Via Movie City Indie, Down to the Bone is out on DVD. Here's a story we ran on the film from our archive.
Like Weinstock, writer/director Debra Granik drew from real life experiences as the genesis of Down to the Bone, the harrowing story of Irene (Vera Farmiga), a working class wife and mother in upstate New York with a dead end job at a mega mart, struggling to hide her addiction to cocaine. Prior to attempting the feature, Granik had made a short called Snake Feed, and says, “In that film, I collaborated with a family in Ulster County NY. One member of the family was newly sober and the other adult was struggling from a major relapse after 10 years of being clean. It was a suspenseful time in their lives, and I was very drawn into how they were going to navigate and go forward. The short was very well received, and we were encouraged to tell more of the story, to flesh out a longer script, which is what this family and I did. The first drafts we wrote were very long, given that it was covering a lot of real life twists and turns of fate. It was a long and difficult process to whittle it down to a filmable length.”
Granik, too, had to find her own resources to get the movie made, and heard all of the usual objections from potential financiers: she was a first time director, the subject matter was difficult, and she had no big stars attached. So, in lieu of outside financing, she decided to greenlight herself. “At some point, I had to make a first film. I had worked a long time, very arduously, on this material and I could wither away waiting for outside approval. What really made the jump off the cliff and begin the free fall was finding producers who would jump with me. Susan Leber and Anne Rosellini gave a huge chunk of their life energy to make this film, and there is no way to thank them enough for going there without financial compensation. It still blows my mind to this day.”
Granik and her producers set about finding unconventional sources of income, largely from businesses in Ulster County in the form of in-kind donations of cars, locations, food, and other tangible production needs, in addition to private equity, loans, and debt. “The cast and crew also made it possible by working for sliding scale fees. We shot on PAL DVcam, small format video on the PD-150. We edited on Final Cut Pro from the PAL DVcam tapes.”
The film played well at Sundance 2004, where Granik won the Dramatic Directing Award and Farmiga was given a special jury prize. However, Granik was unable to find distribution. “After Bone finished the festival circuit, it went into the closet of the undistributable. It was pulled out briefly for Gotham nominations [nominated for Breakthrough Director] and Independent Spirit nominations [ nominated for Female Lead and the Cassavetes Award]. [Fortunately for us,] a new maverick distribution company started up and they were making it their mission to distribute the undistributable. Laemmle/Zeller Films is their name and they did what no other company would do. Everyone else said, ‘Though we like the film, we'd lose our shirts if we took it on.’ Once the film was labeled by sales and acquisitions people as ‘dark’ it was an impenetrable kind of censorship. But for whatever reason, Laemmle and Zeller wanted to defy that edict, and they were willing to take the risk to get behind it.”
Laemmle/Zeller Principal Steven Zeller, (who is also President of GS Entertainment Marketing Group), saw things differently. “Down to the Bone is exactly the sort of movie we want for our company. As odd as it sounds, we're not in the business of theatrical distribution to make money- at least not in the short term. When we acquire films, our main goal is to shepherd terrific movies into the theatrical marketplace. We know we'll make our money back, down the line, in the ancillary markets, but our priority is getting good movies where they deserve to be- in movie theatres.” A theatrical release gives a small film like Down to the Bone a kind of prestige that will drive DVD sales both directly to consumers and to companies like Blockbuster and Netflix. Additionally, foreign markets can prove to be surprisingly lucrative for independent films.
Both Granik and Weinstock are forging ahead and sticking with their tendency towards unconventional subject matter. Weinstock is collaborating with Gloria Norris, the producer of Easy, on a new script, saying “it's a ‘female driven psychological thriller a la Memento.’”
And Granik continues to pursue her strategy of following real life people as inspiration for her next feature. “I am working on another project dear to my heart, that takes place in Brooklyn among some young men who I've been documenting for a long time. I think they are very complicated and engaging, and I would love the chance to work with them to make a film about their experiences.” Like Weinstock, Granik plans to continue to make films, hoping to turn her artistic talents into a career as a working director. “I would love my career to trot at a steady pace; by this I mean, I desire to reduce the huge and difficult distances between each project. I would love to keep working consistently, getting a chance to work on a variety of projects.”
Filmmakers heading to Sundance this year would do well to remember that the festival will mostly like be just the beginning of the life of their film. For every The Matador, bought during the 2005 festival by the Weinsteins themselves, there are many films that struggle to make their way to theaters, television, or DVD, typically due to the trifecta mentioned by Granik and embodied in Down to the Bone and Easy: first time director, risky subject matter, and no big stars (The Matador stars Pierce Brosnan). The lesson for first time filmmakers might be to play it safe with the subject matter or try for a big star. But if everyone played by these rules, there wouldn’t be films like Down to the Bone or Easy, films with artistic integrity and vision that take risks and give viewers something more than what they get from Hollywood. Granik and Weinstock didn’t let market considerations or conventional wisdom deter them from creating art - and that’s the real value of independent film.
Read about Easy here.
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November 1, 2006 - 5:46pm
