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Steve Mason is a Los Angeles-based talk show host for 710 ESPN Radio. He has previously hosted the nationally-syndicated "The Late, Late Radio Show with Tom Snyder & Steve Mason" for CBS Radio and worked the last five Olympic Games for NBC and Westwood One Radio Network. He is also President of Flagship Theatres which owns the University Village Theatres near downtown Los Angeles (www.FlagshipMovies.com) and Cinemas Palme d'Or in Palm Desert, California (www.ThePalme.com).

Sundance record-breaker Little Miss Sunshine brightens summer box office

On a winter's night in Park City in January, the husband-wife directing team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris found themselves at the center of the show business universe. Their first feature film, Little Miss Sunshine, had its world premiere at Sundance, and for the next 11 1/2 hours, a furious bidding war raged. The winner was Fox Searchlight with among the biggest sales in Sundance history – just over $10 million.

Little Miss Sunshine begins a platform release this Wednesday (7/26), and with a cast that includes Oscar nominees Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette and Alan Arkin along with Golden Globe winner Steve Carell, this isn't a traditional arthouse offering – and Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris aren't the usual art film directors.

Dayton and Faris started out at MTV with a show called The Cutting Edge. American audiences were introduced to legendary bands REM and The Red Hot Chili Peppers on the program, and, from there, they began directing music videos for diverse acts like The Smashing Pumpkins, Macy Gray, Weezer, Janet Jackson and The Ramones. Then it was on to commercials for everyone from Gap to Target to ESPN.

Their previous work doesn't necessarily inform Little Miss Sunshine heavily. They say that this film is about actors and not flashy MTV visuals, but that their past work gave them a solid foundation to build on. "Videos and commercials gave us a lot of experience working on our craft," says Valerie. "We got to know crews and got practice. Our production muscles are very well-trained."

So what made the directors of Korn's Freak On A Leash video choose this quirky comedy to be their first foray into features? "We developed other projects prior to this, but nothing hit us the way that this did," says Dayton. "We were never particularly interested in kids' beauty pageants or family road movies, but this script was so well-written and these characters were so well-drawn."

Michael Arndt's screenplay introduces us to the Hoovers, a uniquely fractured family that decides to make a cross-country trip to Redondo Beach, California so that their daughter can compete in a pre-pubescent beauty pageant. The Hoover patriarch is a desperately hopeless motivational speaker played by Greg Kinnear. Toni Collette plays Mom Sheryl Hoover, who tries to put a happy face on the clan's dysfunctions. Steve Carell is her brother who has just been jilted by a gay lover. Abigail Breslin is the slightly pudgy daughter who aspires to win the Little Miss Sunshine pageant; her brother is a Nietzsche-fueled teen who has taken a vow of silence; and Alan Arkin adds spice as the grandfather who has been kicked out of his retirement home for snorting heroin.

Over the years, there have been other proposed film projects for Dayton and Faris, but the script for Little Miss Sunshine was the furthest along in terms of development with very solid characters and a sound structure. Still, it took five years to get the movie made.

Dayton says that it was a hard film to make for a number of reasons, "It's an ensemble movie on a small budget, so, and it was tough to get big-name actors. It wasn't like Lost In Translation where Bill Murray is the star of the movie." Also, it's a comedy, but not a pure comedy, and "people couldn't see the whole picture."

The Wachowski brothers have given us Bound and The Matrix trilogy and the Farrelly brothers have scored with films like Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There's Something About Mary, but directing teams are fairly rare. Husband-wife directing teams are even more unusual. (Little Miss Sunshine is the second notable film from a husband-wife directing team this summer, though. Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri wrote and co-directed Only Human [Seres queridos] from Magnolia, now in limited release.)

Dayton and Faris say that there is no division of labor when they are working. "We both do everything," says Dayton. "It happens without much wrangling. We are well-versed in coming to a consensus." Faris adds, "Directing is bigger than one person can handle. It would be more efficient to divide labor, but we value each other's opinion."

There's also the sense that their work, including Little Miss Sunshine, may be more accessible to a wider audience. It has both male and female points of view. "Our work may be more approachable because we've already reached a consensus," says Faris. "It forces both of us to be less indulgent."

Before the premiere of Little Miss Sunshine in Park City, nobody had seen it. In fact, the film was finished only two days before the premiere. There was incredible anticipation, particularly because of the presence of Carell who was fresh from the box office success of The 40 Year-Old Virgin. According to Dayton, "Producers spent a lot of energy trying to keep the buzz at bay."

