now, I'm getting into a Moebius strip of digression here, but take for example Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg was born during World War II in a country that was fighting blood-and-guts battles around the world and, at the same time, was somehow paradoxically at arm's length from those horrors. Everything Spielberg's generation remembers about the war is from Movietone news footage and relatives' recollections. Normandy was a shaky set of half-ruined snapshots, Auschwitz was an after-the-fact black-and-white documentary commissioned by the U.S. Army.

Doesn't it make sense that his film about the Holocaust was shot in black-and-white and his film about combat in Europe was shot from the perspective of a war correspondent? Screened alongside films made by Europeans about the same events it's uncanny: compare Wajda's Kanali to Saving Private Ryan or Landscape After Battle to Schindler's List. I am not trying to diminish Spielberg's two movies - I love them - I am just trying to illustrate that America is a land of separation and alienation and that we make art about how we live.

I approached Zero Day in a way that I felt talked about that phenomenon of cultural separation and alienation at the same time that it dramatically interpreted the events at Columbine. I appropriated the cool, user-friendly, pop-culture Blair Witch approach (another movie that I love) and distorted it. Instead of a supernatural being made real, and hence more scary, I took a real scare and made it feel immediate and present and at the same time unapproachable and at arm's length. I also took a pulpy, exploitation-flick title to match my approach.

This, I felt, was the apex of independent filmmaking - right? Isn't that right? You use what you have, you approach something with a personal vision, and you try to say something smart in an interesting way. Isn't that the point of being an independent filmmaker?

Well let me tell you, during all of this - from making this thing to seeing it limp out into the world - I thought a lot about what the point of independent film is. Somewhere between what B-movies did for us as a culture and what the modern entertainment conglomerates monopolized came the idea of independent film. The power to pop the public in the puss, and to be cheap about it - to thumb your nose at the big boys and make a buck - that's the dream, isn't it?

Over the last thirteen years, the no-budget/no-star map of indie film became muddled to me. I had to discover a new definition. I decided indie flicks are movies made about things that studios can't or won't touch, in ways that studios won't or can't work. Well, two years on from the day I set sail, that doesn't really work for me either. When I started working on Zero Day, it was March of 2001. By the time I got distribution, Columbine had been tackled by "Law & Order," Showtime, Michael Moore and Gus Van Sant. And although these guys are not the Hollywood A-list, their ability to get attention for their work and to be backed by medium to large companies (United Artists, HBO, Fine Line) amounts to much the same thing to a max-out-the-credit-card-and-pray-for-rain guy like myself.

So what is independent film? It's like mercury - once it spills from the thermometer and onto the real world, it'll always slip from under your pointed finger. Nowadays, I don't care much for distinctions. I think the only thing that matters is making what you want to make any way you can. You can't expect special treatment just because you came out of nowhere and made your film cheaply. You can't demand attention just because you make a movie about something you think is off limits. You can't hope for an audience to grasp what you think is profound just because you played your movie at the Film Forum. I must have been very naïve when I set sail, and I wish I could say for sure that I am on a new track. As I venture into deeper waters, listing slightly, my journey towards becoming a filmmaker is far from its end. It's not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The festival circuit is a pretty competitive one, but the VFF will burst onto it armed with two big innovations: a Television Pilots programme and the first-ever Gershwin Showcase. The latter is a short-film contest sponsored by the Gershwin Foundation, which is giving away music rights to songs from the catalogue of George and Ira Gershwin, in addition to awarding thousands of dollars in prize money.

Co-directors Denis Jensen and Sean & Scott Cross have watched their project gather major momentum on its downhill race from vision to reality this past year. They are all New York-based filmmakers and avid Vail skiers, with no prior experience in such an undertaking. From where they stand in their cramped New York City office, the festival seems to have been conjured out of thin mountain air.

"I think a lot of it had to do with timing," says Jensen. "We always kind of wondered, well, why isn't there a film festival in Vail? That evolved into talking to a number of community leaders. We were giving a presentation to the Vail town council and they stopped us midway through and said, 'This is just a slam dunk.'" The idea went over very well and it literally snowballed from there."

