Boxoffice - October 2016

SHOWEAST AWARDS > JAMES SCHAMUS
Schamus was nominated for
Best Adapted Screenplay
Oscar for his work on 2000's
international hit Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Schamus was nominated
again in 2006 as a producer
of Brokeback Mountain.
That sort of film isn’t finding the financing as
before. Is this a gap that distributors can fill
with acquisitions? Or is this lack of financing a
detriment to film culture?
I think the premise of your question, with the
exception of a number of years from the mid-eighties
to the mid-nineties, is the presumption of every
single question asked about independent film every
year. It’s always been rough and it always will be
rough. Sure, sometimes there will be a point where
it’s a little easier. The prestige picture, on the other
hand, and our continuous foreboding of its disappearance,
seem to be a structural part of American
film culture. And yet every year, when you tune into
the various award shows, and people open envelopes
and say things like Spotlight, The Revenant, or Birdman,
I go, “Wait, I thought this wasn’t supposed to
be happening this year.” So yes, while it is true that
we’re probably in a bit of a down cycle, it’s also true
that new players are entering the field and they seem
to have no problem either acquiring or financing
specialized fare for adults. It doesn’t look all that
different to me than how it was before, and in some
ways you can hear the opposite complaint—that we
are suffering from a surplus of micro-release, specialized
cinema. I don’t subscribe to that theory myself,
but I do hear that argument a lot.
Don’t you think that might be because of the
glut of prestige fare that’s packed into awards
season? One of the lessons from this year’s
box office is that the summer blockbuster is
no longer confined to the summer; it’s been
that way for a couple of years now actually.
You have tentpoles being released in February
and March. Is there an overreliance on the
marketing push that awards season brings to
independent cinema? Or do you think there
can be a year-round release schedule for arthouse
fare?
It’s part of the snowballing of awards season, which
by the way is now a season that lasts seven to eight
months. You have to look back to when the independents,
the Liongates and the New Lines, when
they entered into the awards game. To the rise of the
screener culture in the eighties and nineties. It is true
that the collective suicidal bloodbath that is known as
awards season is unfortunate and provides a continuous
self-fulfilling prophecy along the lines of, “Well,
you don’t think my movie is a serious awards contender
if you don’t release it in the fall.” But then again,
I happened to be in the room when I saw somebody
open an envelope and read out the name of a film by
the ex-wife of a guy who was up for Best Picture with
Avatar. They picked up the award for The Hurt Locker,
which was released in June. I happened to have been
there on the night Jack Nicholson opened an envelope
and read out the word Crash, a movie that was released
in May. My point being that it’s inaccurate to say that
the only way to win an Oscar is to release a film during
the “Oscar season.” The only reason you can point to
anything supporting that assertion is because not too
many people have the cojones to release those films at
other times of the year. n
JAMES SCHAMUS AT THE MOVIES
MOVIEGOING MEMORY
I have so many, being one of those oddball kids who didn’t have any
friends and therefore spent so much of his time in a dark room watching
movies. A great deal of what passed for my childhood was actually moviegoing.
I grew up in Los Angeles and went to Hollywood High School, and
I remember when I was growing up, going to the local movie theater and
catching a triple feature. Back then they didn’t publish the show times. You
just showed up. You walked in on the middle of a movie and waited for it to
start over again, leaving halfway through at the point when you first walked
in. It’s quite a different kind of viewing experience.
I do recall a friend of mine giving me a ticket to the Pantages Theatre on
Hollywood Boulevard to see The Last Picture Show. They had forgotten to
check what the rating was, and at a certain point early on in the movie, while
Cybill Shepherd (left) is on the screen, I felt a hand on the back of my neck
lifting me up out of my seat and removing me from the theater. It was many
decades later that I actually finished watching that film.
I’m one of those people who love going to movie theaters. In this business
one does tend to get invited to a lot of screenings, and I regularly pass on
those invitations, not because I’m antisocial but because I actually like going
to the theater and sitting through the pre-show roll, watching the trailers, and
enjoying the movie with others. It keeps me very much aware of how people
see movies, and how they go to the movies, as opposed to exclusively attending
films through a cordoned-off experience.
50 BoxOffice ® OCTOBER 2016