The film premiered at 9:00pm to a wildly enthusiastic festival crowd. Then the "mating dance" began. An hour after their debut feature film screened at the America's most famous film festival, Dayton and Faris found themselves sitting at a Park City restaurant being courted by virtually every studio and distribution head in the industry.

After dinner, Dayton and Faris retired to their hotel room while the producers negotiated. Faris says, "A lot of great places were bidding. We received calls from the producers through the night, and Fox sincerely loved the film." Ultimately Fox Searchlight landed the distribution rights to Little Miss Sunshine at 8:30 a.m. the following morning for a Sundance record price.

Fox Searchlight has a tremendous track record with high-end art films with wide commercial appeal. In just the last few years, they have scored major successes with Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State and Sideways. There have been about 30 word-of-mouth screenings across the country in the past month, and the husband-wife duo has dutifully traveled the country doing Q&A's at each of them.

With the platform release now underway, they are a bit worried about "the 40 Year-Old Virgin crowd" because it's a very different film. Much of the humor comes from pain, and it's not purely optimistic. However, with a tremendous cast, sterling reviews and the Sundance seal of approval, Little Miss Sunshine has become the most anticipated specialty film of the summer. "We hope that people won't come in thinking it's a mind-blowing, life-changing film," says Dayton. "We want people to have realistic expectations."

The Little Miss Sunshine team expects this film to perform. It's perfect for summer. It's funny enough to stand out against the major tent pole movies and smart enough to appeal to the adult film crowd that is starved for something more intelligent.

The reward for Jonathan Dayton and Faris is seeing the film with an audience. "They're laughing," Dayton says. "They're rocking in their seats. It's almost like a jackknife effect as they curl over and laugh from a deep place."

Can Quinceanera (Sony Classics) Play To A Latino Audience?

A quinceanera is a coming-of-age ritual for Latina girls when they turn 15. Think of it as a Latino version of the Jewish bar mitzvah/bat mitzvah. Its ancient roots are in Aztec culture – when young men went off to fight, their young wives were given a party to celebrate their coming into womanhood. As Mexico became a predominantly Catholic culture, the quinceanera became filled with Christian iconography and content.

Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have co-written and co-directed Quinceanera (Sony Classics), which uses this Latina right-of-passage as both a backdrop for a soapy tale and as metaphor for a gentrifying neighborhood in Los Angeles. This sweet and honest film opened on eight screens last weekend and generated $11,900 per screen, only trailing Little Miss Sunshine ($25,000 per screen) and Talladega Nights ($12,300 per
screen).

The film tells the story of Magdalena, who is preparing for her quinceanera, when she learns that she is pregnant. Her deeply religious father kicks her out of the house, and she moves in with her great-granduncle Tomas and her cholo cousin Carlos, who has been kicked out of his house for being gay. This oddly-matched trio forms a makeshift family. When a gay, white couple purchases the property that includes the house where they live, it turns their lives upside down.

Previously, the Glatzer/Westmoreland duo made the modestly successful The Fluffer (2001), which was an outrageous comedy set in the world of gay porn. I asked Glatzer why so much time has passed since their last film. "Making independent film is never easy. You've got to come off of something really successful to line something up quickly. Although if we wanted to make another comedy about gay porn, we probably could have."

Quinceanera is really a love letter to their Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles. It is where Glatzer and Westmoreland make a home together in a long-standing gay relationship. They previously lived on the edge of West Hollywood (near Melrose and La Brea). "It was cold and impersonal," says Glatzer. "We had neighbors with a driveway they never used, but if somebody blocked it, there'd be trouble." They moved to a little, predominantly-Latino cul-de-sac in Echo Park, and their neighbors were very different. "They were more social. It felt warmer. It went against every clichéd idea about Latino neighborhoods. We never saw gangs or violence. The neighbors are laid-back and easy-going." They'd regularly see chickens roaming around the neighborhood, and everyone on the block would take care of the neighborhood dog.

They were the first gay couple in the neighborhood. It was never discussed, but they assumed everyone knew. "We haven't run into any prejudice whatsoever," says Glatzer. To the contrary, the families in the neighborhood began to involve them in their lives. A 15-year-old neighbor girl was having her quinceanera, and they agreed to provide the photography.

This is where Richard and Wash began to develop their idea for the movie. "The quinceanera is a beautiful mix of the old and the new. It feels like an ancient ritual. It involves different generations coming together as a community," explains Glatzer. They were also impressed by how seriously the kids take it. They seem "LA street" but they learn, rehearse and perform waltzes and routines with real commitment.

On January 1, 2005, they conceived the film. They immediately found investors. "I've had the experience of looking for money for years, and never finding it. Everything on this project just fell into place," Richard says. They had the money and went into pre-production before they even had a script. "The investors would tell us, ‘Get it moving. We want our money back.'" Ultimately, the script was written in just three weeks. Many of the actors are non-professionals from the neighborhood. By January of 2006, the picture won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance.

