JAKE WEISMAN: "Terraforming Hollywood: Changing the Landscape of Cinema, Venue by Venue"

Market Monday #11

TRANSCRIPT:

I am the boots on the ground. I literally worked this festival two days ago, next door at the Landmark Sunset, serving you popcorn and chicken tenders. This is what I do for the bills. But that’s the reality of the situation.

I just happen to love movie theaters. I love infrastructure. I am an independent filmmaker. I’ve made two movies with my own money. When they didn’t get into festivals, I did my own shows. Because this country is founded on one rule and one rule alone, and that’s, “Don’t fucking tell me what to do.”

It’s what we were founded on. So I want to return to that – I’ll come back to that. But also, the main anchor of my talk right now is romance and affordability. What makes you happy, guys? What do you want to do? Like, what do you actually want to do? There’s no more rules. You don’t have to do anything anymore. It’s about what do you want to do with your movie that will make you happy? Now it’s more about being a punk rock star.

You know, you’re the star now. So instead of doing what — I love this term — “checklist”. That saves me so much time. If you do the checklist thing, the best-case scenario is that you’re going to spend all your time raising your own money, and then you’ll have the pleasure of giving it to somebody else. You’re not going to get what you want. You’re not going to get that loot. You’re not going to. So what you’re going to do instead is buy your movie outright and then treat it as such.

You are going to find different venues to show your movie and find your own audience. The analogy I really like to use: I was talking to my dad and I said, “Dad, you like Carole King? You like James Taylor, right?” He goes, “Yes.” I go, “What kind of shows do they play? What kind of houses do they play?” He goes, “They can play wherever they want. They can play a really big house.” I go, “Okay, cool. I just learned how to play the guitar. I just wrote a song, and I want to start getting an audience. Do I play the same house that Carole King is playing?” No. I’m going to go to the coffee shop or something and find my own audience down the street.

And that’s what we’re promoting. That’s what Terraforming Hollywood is. It’s enough of this one kind of — there’s one way of doing things where you get into a festival, and then by God, you’re going to get picked up and you’re going to have your career just like fucking all of us. So the answer is to find your own venue.

So the two things I’ll be spending the most time talking about: one is we are starting a microcinema in downtown Los Angeles called Movie House LA. We’re really blessed for it, and we have an active FilmFreeway for submissions because I want to show everything — anything that made it into the festival and didn’t win anything or didn’t get distribution.

I want to show it. And hopefully that will encourage other people to want to show it as well. It’s about third spaces. It’s about affordability. It’s about romance. It’s about finding a place, not spending every last dollar that you have so that you can really worry about getting... You spend $1,000 to get a hundred-seat room and three people show up, and all of the romance is out the fucking door. It’s moot.

But I just had a show of my own ten-year-old movie, at my own space, with five of my best friends and one kid who I work with. And after the show, he was like, “Can I shake your guys’ hands, please? I would love to.” It was really sweet. And I was like, that’s what this is. That’s what this is.

It’s about you with the ten people that care, as opposed to this drip-drop into a giant ocean. I was just talking — you go through an existential crisis scrolling through Tubi, scrolling through Prime, seeing all the titles, all the titles. This is about you. Why are you making your movie? What’s going to make you happy?

I’m working on a project. Please look into Movie House LA because we’re building it out. It’s a really big deal for us, and the more support that we have, it’s all about the support here. We believe very strongly in third spaces. And affordability, of course, is only five bucks a ticket. We’re going to start doing memberships and stuff like that because we’re absolutely priced out of everything. Baseball used to be affordable. Movies used to be affordable. I’m telling you, I work next door. It’s $100 if you want to go see a movie for the weekend with a date and parking and chicken tenders.

So that’s what this is about. The only thing is that it’s Downtown, so we’ll talk about that too. You just got to be realistic about the fact that it’s Downtown. But there’s this other project I’m working on with Taylor Lewis and Abby Satin, which, if you don’t know Taylor Lewis and Abby Satin, they’re the first two people after Ted that you should be looking up on Substack.

We’re doing a project called The Circuit. We’re talking to every microcinema. We put out word about microcinemas, and all of a sudden everybody was like, “This is brilliant. This is what I want to do. How do I get involved? How do I have access to a coffee shop in Philadelphia? How do I show my movie there?”

So what we’re doing is we’re talking—we’ve had conversations with people in Portland, West Virginia, Vermont, the UK, India, and Venezuela. We are trying to collect data, understand what the venues are, and identify different-sized venues. Your movie, maybe, is for thirty people. Maybe it’s for a hundred and fifty people. But maybe the thirty people in Burlington, Vermont are really similar to the thirty people in Portland.

And then you can start building your own tour through the country with like-minded venues on your own dime, selling your own merch, doing your own thing, as opposed to every step of the way finding somebody who’s trying to suck the life out of you and take every last fucking dollar that you have.

I came out here for school. I was supposed to be funneled in. I got an internship at Paramount in 2010, but that was the first economic crisis. So then I had to move back to Vermont. I got obsessed with this idea of making my own movie outright. So I wrote a script in 2010. My producing partner and I said, “We’re going to make this outright. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

We figured it out. So then I ended up moving to Chicago, working in microcinemas and building out series, doing independent shows, all the while trying to figure out how I was going to make my own independent film while keeping my rights, and also doing it the way I wanted to do it.

Because if you’re only going to make one movie, you’ve got to do it the way you want to do it. This is your shot. This is the one time you’re going to do it. So make it exactly the movie that you want it to be. Don’t compromise for anything other than the thing that really speaks to you. When my movies did not get into festivals, I did bars and I did independent shows. Yeah, all over. Any place with a projector.

About SLAMDANCE

Slamdance is an artist-led organization, founded in 1995, dedicated to championing independent voices in film and digital media. Its mantra - by filmmakers, for filmmakers - guides year-round programming including the Slamdance Film Festival, Screenplay Competition, Slamdance Unstoppable, DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming), and Polytechnic, an accessible education initiative.

Slamdance celebrates its 33rd Film Festival from February 18th – 24th in Los Angeles - its third year in the city - as well as online via the Slamdance Channel. Slamdance ‘26 broke the organization’s festival box office record and attracted its largest ever audience.

Notable Slamdance alumni include Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Lynn Shelton (Little Fires Everywhere), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard), the Safdie Brothers (Uncut Gems), Marina Zenovich (LANCE), Lena Dunham (Girls), Sean Baker (Anora), Rian Johnson (Knives Out), Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), Merawi Gerima (Residue), Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), Natasha Ofili (Creed III), and Julio Palacio (Makayla’s Voice: A Letter To The World).

Slamdance’s mission is to serve as an agent of change in filmmaking and digital media, making the creative work of artists with divergent voices accessible to everyone.

Slamdance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Connect with us

More at: slamdance.com

For more educational content from Slamdance, check out our Polytechnic Programming on Youtube: Polytechnic - Free Educational Film Content - YouTube

Follow @Slamdance on Facebook, X, and Instagram