Peter Bart, Tentpoles, Niche Films & TCFF
Peter Bart is the editor of the venerable entertainment trade paper Variety. He and producer Peter Guber do a show called Sunday Morning Shootout on AMC-TV. This Sunday their featured guest will be Nikki Blonsky the new star of Hairspray. The buzz and early reports are that Hairspray is a crowd-pleaser.
In a recent column in Variety he talked about how big studio’s business of making tent-pole films is affecting European filmmakers.Peter wrote column while visiting the Karlovy Film Festival. “Presiding over a jury at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, I had abundant opportunity to talk with diverse filmmakers from around Europe and learn about their hopes and apprehensions.” His comments are perceptive and enlightening. While the cultural divide can lead to both good and bad films; the blockbuster sequel producing Hollywood is intimidating European filmmakers as foreign language films struggle to make a dent at the US boxoffice.
Two recent articles in Variety point up the difficulty’s in marketing and distributing smaller more specialized films in the United States. Elizabeth Guider was at the Cannes Film Festival and talked with various distribution acquisition staffers about buying specialized films. Pamela McClintock writes on the difficulty’s niche films are having staying on screen in the face of a glut of wide release summer blockbusters.
It is fascinating to follow filmmakers as they bet years of their lives and large sums of money on projects that require collaboration, tenacity and faith. One of the few specialized films staying on screens this summer is SiCKO. Michael Moore is one filmmaker that has achieved success where so many fail. It is our community’s good fortune that he has leveraged this success and placed himself behind the Traverse City Film Festival.