From idea to the most-decorated film at Sundance in less than 13 months must be some kind of record. "It should have been a disaster" says Glatzer. "A month and a half to prep a movie. It takes longer to prep a quinceanera."

You would think that Glatzer and Westmoreland would have left Park City with a deal from a specialty distributor last January. After collecting their hardware, they thought they'd be inundated with offers. Instead, they were repeatedly told that their movie was a "tough sell" because of its gay content. The gay couple in the film have certain parameters in their sex life where three-ways are allowed, but separate affairs are not. Magdalena's gay cousin Carlos becomes entangled in this complicated relationship.

"Distributors asked ‘How do you sell it?'" explains Richard, "As a Latino movie? As a gay movie? As a teen movie? As an art movie?" In describing why they committed to Sony Classics a month after Sundance, he says, "Sony loved the movie exactly as it was."

Which brings us to my original question. Can Quinceanera play to a Latino audience? There is a stereotype that Latinos are more squeamish about gay issues than the general public at large. Yet, at Q&A events around Los Angeles on opening weekend (8/4-8/6), Glatzer and Westmoreland noticed a lot of Latinos. Glatzer called Sony Classics on Monday and encouraged them to open the film in some Latino neighborhoods as a test. This Friday (8/11), Quinceanera will open in the predominantly-Hispanic neighborhoods in greater Los Angeles - Commerce and South Gate.

I'm betting that Latino audiences will appreciate this little gem of a film in the same way that the arthouse crowd did last weekend. This isn't a gay movie or a Latino movie. Quinceanera is about a neighborhood that is changing through gentrification. What happens when a little corner of the world becomes more diverse – white, Latino, gay, straight, old and young? What does that newly gentrified world look like? Is gentrification necessarily better?

The central metaphor is the quinceanera. Echo Park – the neighborhood where Glatzer and Westmoreland live and where they made this movie - is going through its right-of-passage right now. Real estate prices are on the rise, new buyers tend to be wealthy and white, and longtime Latino residents will find it tough to stay on as renters.

Growing up is hard for teenage girls - and for gentrifying neighborhoods. It can be uncomfortable. Something is gained, but, also, something is lost. And, a certain sweetness can hopefully be preserved.

ThinkFilm Puts Specialty Box Office Into a Half Nelson

When Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden chatted with distributors at Sundance, they were confused. "All the acquisition people were saying it was their favorite movie at the festival," explains Fleck, "but they also said they had no idea how to sell it."

By "sell it," those acquisition executives were talking about two problems. There's the question of how you market a subtle film about a crack-addicted teacher who strikes up a unique relationship with a student who discovers his drug use. But this is also challenging material for a specialty distributor to justify to its powerful parent company. After all, Miramax answers to Disney, Paramount Classics answers to Paramount, and so on.

Thankfully, there are still some truly independent specialty distributors who will step up to support a truly independent film. ThinkFilm acquired Half Nelson at Sundance, and they were rewarded with a $26,000 per screen average this past weekend on two screens in New York. The film will expand on August 25th and again on September 1st.

The release of Half Nelson is the culmination of a long journey for co-writer/director Ryan Fleck and co-writer/editor Anna Boden. The couple met in 1999 while he was an undergrad at NYU and she was enrolled in Columbia's film program. He had his first success with his NYU thesis short Struggle which won a spot in the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. At that point, they decided to collaborate. The result was the critically-acclaimed doc Have You Seen This Man?, which had a successful run on the festival circuit before premiering on PBS.

Then came the screenplay for Half Nelson. "We are film fans," Fleck tells me, "and we are fans of the oddball friendship movies of the '70s like Harold & Maude and The Last Detail." The lead characters in Half Nelson are certainly every bit as complex as the offbeat buddy-films of that era. Dan Dunne, played by Ryan Gosling, is an idealistic yet crack-addicted teacher and coach while his student Drey, portrayed deftly by Shareeka Epps, is a wise-beyond-her-years teen who is attempting to resist the world of drugs. When the script was complete, the fresh-from-college couple had neither the resources nor the connections to mount their first narrative feature.

So they created a short based on Half Nelson. They believed that a completed short along with the finished screenplay might win them the attention of the right agent or producer. Gowanus, Brooklyn was born. Shot on video and crewed by friends, it boiled the Half Nelson story down to the Drey character, and how she reacts when she stumbles upon her favorite teacher smoking crack. The short won the Grand Jury Prize for short filmmaking at Sundance in 2004.