The idea: Vail as an annual Mecca for innovative filmmaking.

"We didn't want to do just another big festival - like Sundance - but we also didn't want to reinvent the wheel," Jensen continues. "We're looking to keep it truly independent, with an emphasis on innovation."

One innovation has been adding TV pilots onto their festival slate. "One of our bigger goals is to do for television pilots what festivals have been doing for films the past thirty years," according to Jensen. The integration of this new category shines the spotlight on a seldom-recognized genre, to the benefit of visiting TV execs as well as regular moviegoers. As TV-pilot veterans know, works such as these see oblivion much more often than they deserve.

The driving force behind the Vail Program came from director-writer Michael Nigro of Acme Pictures in New York. And though he is no longer working with the VFF, his creations remain. The most valuable of Nigro's innovations for the festival may be for the short films and his Gershwin Showcase, which is something of a mini film festival unto itself. The Showcase will benefit new and poorly-heeled filmmakers with free-licensing for some of the well-known songs by legendary 1930s composers George and Ira Gershwin. In collaboration with LJ Strunsky of the Gershwin Foundation, the VFF has launched the Showcase with the intent of re-introducing the famous Gershwin sound to young, filmically hip audiences. More information can be found on the VFF website (www.vailfilmfestival.org) and on the Gershwin site, www.gershwin.com.

The VFF's other secret weapon is of course Vail itself. It's a small town that holds the largest resort in North America - a fact not wasted on the three co-directors. "We want people to really interact," says Sean Cross. Many screenings will take place at night, allowing attendees to make the most of Vail's considerable daytime charms. And throughout the four days, screenings will be accompanied by workshops and panel discussions, helmed by veteran indie producer and festival impresario Gil Holland.

But an indie film festival runs on indie films, not just a great venue. At the end of October, the VFF began accepting submissions, even in advance before the first official day of consideration (October 31st). Studio films, which often cruise the festival circuit in advance of widespread theatrical releases, will be considered alongside their distant low-budget cousins. All festival towns like publicity, and Vail is already known as a celebrity destination. Publicity will come to the bigger films by virtue of the big names attached to them. But the VFF directors have more on their minds.

"I think that there are only so many movies that can make it to mainstream theaters," Sean pointed out. "There are so many people out there making quality films that don't get to be seen. I think that's the true reason for these festivals and why audiences love to go. They get to see these little gems that they won't get to see anywhere else. People want to see unique perspectives."

As the VFF gains exposure in such a celebrity-conscious town, the three directors will be challenged to maintain their underground roots and creative schemes. Jensen and the brothers Cross are unfazed: "We'd really like to perpetuate the momentum that independent cinema has right now," says Jensen. "We'd like to take that in slightly different directions, based on our vision. All of us come in as artists putting on a festival for artists. We're looking to mix things up a little."

- Daniel Wasserman

When we finally meet a few days later, I'm expecting to shake hands with a brooding, melodramatic, "artiste." Bencivenga is anything but. He greets me with smiles and exuberance, leading me to wonder: Is this art imitating life, this cheerful façade? No, this is a genuinely happy guy. But a guy still capable of delving into the twisted bowel of alcoholism and lost dreams at the center of his latest project, Happy Hour. The main character plumbs this depth completely during the course of the film.

"I am not that person," he says, laughing. "But I've had plenty of experience getting to know people in my life who are like that. Plenty self-destructive writers and people who struggle in New York with working a job during the day and writing at night. I am very familiar with wondering how you get that to work."

Happy Hour stars Anthony LaPaglia and Eric Stoltz as two friends, Tully and Levine, self-admitted "drinkers with a writing problem." They meet daily at their favorite bar to complain about jobs they hate and dreams they've left unrealized. LaPaglia shines as Tully, whose excessive drinking literally consumes his life, even as he blossoms in a love affair with a schoolteacher, played with grace and charm by Caroleen Feeney.

