Story Ideas: Disappearances

We have several first-person essays by director Jay Craven on these and other subjects related to the production and release of Disappearances.  We’d be happy to discuss these and any other ideas:

• Disappearances as a North Country western – Disappearances marks the completion of director Jay Craven’s trilogy of “Vermont frontier films” set along the northern border.  Like many westerns, it explores characters and themes related to a fading frontier where an outlaw culture survives in the margins.  In the first picture, Where the Rivers Flow North (1994) an aging logger (Rip Torn) and his Native American mate (Tantoo Cardinal) face the extinction of their way of life when a power company sets out to build a dam that will flood them off their land.  A Stranger in the Kingdom (1997) tells of a black former Air Force officer (Ernie Hudson) who arrives as the town’s new pastor and soon finds himself at the center of racially-heated charges of adultery and murder.  In Disappearances, Prohibition era dreamer and schemer Quebec Bill Bonhomme (Kris Kristofferson) sets out for one last great whiskey run—to initiate his 15 year old son into a fading way of life—and to confront his family’s strange outlaw legacy.

 

• Eight Miles Outside Manhattan – grass-roots indie film distribution against the tide. How rural indie filmmaker Jay Craven works to build audiences, against the industry tide, through the unconventional practices of deep regional release (starting with 100 Vermont small towns) and reaching out to core audiences across the country through self-directed theatrical release to New York, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Boise, and many others.  Director Craven puts two teams on the road all summer (and one team in the fall, winter, and spring) to fan out into town halls and old opera houses.  He has kept a diary of the ups and downs of the touring experience.  His “hybrid” national release include his own non-profit company, Kingdom County Productions, the Magnolia/Landmark Theater spin-off Truly Indie, and the film’s video distributor, Screen Media Films, where Craven has again partnered with (President) Robert Baruc who, in an earlier incarnation, supported the ground-breaking self-release of Craven’s first feature, “Where the Rivers Flow North.”

• Working with Kris Kristofferson.  “Disappearances” marks Kristofferson’s first lead role in 20 years (since Alan Rudolph’s “Trouble in Mind”—also co-starring Genevieve Bujold).  The story if how he came to the film, his support for the production (2 benefit concerts raised $70,000—he earned $10,000), and the many beats and challenges of production (a serious knee injury, the death of his sister, plunging into frigid April lake waters a week after the ice melted) make for an captivating story.

 

• The business of indie filmmaking.  – Director Jay Craven came to indie filmmaking from his background as a rural North Country arts activist.  He started in 1975 by making short films and taking 16mm projectors down dirt roads to five towns a week, showing old prints of Chaplin, Fellini, Bogart, and Bunuel.  He expanded to include the presentations of 100’s of performing arts events, ranging from Spalding Gray and Mabou Mines Theater to Miles Davis and Johnny Cash.  All of this was a challenge in rural Vermont—but Craven learned fundraising, marketing, and audience development skills that serve him well.  Still, nothing compares with the financing and distribution of independent film where even a successful title is torpedoed by routine overwhelming factors including: 1) distributor bankruptcies (four bankruptcies during the release of our four feature films), 2) unfair trade practices (studio pressures to keep titles on screen, thereby reducing indie slots), 3) monopolization (Blockbuster’s 1997 decision to, overnight, cut the price it would pay for rental video from the industry standard of $60 per unit to $5 per unit), 4) the buyer’s market in television (where $15,000 three-year licenses are commonplace), and 5) changes in the retailing infrastructure from “mom and pop” independent video and book stores to impenetrable chain stores where access is difficult and profit margins are razor thin for struggling indies—and where investor payback becomes next to impossible.  The solution includes: 1) hybrid grass-roots releases like Disappearances, 2) web development, 3) building of regional infrastructure, 4) cultivation of core audiences through screenings and internet outreach, 5) work with others to improve the climate for film culture, public policy, and the infrastructure for independent film exhibition, retailing, and distribution.

• North Country Story Threads—exploring the regional specifics of the Disappearances film narrative, characters, and sense of place.  And how regional indie filmmaking does and could influence the national film culture.