This path to a career breakthrough is not unprecedented. Billy Bob Thornton's short Some Folks Call It A Slingblade became the Academy Award-winning feature Slingblade, and, more recently, Peter Sollett's short, Five Feet High & Rising, was adapted as the 2002 indie feature hit Raising Victor Vargas.

The success of Gowanus, Brooklyn led to an agent, which led to the right producers, and soon they received a greenlight to make their first narrative feature. When it came to casting, Ryan Gosling wasn't on their list. "We were thinking Mark Ruffalo – someone older," say Fleck, "but a casting director sent the script to Ryan's manager. He got a hold of it and liked it." Fleck and Boden looked at some of his other films and began to see him in the role.

Gosling is best known for his work opposite Rachel McAdams in Nick Cassavettes' The Notebook. He was also especially impressive in The Believer, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2001, and in the underrated Murder By Numbers in which he played an ingenious killer who attempts to outsmart a detective by teaming with a far less ingenious friend (played brilliantly by Michael Pitt). Half Nelson is Gosling's best performance to-date, and he is deserving of all of the accolades he is receiving. For my money, he joins his former co-star Michael Pitt on a very short list of the best actors of their generation.

No spoiler here, but for those looking for a pat, happy ending, Half Nelson doesn't deliver. Fleck and Boden are self-described "film geeks", and they were raised on the classic American films of the late '60s and early '70s where nary a happy ending was to be found. But, this film is part of a larger thematic trend.

In an increasingly fragmented and technology-driven world, people have become desperate to connect in intimate, yet non-sexual, ways. In a sense, those offbeat friendship movies that served as the model for Half Nelson have made a quiet comeback. The Station Agent, Lost In Translation, Million Dollar Baby, Finding Neverland, Sideways and even Seabiscuit are, at their core, movies about people who are alone and trying to connect. In the absence of traditional romances, they find what they need in mismatched friendships and unorthodox alliances.

Fleck and Boden intend to continue their creative (and romantic) collaboration. "It's really good – so far," says Fleck. Living and working together on Half Nelson presented no real problems, "Nobody understands me and understands the characters like she does. It's hard to navigate a film alone. If you have someone that you trust more than anybody else, it helps."

Their next project is adapting a popular book Fleck declined to name for Paramount. It's geared for young adults, and he describes it as a "dramedy". As for working with a major like Paramount, he says, "I've heard all of the horror stories about indie guys working with studios," but so far, he reports no trouble.

Fleck is discouraged about the state of independent film, "At Sundance, films are just not selling like they used to. There are so many great indie films, but they're not getting deals. Filmmakers are being forced to self-distribute." He's thankful for companies like ThinkFilm that "don't answer to anybody."

He admits that he and Boden have been "sucked into" the world of box office results and per screen averages. They've never had a feature film before, but they realize that these mechanics of distribution are the way that Half Nelson will reach the widest possible audience.

It's a small, special gem - subtle in its convictions, resisting a Hollywood ending and committed to the complexity of its characters. It's a showcase for rising star Gosling, and, most of all, it's the start for a pair of promising young filmmakers, Fleck and Boden, who I am certain will continue to chart a creative and, truly independent, course.

King of the Micros?

Gary Rubin at First Independent Pictures has a very busy month. His upstart company is rolling out three movies in four weeks. That would be a daunting feat for a major distributor, but he's performing the feat with a small staff working long hours. FIP isn't a huge operation, but Rubin makes up for that with years of experience in the specialty film world and a real handle on the dynamics of "micro-distribution".

First Independent opened both Mini's First Time and David Mamet's Edmond last Friday (7/14), and the company significantly expands the subtle post-9/11 drama The Great New Wonderful this Friday (7/21).

Ten years ago, Rubin was at October Films as the company really took off. Emily Watson earned a Best Actress nomination for her work in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, and Mike Leigh's innovative Secrets and Lies earned five Oscar nods including Best Picture. When October was gobbled up by Universal , he segued to Live Entertainment which later became Artisan. Rubin helped to strategize the release of films like Darren Aronofsky's Pi in 1998 and box office sensation The Blair Witch Project in 1999. Then consolidation struck again.

When Lionsgate acquired Artisan, Rubin could have stayed, but he opted to strike out on his own, founding First Independent Pictures about two and a half years ago. Prior to this very busy summer of '06, FIP released five films, including Doug Liman's Mail Order Wife and the critically-acclaimed doc New York Doll.

