The D-Word's life is one of glamour and riches, as only a documentary filmmaker can live it

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A fax comes in from the Rotterdam International Film Festival. We’ve been invited to screen Home Page in a special section called the Digital New Wave.

I’m thrilled. Rotterdam’s a highly regarded festival and, according to a few industry friends, actually better for filmmakers than Berlin (which it’s exclusive with— you can do one but not both). All the buyers and commissioning editors stay in one hotel, they say, and you hang with them at the bar every night. In Berlin, you have to traipse all over the city just to put a flyer in someone’s hotel mail box. Besides, we can still do the European Film Market at Berlin and get the best of both.

Esther’s also thrilled, since The Last Broadcast, which she's helping get distributed, has already been invited to the same section in Rotterdam. Having two is a coup.

Jane still thinks we should hold out for the Forum section at Berlin. It’s more prestigious, she argues.

Linda Hansen, who’s working with Berlin, urges me not to make a decision until she gets Urlich Gregor, head of the Forum, to the Home Page screening on Wednesday. We can then ask him to make a quick decision.

Nice to be in that position-- Urlich usually delays til the last second (sometime in December) to announce his choices. Too late for Rotterdam if you’ve waited. And too fucking bad for you should you miss both.

Anyway, coming on the first day of the IFFM, it’s a huge relief and confidence booster at the best possible time. Our first screening isn't for five whole days. We have plenty of time to get word out about it (and buyers in to see it).

We bump into Pat Thompson, editor of The Independent and Eugene Hernandez, editor of indieWIRE, at the registration desk and immediately let them both know about Rotterdam. Eugene snaps a photo to commemorate the moment. He tells me Anthony Kaufman’s indieWIRE interview with Yours Truly has been posted online that very day. Have I seen it?

Well, nope, actually.

We get the sense that people have already heard about the film. They all say they want to come. Of course, they always say they want to come.

Back at the office, I check out the interview. Seems a little heavy on the grizzled veteran angle, but it is my 13th straight IFFM, so I guess I really am one. I suppose Anthony could have been a bit more effusive about the film. He could also have mentioned the D-Word and given the durned url.

But hey, me complain? He's a journalist, not a publicist.

“You should never talk about your biggest fears,” chides Esther, gently, referring to my worry that the foreign territories we’ve pre-sold might scare away distributors. Too much public confession has The D-Word out of the habit of spinning his best foot forward.

Otherwise, it’s a fine article. And almost any buzz is good buzz.

I wonder whether anyone is actually reading it, though. Most of our targeted buyers, mainly the bigger indie theatrical distributors, are still at !@#$!&*$! Toronto, which ends tomorrow.

I’m over an hour late for the opening night party because Marjorie, Lucy and I pay a Shiva call to our friend John Putnam, whose mother passed away a few days ago. There’s a nice group of people there and I keep delaying my departure. Marjorie gives me a funny look every so often, as if she can’t believe I haven’t long gone.

At the party, I shmooze for a while with Jeff Lipsky, a founding partner of October Films and now Head of Marketing and Distribution for Samuel Goldwyn Films. He’s not exactly looking for docs, but then who is? Having the fetching Esther there chatting up the film means I don’t have to be in heavy duty pitch mode. In fact, I decide to take the high road and not mention Home Page at all. Jeff gives me more face time than usual, as good a gauge of industry standing as any, but he’s constantly interrupted by friends and fawners.

A few filmmaker cronies from the Sundance Class of ‘93, Nora Jacobson (Delivered Vacant) and Roger Weisberg (Road Scholar), are at the IFFM with new films, too, and we commiserate. A lawyer and a producer tell me they read the indieWIRE interview and seem impressed.

As I predicted, before long my head is pounding and my voice is raw from trying to talk over the blaring music.

The fun begins.

SATURDAY the 19th.

I guess I’ve never mentioned I videotape weddings to support my documentary habit. It’s not like I’m ashamed of it—in fact, I consider it an incredible privilege. Imagine getting paid a lot of money to witness and record the most important day in the lives of people you otherwise would never know. It’s like watching great real-life theater, with all of the tension, exhilaration, comedy and drama of theater, from a front-row vantage point.

I get there a couple of hours before the ceremony with my Hi-8 camera and follow the events of the day in an unobtrusive, fly-on-the-wall kind of way, editing in-the-camera as I shoot.

