Attention Filmmakers, Comedians and Musicians,

You are invited to the inaugural “Connecting Artist with Audience” Meetup in New York City — featuring me!

“Connecting Artist with Audience,” sponsored by the Pyxix® Corporation, is a group dedicated to helping musicians, filmmakers and comedians network, collaborate and share ideas and experiences about both the creative and business sides of entertainment.

Our first event will take place Tuesday, December 9, from 7 to 9 pm, at the Westbeth Community Room, 55 Bethune St., New York, NY. It will consist of a presentation by Yours Truly on self-distribution opportunities and challenges for filmmakers in the digital age. I will be joined by Sara Millman, the Creative Director of Pyxix, for an audience Q & A session. There will be time to network with fellow artists before and after the discussion, and refreshments will be served.

Admission Fee : None!!!!

Click here for more info: http://www.meetup.com/Connecting-Artist-with-Audience-SM-NY-Metro-Chapter/

Since my blog site was compromised for mot of the past eight weeks, I wanted to go back and update my posting of September 10 titled, “Has THE Big One Hit?” The post referred to the announced release of DVD-copying software by RealNetworks which was ”legal, at least until the MPAA drags RealNetworks into court.”

Well, the lawsuits started flying immediately after the software hit the market September 30, with RealNetworks filing a preemptive lawsuit against the major studios, and the studios filing for a temporary restraining order halting the software’s release until the legal issues could be resolved. The TRO was granted October 6, after 3,000 copies of the ripping software were purchased, and remains in place while the legal wrangling continues.

A jet-lagged hello from New York City, where I am re-acclimating after a week in Santa Monica for the American Film Market. AFM is the annual bazaar of film sales, with a focus on stars and genre films. So-called “art house” films are not popular at AFM, and documentaries are generally disdained.

This year has been fairly depressing for most of the veteran buyers and sellers here, getting off to a terribly slow start due to the global financial meltdown and a glut of films that took buyers a while to sift through before finally executing some sales over the weekend. 

As a documentary filmmaker and marketer, I definitely felt like an outsider at AFM, where it seems every third film features either Michael Madsen holding a gun or a large-breasted woman on the verge of impalement by some shiny phallic instrument.

However, in talking to dozens of buyers and sales agents this past week, the anti-documentary message was particularly resounding. Of the 513 films screening at AFM, only 34 were documentaries. My unofficial inspection found fewer than a dozen of the 400-plus exhibitors even had a poster for a documentary hanging in their hotel suites.

There are markets that are stronger for docs — both Berlin and Cannes have markets that are more doc-friendly, and HotDocs in Toronto is designed to put documentary filmmakers and buyers together. But the weak market at AFM is still a disturbing omen for any “factual-content” producer who hopes for international distribution or theatrical release here in the United States. And the fact that a hoary, performance-enhanced Sylvester Stallone vehicle called The Expendibles is the hottest thing at AFM is pretty disconcerting for independent “specialty” filmmakers across all genres.

The good news? Everyone here realizes they exist in a distribution model for film that is broken and soon to completely collapse as technology allows every consumer to pick what, where and when they watch. So, the fact that docs were not welcome at AFM means little for the future of documentaries in general.

PS: You may have noticed a monthlong gap in my blog postings. I apologize, but my blog admin site got broken into and all kinds of silliness ensued.