Filmmakers Saloon: The Film Mediocracy
Quarterly, the Filmmakers Saloon (which features drinking, as opposed to the Screenwriters Salon, which doesn't) meets up at the Northwest Film Forum to obsess over film trivia en masse, instead of, you know, blogging about it.
Seattlest noticed that Thursday night's panel discussion was about the grim reality of mediocrity, so we decided to attend to see what level of introspective honesty might be displayed. After all, considered as a single case, anyone might be a genius, but you get a group together and that damn bell curve pops up.
The panel was moderated by the indefatiguable, bearded, tomato-tossing Andy Spletzer. Panelists were the Stranger's Annie Wagner, director and provocateur Karl Krogstad, NWFF's program director Adam Sekuler, Gory Gory Hallelujah creator Sue Corcoran, and GreenCine's Jonathan Marlow.
Interestingly enough, except for Karl disagreeing with himself from time to time, there was consensus right out of the gate that mediocrity is all around, and that it's in part the result of filmmakers' reach exceeding their grasp. As Adam put it, the question is how well you actually work with the tools that are in your personal toolbox, as opposed to those you see other people using.
Annie actually kicked things off with an OED definition of mediocre (so that was funny because the Stranger::OED as...jesus we don't know, but you won't find Dan's definition of "santorum" in the OED). Since Annie was a bona-fide media representative, the crowd (of 30 perhaps) was ambivalent about her tales of reviewing mediocrity, no doubt thinking that instead of writing about Hoodwinked, she could have been covering their magnum opus.
Both Sue and Jonathan copped to achieving mediocrity in their own work; Sue refreshingly admitted to realizing in the middle of one project that it was headed for "middling" status, and still had to struggle through to the finish. Jonathan's personal example was becoming so obsessive about an element of production that he wore himself out midway through and "half-assed" the rest. Now, in charge of acquisitions for Greencine, he gets deluged with the semi-cheeked fruits of indie filmmakers' labor daily. His trenchant advice: "Do not film something that looks like a stage play." But the delivery was much funnier.
During the Q&A, we asked whether, on the local scene, mediocrity might have more to due with insufficient technical skills or with just not having something to say, and overwhelmingly the panel said they could forgive technical foul-ups in favor of a good idea. (Though a sound guy told me afterwards that people say that, but if the sound's bad, it's not safe to try to bar the door.)
Both Karl and Sue testified that in fact over the past 10 years, the local film scene has developed strongly. Mostly tellingly, they said, it used to be that local filmmakers wanted to make that one "calling card" movie to elicit LA interest -- now it's more likely that Seattle's interest is what they're aiming for. Then it was time to drink wine, schmooze, and fend off inquiries for funding.