Each wedding is a feature-length documentary in its own right, and it's some of the best work I’ve done.

When I first told Sheila Nevins and John Hoffman of HBO/Cinemax that I do this to get by, Sheila got very excited and said I had to do my next documentary on the subject. I’ve thought about it since, but haven’t been able to figure out how to build a story around the various weddings I’ve shot. I must have over 50 hours of footage by now to choose from. Some truly wonderful moments.

Needless to say, I have a wedding to shoot today. It’s the real reason I couldn’t make the Digital Storytelling Festival screening.

The bride, Claudia Hajian, is a pisser, a classic Queens broad in the best sense-- funny, loud, ethnic, emotive. After the ceremony, I catch the groom, Jeff, having a private moment with her outside the Church, and sidle over. “You look absolutely fantastic,” he’s saying. “You’re so beautiful. I can’t believe it.” He repeats it over and over like a mantra. If I shoot nothing else at all that night, I’ve earned my hefty fee.

For a day the market feels far away.

SUNDAY the 20th

The IFFM has wall-to-wall panels. Some are useful for the info, but it’s also often the only way to get a moment with an important buyer. My strategy is to sit on the aisles and the millisecond the panel ends, worm my way up to the front of the milling throng of panting filmmakers.

You have to be really quick with your pitch, though. "Hi, I’m Doug Block. A producer of Silverlake Life and Jupiter’s Wife. Got a new film here, Home Page. About these kids doing intensely personal home pages on the Web, and what happened when I set out to meet the most interesting ones in real life (and got sucked in)." Then I hand them a flyer thingy with the screening times and some of the tasty quotes about the film.

Which they probably throw away the second my back is turned.

I duck into the morning panel, “Self Distributing Your Film,” looking for inspiration. I sure as hell hope it doesn’t eventually come to this, but I want to be psychologically prepared.

Esther’s on the panel and acquits herself well. She talks about the event she’s set up for The Last Broadcast, which is “the first nationwide theatrical distribution for an all-digital feature via satellite broadcast.” The fiction “film” was shot on video for under $1,000! And now they’re getting it out to 5 cities without springing for a film transfer to 16 or 35mm.

I’m struck by how lucky I am to have her as my collaborator for this part of the process, after having Debbie as my collaborator during the editing process.

Go Esther. Power to the people.

Jane’s finally in town, so the three producer moguls go off for a power brunch and plot strategy. Jane still argues for Berlin. Esther diplomatically pushes for Rotterdam. I wonder if doing Amsterdam makes us inelligible for Rotterdam. These national exclusives are a nightmare for filmmakers.

Afterwards, drop in on another panel, “Marketing Your Film on the Web and Exploring the Future of the World Wide Web Film Distribution.” Hey, the D-Word’s always lookin’ to stay on the cutting edge of the cutting edge. Turns out one of the panelists, Julia Zborovsky of Film Bytes, wants to interview me. I’m not sure what it’s for exactly, but figure what the heck. We set up a time for tomorrow.

No party tonight, thank God.

MONDAY the 21st

The print has come in from Film Craft and I hightail it over to Angelika. No chance to check it, of course, before the Wednesday screening. Try not to focus on the potential for disaster.

A 45-minute meeting this morning with David Liu of ITVS (the Independent Television Service). It’s a spin-off of CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) and not the place to go if you have theatrical aspirations, but if I’m thinking of a simple 60-minute piece next (wedding bells, anyone?), ITVS is a major consideration. David’s a really nice guy (and a buddy of Jane’s), and I make a mental note to keep in touch with him.

Time out for a Rosh Hashanah party at the Golombs with my parents and many of our old family friends. It’s a more bittersweet gathering this year with Lee Korobkin gone and David in the hospital awaiting his third heart transplant. A nice talk with David’s kid sister Nancy (now 40, for God’s sake!) about the importance of rituals like sitting Shiva.

Perspective is good.

Nice unobservant Jewish boy that I am, I later go to a private party for Amsterdam Film Festival artistic director, Ally Derks, hosted by Jonathan Stack (The Farm).

