ThinkFilm, a Short-Lived but Wily Distributor, Still Influences Industry

Perhaps the toughest of the lot are the survivors of ThinkFilm.

ThinkFilm, a small, short-lived movie distributor, briefly took the indie world by storm with provocative fare like “Half Nelson,” about a drug-addicted high school teacher, and “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a documentary about the use of torture in the American war on terror.

When it closed most operations in 2008, as financial carnage hit the independent film business, it seemed destined to become just another relic of the art-house movement.

Yet ThinkFilm’s influence lives on. Its alumni have become a force in an industry that has been learning to think smaller, make do with less and live more by wit than a fat bankroll.

Nearly a dozen companies, many of which will be wheeling and dealing at Sundance, are rooted in the diaspora created by ThinkFilm’s demise. Some, like Long Shot Factory, are in the vanguard of a digitally sophisticated do-it-yourself movement. Others, like Tajj Media, run by a co-founder of ThinkFilm, Jeff Sackman, have narrowed their focus to an audience segment or business niche; Tajj Media, for instance, helps filmmakers find government subsidies.

These companies’ vigor underscores the maturing of the independent film business. Once populated by young film school graduates turning out productions on the fly, the industry now includes experienced filmmakers and entrepreneurs. As Sundance turns 30, it is these survivors who are forming the backbone of a more seasoned indie community.

“It feels like the world somewhat caught up to where we were,” said Michael Baker, a former ThinkFilm executive. Last year, he and a fellow alumnus, David Hudakoc, formed their own distribution company, levelFilm, based in Toronto.

“We were never bound by traditional thinking,” Mr. Baker added.

Among the most prominent of the new companies is A24, based in New York and aimed at both young and arty viewers with movies like “Spring Breakers” and “The Bling Ring.” A coming release, “Locke,” starring Tom Hardy, will be at Sundance.

Another standout is Oscilloscope Laboratories, which recently bought rights to “Tim and Susan Have Matching Handguns” — at 95 seconds, the shortest documentary in this year’s festival.

David Fenkel and Daniel Katz, two of A24’s three co-founders, are ThinkFilm veterans. Daniel Berger and David Laub, co-presidents of Oscilloscope, both started as interns at ThinkFilm.

Less visibly, an array of firms founded by ThinkFilm refugees have brought lessons from their alma mater to film distribution businesses that operate with little overhead, yet manage to put movies on the map. They include Paladin, run by Mark Urman; Variance Films, led by Dylan Marchetti, and Long Shot Factory, founded by Erin Owens in 2011.

“You are talking to some of the most media-savvy people in the independent film industry,” Ms. Owens said of her former colleagues, who were early adopters of low-cost web promotion.

Short on capital, but long on attention-getting ideas, ThinkFilm was started in September 2001 by executives based in Toronto who had previously worked at a then-young Canadian studio, Lionsgate. Several of the founders — Mr. Sackman, Marc Hirshberg and Randy Manis, each of whom now has a company of his own — were quickly joined by Mr. Urman, who led the film operation from New York.

The group then assembled a mostly young staff that operated much like a dot-com start-up, with little hierarchy and a bootstrap ethic. Mr. Manis recalls even allowing employees to vote on a critical decision affecting “Murderball,” a Sundance documentary about wheelchair rugby.

“I’m not sure it was the right outcome, but that’s what we did,” he said.

A former publicist, Mr. Urman had a gift for the outrageous. “The Aristocrats,” a documentary about comedians telling the same dirty joke, took in $6.3 million at the box office in 2005, and signaled that ThinkFilm was a home for pictures that others would not touch.

“Half Nelson” received an Oscar nomination for its star Ryan Gosling in 2007. “Born Into Brothels,” about the children of Calcutta prostitutes, was named best documentary in 2005, and “Taxi to the Dark Side” won that honor in 2008.

But ThinkFilm had been sold by then, and after having released almost 90 films, was shuttered that year. (Its assets were later collapsed into a complicated bankruptcy proceeding.)

“We put off the belt-tightening a lot longer than we should,” Mr. Marchetti said of an industrywide reckoning that ultimately closed or sharply downsized many other small film companies.

Among the resulting castaways, ThinkFilm’s proved remarkably buoyant. That owes much to their comfort with an emerging business model under which filmmakers keep ownership of films while cobbling together money to book their own theaters or land digital deals — all with help from paid advisers, many of whom learned guerrilla tactics at ThinkFilm.

“In the old days, you would have a small distributor buy the film,” said Michael Tuckman, a ThinkFilm alumnus who now operates mTuckman Media. “You can do better if you own it yourself.”

While Mr. Sackman steers producers toward government funds, Mr. Hirshberg’s Evra Media Solutions, founded in 2011, trades on his ThinkFilm experience by concentrating on troubled companies.

“I don’t know how people do it,” Mr. Hirshberg said of an independent landscape that finds more films competing for fewer cash bids, and fleeting viewer attention. “That’s why I’m not in the distribution business, I’m in the distressed space,” he added.

Predictably, there is camaraderie — and shared business — among the ThinkFilm alumni. And, of course, the tribe will converge in Park City, Utah, for the Sundance festival, which begins on Jan. 16.

“We still do work together on some level, which speaks volumes for how close-knit we all were there,” said Alex Klenert, who became a co-founder of Prodigy Public Relations after leaving ThinkFilm.

Some of those survivors will be buying at Sundance. Others, like Mr. Tuckman, will be watching movies, scouting for clients and scratching their itch for a changing indie game.

“I’m still addicted,” Mr. Tuckman said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/business/media/thinkfilm-a-short-lived-but-wily-distributor-still-influences-industry.html?partner=rss&emc=rss