The film's intelligent script succeeds by delineating the two characters despite their similar artistic ambitions and after-work hobby of drinking. The character of Tully works as some kind of hero and as his own foil; he's an older version of Levine. As Tully's arc rises and falls, Levine measures him and watches what could well be his own future sitting and rotting beside him. It's a powerful combination and a difficult one to play well.

Bencivenga's ear for dialogue is laudable and, he admits, has been a focus since his years at NYU Film School. "Everyone wanted to be a director but very few people wanted to sit down and learn how to write. I had made a bunch of short films and documentaries and had directed plays but I wanted to learn to appreciate scripts."

Bencivenga won a Student Academy Award before NYU, at Adelphi University. He went on to write sketch comedy and to direct several short comedy films for HBO and Cinemax, before landing a steady gig at ABC News. He produced a full-length documentary with Yoko Ono, and won an Emmy for a show he created for "Frontline" on the Millennium celebration.

In 1993, Bencivenga's first feature, the micro-budget Losers In Love, won several festival prizes and got him a producing credit in the Independent Feature Project catalog. Richard Levine, a screenwriter in North Carolina, found him through "Losers" and sent him an early draft of Happy Hour. It wasn't long before they re-wrote the script together and Bencivenga agreed to direct. Through several indie connections, LaPaglia and Stoltz eventually signed on and Happy Hour was completed this past January. It is now playing film festivals across the country while its authors search for distribution.

Bencivenga tells me he's been culling his own life experiences for his next project, Single Bullet Theory. The title throws me and he clarifies, "No, I haven't killed anyone." Now it's me who's flaking: see, he's recently engaged and the story's about the "nature of love in the modern world." Talk about writing from the heart.

- Emmett Williams

While searching for a producer with experience, I was also working to raise money. And failing at that too. After three years of looking for funds, I said "enough of this shit" and gave myself an ultimatum: If I didn't raise the capital in another six months, I would pull together whatever I could and just start shooting. Which is exactly what happened. What did I use for money? Why, Visa and Mastercard, of course. Twenty-six of them. But because I wanted this to be shot on 35mm, I only had enough lines of credit to get it in the can.

Before it was in the can, however, I had my share of problems: directors bowing out, an actor leaving two weeks before principal photography, losing our production manager two weeks before shooting. It's amazing I don't have gray hair.

Shot on location in Lake Tahoe, the 3-week shoot (3 six-day weeks) was not extremely problematic. That's a lie. There were a lot of problems, but nobody died and nothing burned down, so I consider that not extremely problematic.

Once wrapped and back to Los Angeles, the editing began - though I had no money left. Finding completion funding when the rough cuts are really rough is extremely difficult. Investors and distributors cannot extrapolate what your gem will look like when it's done. (Don't trust distributors who say they "can" - they cannot.)

After a significant passage of time I finally was able to raise the funds to get the movie finished. No, no more credit cards, but not for lack of trying. All my applications were rejected. With the movie completed I showed it to a few distributors, who all passed. The prevailing reason: no "stars" in the cast.

Another tactic: the film festival circuit, the top North American festivals. But that didn't happen and finding theatrical distribution was looking dim. Knowing that theatrical distributors only buy movies under certain, very specific conditions, I reconciled myself to developing a profile (press, reviews, festival awards, etc) for the movie while hitting the next level of film festivals. I figured when I was done, I might have a shot at something else, such as home video or cable. After God, Sex & Apple Pie began winning festival awards and critical praise, I decided to hold a big screening for all the major distributors in L.A. Distributors, I knew, do not buy movies this way, but I thought, "maybe it'll be different for me." It wasn't.

One year and eleven festivals later, I called it quits. I was burned out, and so far in debt it wasn't even remotely funny. A couple of drunken stupors and a month or two of rest later, I was back at it. I began to pitch all the home video companies, had a television sales rep pitch the cable companies with an astonishing result. Nearly everyone passed. A few bites from a couple video companies, but they couldn't commit. Now I was depressed.

I then came to the conclusion - the ultimate decision - that if this movie was ever going to see the light of day, I would have to open it theatrically in as many cities as I could. I felt this was the only shot I had at changing the movie's prospects. So, off I went to raise more money. Again!

