PARK CITY, UTAH — For several weeks, the biggest story in advance of the Sundance Film Festival was that there was a movie that involved 12-year-old star Dakota Fanning in a child rape scene. Writer-director Deborah Kampmeir was widely interviewed. Catholic activist Bill Donohue called for a boycott. The issue was discussed on The View with former child star Tatum O'Neal.
At a packed press screening yesterday, there were indeed many walkouts, mostly about a half-hour after the rape scene. Hounddog isn't just dubious, it's howlingly bad.
Hounddog stars Fanning as a 12-year-old child in the South in the fifties, with a drunken grandma (Piper Laurie) and a brain-damaged daddy (David Morse). She loves Elvis, and gets raped (it isn't graphic) by a teenaged milkman who makes her sing Hounddog. Later, she is emotionally healed by tapping into her inner "snake wisdom" from a wise and kindly black rattlesnake trainer who lives in the woods.
Some distributor could pick the movie up for its prurient appeal, but it's hard to imagine it being worth it. Hounddog reflects one of the repeated patterns at Sundance where huge hype is followed by rapid deflation.
Little Miss Sunshine's stars, left to right, Abigail Breslin, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, and Greg Kinnear (AP)
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Paradoxically, though, this year's Sundance has gone the opposite direction: low hype, big sales. A festival that was generally expected to be too dark and uncommercial for a breakout hit has turned into buying spree. One reason is this week's announcement that Little Miss Sunshine has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture. Purchased for $10-million (U.S.), the comedy went on to $85-million worldwide grosses. With Hollywood studios cutting back on the rosters of major productions, their specialty divisions (for movies that aren't mainstream) have grown in importance. The idea of picking up an inexpensive indie film that can do major film box-office numbers is more and more attractive.
"The success of Little Miss Sunshine is on everyone's minds," one executive told Variety. "But buyers are acting like every acquisition can repeat the success of that movie, and it can't."
What are they looking for? There's no one answer but heart-tuggers seem to be favourites: Romantic comedies, coming-of-age dramas and lots of lonely women seeking fulfilment with a man. Currently, Sundance is producing a lot of sales -- about $40-million paid out for about a dozen films. The Hollywood Reporter calls it "an insane feeding frenzy."
"It's like Bloomingdale's before Christmas," said ThinkFilm's Mark Urman, who paid $2.5-million for the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon. "It's a stronger collection of films. It's ironic that Sundance wanting to focus on films that were less commercial has made the festival more of a market than ever."
There might be a good Sundance comedy to be made about the frantic bidding wars. One executive described how rival bidders were escorted in and out of different doors so they wouldn't see each other "like a British farce." In other cases, cars from the various studios would shuttle from condo to condo at set intervals to make their pitches, with negotiations carrying on until dawn.
One all-night session ended up in a sale for the Canadian step-dancing drama, How She Move, picked up by Paramount Vantage, in association with MTV Films, for a reported $3-million. The film, set in Toronto's Jane-Finch area, was bought early Tuesday after a competition that involved Paramount as well as Fox Searchlight, Focus and Warner Independent Pictures.
Paramount Vantage also came out on top in the biggest sale of the festival so far, Son of Rambow, a sweet English coming-of-age comedy about a boy, separated from pop culture, who becomes involved in a home movie inspired by Rambo. It sold for about $7-million. While Son of Rambow might be this year's Little Miss Sunshine, someone observed that it was reminiscent of the Danny Boyle film Millions, a critical hit that earned only about $6.5-million at the box office.
"There's a lot of $6-million pictures this year," noted Noah Cowan, the director of the Toronto International Film Festival and a former film distributor. He feels it's a risky trend.
While the amount may sound paltry compared with a $100-million summer movie, it's deceptive. To begin to turn a profit, Cowan says, buyers realistically need to have box-office grosses at about 2½ times the buying price, or about $15-million. Little Miss Sunshine's sale tied a record set in 1999 for the comedy, Happy, Texas. Eventual box office? Less than $2-million.
Some studios are working as partners to reduce risk. Indie film mogul Harvey Weinstein, who has already bought the Iraq drama, Grace Is Gone, co-bought the vagina dentata comedy Teeth, and, with another partner, First Look Studios, bought up a romantic comedy called Dedication for $4-million.
First Look, partnering with Fox Searchlight, bought the world rights to a Mexican immigrant drama, La Misma Luna, for between $5-million and $6-million.
