Finding UK Distribution for LAVA
Okay, so I got to make the film I wanted to make and how I wanted to make it (within the constraints of time and budget). Because we’d gone the route of private equity investment funding, it obviously meant that there was no distributor or sales agent money attached and, therefore, no built-in distribution destiny. This meant we had to find a way to give our film a profile—an edge—to attract anyone willing to champion it in an overcrowded marketplace already swamped with other low-budget indies vying for release. We came up with a simple idea.
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| L to R: Johann Myers as Curtis, Stephen Callendar-Ferrier as Stefan and Dennis Titus as Claude in Joe Tucker’s LAVA. |
We took out a one-page ad in the industry magazine Screen, which featured our own artwork comprised of film stills squeezed into a bold depiction of the word “LAVA” along with an early tagline: “It’s Notting Hill Carnival and Smiggy’s off to see a dog about a man… It’s not only stupid, it’s dangerous.” This coincided with mounting a string of private screenings to which we invited anyone and everyone who might be able to help. We continued to do this regularly, hiring out small theaters, inviting potential champions, chasing and persisting. Over many months positive word of mouth had spread to UK sales agents and distributors, aided by a great review on Ain’t-It-Cool-News (“Restores your faith in the Britpic”). We also got an enthusiastic, unprompted letter from film director Mike Leigh who after the film, felt compelled to write to the President of the Cannes Film Festival urging LAVA’s inclusion into the official selection (to which the reply was unfortunately “non!”).
Through all of this activity we struck gold and found a distributor in the form of Winchester Films. The film was brought to them after being picked up by its subsidiary Feature Film Company (responsible for the UK distribution of such diverse indie hits as Richard Linklater’s Slacker and the much-celebrated Lantana).
The next hurdle was to find exhibitors willing to screen LAVA over the glut of highly packaged, big-budget and star-heavy fare constantly available to their theaters. After all, LAVA is unapologetically profane and not for the squeamish. It’s a brutal comedy that is disturbing, irreverent and relentless—it’s absolutely unflinching in its depiction of a day at the Notting Hill Carnival that goes horribly, farcically and insanely off-course. With that in mind, it felt very rewarding when the film did find favor and affinity within the UK’s independent cinema network.
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| Tyler Garni as Jason in Joe Tucker’s LAVA. |
We were more surprised (and thrilled) to find a broader support for the film in the shape of mainstream exhibitors Warner and Odeon, who both offered up screens for LAVA’s UK theatrical premiere.
Critical Response to LAVA
Having spent so many years banging on doors and sticking to the mantra of not compromising on any of the film’s aesthetic prerequisites, it felt enormously rewarding and totally vindicating to have the film receive almost unanimous critical acclaim in the UK press. It’s been a long journey of some seven years—five spent resisting pressure from interested funders to sanitize the story and seize control. For me, it was only worth making if it was worth making. And that meant that the film had to be entirely true to itself and free from any compromise prompted by outside interference. It’s been a long haul, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
LAVA has been praised for having its own personality, its own strange outlook, its own peculiar voice. I put that down to having had complete freedom, the expanse of which I’ll try to retain on my next one, Waxers. Think Glengarry Glen Ross or Tin Men told in the vein of Goodfellas. Hey, there’s a thought: Goodsellas!
LAVA went down in a storm in Austin (if I immodestly say so myself). Amongst the festival crowd, it was a thrill to hear that familiar guttural yelp of shock and that universal ring of belly laughter as I witnessed the film’s anarchic sense of humor successfully cross over and strike a clear, resonant chord with an American audience.
I’m hoping that all this means it won’t be long before LAVA finds the appropriate U.S. distributor to explode it onto American screens and to bring the clarion call “Suck my spangle” into everyday common parlance. MM
For more information, visit www.lavamovie.com.
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