Putting the movie into theatres yourself is, in fact, as hard as they say it is. But if "they" tell you not to do it, as some high level industry people told me - including one famous producer's rep (there's a character in a movie modeled after him) - ignore them. They're NOT filmmakers, and they DON'T have what you have on the line. You make the choice - don't let them make it for you. That said, four-walling God, Sex & Apple Pie took enormous time and energy and cash. And there's no point in just throwing your movie into a theatre and not supporting it. This really requires "working it."

Nevertheless, the theatrical exposure was providing some good reviews from recognizable film critics. This, along with positive festival press and awards, was the critical point which enabled me to finally make some distribution deals happen. I was able to close a Pay-Per-View deal, and found a contact to a company with a relationship with Warner Bros. Home Video, who are now distributing God, Sex & Apple Pie on home video and DVD.

The bottom line? Don't give up if you believe. If you've put years into your movie, what's a couple more? You've probably made enormous sacrifices to get your movie this far and into the festival circuit, you might as well keep going till you arrive at your finish line or wherever it is you want to go.

- Jerome Courshon
www.GodSexApplePie.com

The Sixth Annual Sarasota Film Festival: Jan 23 - Feb 1, 2004

So what if it's only their sixth year. It's one of our faves and you only have until November 7th to postmark your submission. The Sarasota Film Festival is a wonderful 10-day festival presenting a non-stop schedule of film premieres and screenings, symposiums, seminars, programming for students and families, community outreach events and, of course, parties near a beach.

www.sarasotafilmfestival.com

Short Comedies on Broadway

Have a funny short? Let New York's premiere comedy night club CAROLINES put it on Broadway for you.

Funny Film Shorts is a monthly festival, consistently screening the finest comedic short films from around the world. The next deadline is December 1.

The show sports a comedian host and an all-star panel, consisting of filmmakers, comics, and other industry professionals. For more info go to: www.carolines.com/filmshorts.html - however, we kind of like Brandon Mikolaski's snappy e-mail answers, so click here and email him for further info: bmikolaski@carolines.com

Finding Nemo in France

You want to find Nemo? Go to France. Hey, we're not kidding. The Nemo Festival in Paris, France is dedicated only to the experimental image. This program is so dang flexible it'd make a dog cleaning itself jealous. Interactive documentaries and fictions, video art, 2D/3D computer graphics, motion graphic design, music videos, electronic visual effects, installations, 'Net art, audiovisual performances, as well as innovative classic narrative cinema. The next festival runs March 9 to 14, 2004. Deadline: December 18, 2003.

www.festivalnemo.com

Cinema Epicuria at Sonoma's Best Film Festival

Filmmakers, if there's one festival you want to get into it's the Sonoma Valley Film Festival. No pretension, no Hollywood B.S. But, lord, the food, the wine, the friendly Sonomans (as opposed to the abominable Sonomans) (seriously), and a killer film program. There's wine served at every meal and for some reason you have 10 meals a day while there. So lie, cheat, steal, make friends with festival programmer Chris Gore, or just make a great film and you'll be in good company.

The 7th annual Sonoma Valley Film Festival is set for April 1-4, 2004. Deadline: December 31, 2003.

www.sonomafilmfest.org

Five'll Get You In: William Bonney's Picture Show

We'll freely admit it. We don't know much about William Bonney's Picture Show. But from the press we've read it sounds good. This aptly named Picture Show is an ongoing festival of short- and medium-length works from around the world with a mandate to share revenue from the door with all participating filmmakers. The Rag senses a new festival trend here; more and more festivals have been doing this.

Their entry fees are currently $5 to $7 - designed with one thing in mind: to be affordable, fair, and respectful to the filmmaker. The WBPS believes (we know they believe this because it says so in their website) that many festival and screening entry fees are just plain excessive, especially for emerging filmmakers with little or no PR or festival budgets. Festival deadline, January 1, 2004.

www.camerado.com/picture_show.html

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