Distribution
If you’re asking a producer how to find the right distributor, they’ll likely argue that the right person is the one who gets the investors paid back as quickly as possible. The way investors are going to get that financial stability is different across the board from person to person, place to place. But if you have the good fortune of multiple people competing to distribute your movie, you need to listen when each of them explains to you what they think your movie is—it’ll tell you a lot.
That’s the weirdest thing about distribution: People aren’t talking about your movie like it’s a thing that you made anymore. They’re talking about it as a thing that exists, and they have their own thoughts, opinions, and judgments of that thing. You have to divorce yourself from how personal that can feel and work on the best way to get your movie out while representing it accurately.
There are a lot of different ways one can be involved in distribution as a director. One way is to not be involved. You can just say, “I made my movie, now you guys go market and release it.” But that takes a lot of trust, and doesn’t always help the release of your film.
You’ll want to know: Are we targeting an audience that might remotely like my movie? Are we alienating an audience that might remotely like my movie? You have to be thinking in a colder way, not in a way that’s going to please everybody. You have decide which audience you’re going to speak to, and how to speak to them most effectively.
You also need to ask distributors how they imagine your audience is consuming your movie. If a distributor says, “Your movie will do really well if it goes straight to video,” that’s not a bad thing in and of itself. But you have to be up front in considering how people are accessing and experiencing this movie. Are they in a theater? Are they at home, watching it on iTunes? I’ve been lucky to have theatrical releases of various sizes for all of my movies, but I’m thankful because that’s a difficult thing to achieve, and not everybody wants to do it—or needs to. It costs a lot of money to put a movie in theaters!
Having worked with a bunch of different distributors—from small boutiques like Drafthouse to major studios and mini-majors like I am with Annapurna now—what I always find useful for the moviemaker to do is highlight the themes that animate the story and its relevance. You should do this in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re doing your distributor’s job for them, but you should be open and available to look at marketing materials—posters, trailers, teasers, all of it.
At times, I’ve hoped to have a more active, engaged voice in the process of distributing a film and found that that’s not welcome in the marketing department. Other times, I’ve had amazing relationships with distributors who do want my perspective on whether our strategy is working. Drafthouse was a dream to work with, and that’s totally the case with Annapurna. They pride themselves on working with moviemakers, so it’s in their nature to respond to your input. Just remember that it doesn’t work that way everywhere. It’s the exception, not the norm! MM
Karyn Kusama at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, where Destroyer screened in the Platform program. Image Courtesy of Annapurna Pictures.
—As told to Caleb Hammond
Destroyer opened in theaters December 25, 2018, courtesy of Annapurna Pictures. Guest Moviemaker Karyn Kusama’s chapter intros originally appear in MovieMaker‘s 2019 Complete Guide to Making Movies.
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