Arthur "Killer" Kane is profiled in Greg Whiteley's New York Doll, a finalist for the doc award at Sundance. Kane is a recovering alcoholic and converted Mormon who was given a chance to reunite with the legendary rock band after 30 years. "It's just a good movie," says Rubin. "If you're a music fan, it's a really good movie." With limited P&A (Prints and Advertising), it topped $200,000 domestic.

This is a challenging time for boutique distributors according to Rubin. Companies like his must be smarter than ever because of significant changes in the industry. Rubin believes that the marketplace began to change when The Sopranos debuted on HBO in 1999. "Suddenly, every cable channel had to have original programming," says Rubin. "We can no longer get a significant pay TV output deal, so we have to watch the P&A very closely." Then, NetFlix came along and forced Blockbuster to change its business model. Blockbuster eliminated its late fees and "they received as much as 25% of its revenue from late fees." Finally, Rubin asserts that there are just more films in release than there used to be. He says that the industry used to produce 500 films per year, but now that figure has risen to 600. Films can now be shot on video and edited on a home computer making it easier to make a movie. "This is the worst period for independent film since 1980," he says.

Additionally, the release window for these films in "microdistribution" has gotten smaller. "I'm afraid of October," Rubin says. This used to be an excellent month to launch a limited release, but last year the larger studio specialty distributors swamped arthouses with Capote (Sony Pictures Classics), The Squid and The Whale (IDP Films) and Good Night, and Good Luck (Warner Independent Pictures). He says the window for his movies is now mid-March through August.

Of his current titles, Rubin is most excited about Edmond written by David Mamet and directed by horror master Stuart Gordon ("Re-Animator"). With a cast including Oscar nominees William H. Macy and Joe Mantegna along with Julia Stiles, Mena Suvari, Denise Richards and Bai Ling, Edmond generated $10,000 per screen last weekend (7/14-16) opening at The Quad and The Lincoln Plaza in New York City.

Rubin is more than the distributor on this project. He co-produced Edmond and put the first money into the project. He loved Mamet's dark script and liked the idea of re-teaming him with Stuart Gordon, who directed the original Chicago production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago. The buzz for Edmond started at Telluride, where it was positioned as one of the most important films at the festival. Then both New York press screenings were 100% full. Rubin's intention was to open only at The Quad, but the Lincoln Plaza called the week before the opening to request a print.

"It's a polarizing film," he says. "There are people who love the film and people who like the film but are shaken up by it. Then there are people who are just shaken up by it." It will be critical to see how it holds up this weekend in New York. Next Friday (7/28), it is sure to open huge in Chicago with Windy City natives Mamet, Gordon, Macy and Mantegna.

Mini's First Time from writer/director Nick Guthe had a modest debut last Friday (7/14). With a cast including Oscar nominees Alec Baldwin and Jeff Goldblum, Carrie-Anne Moss from The Matrix and Thirteen writer/star Nikki Reed, this black comedy scored a $3,100 per screen average at seven locations on its opening weekend including $5,500 at The Arclight in Hollywood.

Rubin characterizes The Great New Wonderful as a "solid single" that he's hoping to "stretch into a double". He first saw the film at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival and chased it for six months. When a deal with a larger distributor failed to materialize, he was able to finalize an agreement.

The Great New Wonderful has won some critical raves. New York Magazine calls it "The first great 9/11 film." This subtle meditation on life in New York one year after the 9/11 tragedy has an all-star cast including Olympia Dukakis, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Tony Shaloub, Edie Falco, Jim Gaffigan and Stephen Colbert. Based on a script by Sam Catlin, it is directed sensitively by Danny Lerner in spite of his previous feature film resume, which includes Dude, Where's My Car? and Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.

First Independent opened this film at five locations in New York City, one in Boston and two in Washington, D.C. on June 23rd averaging just under $5,000 perscreen. In retrospect, Rubin thinks five locations in NYC was a little aggressive, but the film still generated $13,000 on that first weekend at The Angelika. In Boston, it scored $11,000 on the opening weekend at Kendall Square. This weekend (7/21), the film expands to LA, and FIP is hoping to ride positive reviews to solid numbers in Dallas, Chicago and Portland in coming weeks. $200,000 domestic is achievable prior to the DVD release on September 11.

Much of the country will have to wait to see Edmond, Mini's First Time and The Great New Wonderful on DVD, but these are unique projects with original points-of-view. With the dearth of intelligent films for grown-ups during the summer months, First Independent, along with other "micro-distribution" players like Palm, Magnolia, Shadow, Regent and Balcony, are salvation for cinephiles. If you're lucky enough to be in a town with an aggressive independent arthouse, count your blessings and support these titles.

In this challenging marketplace, only the players who operate smartly will survive. Expect Gary Rubin and First Independent Pictures to thrive.