As soon as I enter the sweltering room, I nearly plow into Ally. She knows exactly who I am. “Doug Block!” she announces, loudly. “Home Page! I saw it on tape! All 115 minutes!!!” Ally liked it very much, she's quick to point out, but she’s not the festival programmer, she’s also quick to point out. I’m about to tell her how much I really really want to go to her festival when she’s hijacked by Pat Thompson.

Great. I’ve been there one minute and I might as well leave.

The room is a steambath but I stay for an hour. Probably lose 5 pounds.

TUESDAY the 22nd

Pick up the new yellow business cards at Kinkos. They’re still cut crookedly and look pretty cheap, but they’ll do the trick.

I should be putting flyers in the key buyers’ mailboxes, but I go instead to yet another panel, “Marketing Campaigns: Domestic vs. International.” It’s moderated by Darren Aronofsky, director of Pi, and features a number of distributors I want to get a flyer to.

John Gerrans of Strand Releasing is heading back to L.A. today, so I just want to put Home Page on his radar screen. Don’t even bother with Jeff Lipsky. He already knows about the film and figure there’s no way he’s going.

Instead, I shmooze up Sharon Kahn, a well-regarded publicist. We almost went with her with Jupiter’s Wife, but they were too busy at the time. I tell her I have her in mind for this one if we get into Sundance. Charlotte Mickie of Alliance, a foreign sales organization, doesn’t handle docs but is impressed with my track record. “It’s not a normal doc,” I manage to squeeze in as she walks briskly to the street. “It plays like a fictional feature.” Go fish.

Back in the office, I hope to follow up on the flyers we’ve mailed last week by emailing a reminder about the Home Page screening to the choicest of the choice buyers, but practically no one has a listed e-mail address. Over 200 buyers names on my list and less than 30 have email (and all but 5 have company e-mail addresses). A shame because the e-mail included a simple link to all the great buzz. It’s probably less a case of mass technophobia than a desire to keep pain-in-the-ass, low rent filmmakers at bay.

Instead, I make about 40 calls, mostly leaving messages on everyone’s voicemail. In the process, I learn that Ray Price, former head of distribution at Trimark, has left to become a partner in a new indie boutique called Independent Pictures. Ray went out of his way to help Silverlake Life for no other reason than he loved the film, and I’ve never forgotten it. His assistant says he won’t be at the IFFM but he’s in town for business and will be at the Gotham Awards. Try and get a cassette to him there, he suggests.

Ah, it’s nice to have a mission.

At the Next Wave party I chat with Ira Deutchman, who’s more accessible to filmmakers now that he’s an independent producer rather than president of Fine Line Features. I’m waiting for Amy Taubin, the influential critic for the Village Voice. Two years ago, when Home Page played the IFFM as a work-in-progress, Amy singled it out as one of her favorites. I heard through Marina Zenovich that Amy won’t be able to make my screening and wants a videocassette. Well, anything Amy wants...

We kill time until she shows up, then I hand one over. Another mission accomplished.

By the time Esther and I get to the DocuClub party at The Screening Room, there’s only a half-hour left. We catch Chris as she’s leaving. “Everyone’s talking about the film,” she says, breathlessly. Chris is new to this scene. I figure this means she spoke to a few people, mentioned she’s the Associate Producer of Home Page and they said, “Oh, I’ve heard of that.”

I corner my pal (DocuClub prez) Susan Kaplan and swap stories. Susan has a work-in-progress playing after mine tomorrow, called Love3 (to the 3rd). It’s about two men, initially lovers, and a woman who’ve lived together as husband(s) and wife for almost ten years and are now about to have a baby. It’s non-fiction, I swear. It also sounds fantastic.

I’ve been hearing talk about a doc called The Accident, by Joseph Lovett. About a year ago, I hosted a DocuClub screening of the film. It was over 3 hours long, but had some good material there. It’s down to 90 minutes now, Joe says.

That’s the thing about markets and festivals. You hack away at your film in relative isolation for so long, you think you’re the only one going through the tortures of the damned. But when you finally you come up for air and talk to other filmmakers, it’s clear you’re just one of many. It’s both comforting and a little disquieting.

Because, with so many films being made, as far as theatrical distribution is concerned you’re just a needle in a haystack.

In bed that night, I try to downplay the importance of tomorrow’s screening. It’s just the IFFM, I tell myself, it’s not make or break. Just the beginning of a long journey.

But I’m excited. And dying to get a sense of the film’s commercial potential.

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