I hadn’t been to Los Angeles since I was a teenager. I remember the sidewalk of stars, the grittiness of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and the huge evangelical church where my uncle was getting married. Not much else.
So I was both nervous and thrilled when my feature film, “In Montauk,” was accepted into the Los Angeles Women’s International Festival. It was not the first LA festival I had applied to. Not even close. My lead actress, Nina Kaczorowski, lives in LA, so I’d submitted to just about every film festival in the area. I envisioned a theater full of connected executives from various production companies who would swoon over my film and immediately offer me a seven-figure deal to acquire it. Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and the LA Times would all send someone to review the film, where it would be given rave reviews and I would be catapulted to fame in an instant.
My worst fear was a 500-seat theater with three people in the audience: me, Nina, and Lukas Hassel, my other lead. What happened was somewhere in between (minus the executives). The turnout was much the same as at any regional festival — proportional to the amount of work we had done to get the word out.
But I found that the biggest difference was in the way people in LA talked about film. In New York, conventional wisdom holds that to make it in film, you have to be a writer/director, an auteur with a unique vision. In LA, the advice I got was that if I wanted to advance my career and be taken seriously, my next project should only include one unknown in the project: me. Otherwise, the writer, producer, and lead actors should all be known.
In New York, everyone talks about the story and that what you need is a great script. In LA it was suggested that there were a million great scripts by known writers; just find one and run with it. “Cream rises to the top,” is a phrase often trotted out during screenwriting panels in New York. “It might be easier to get financing by finding the world’s worst script and attaching Lindsay Lohan,” an old friend from LA joked.
In LA, it was apparent that film is really a business. In New York, people talk about film as an art form. But one thing seems the same on both coasts, we all love films and we would move heaven and earth to keep making them. — KIM CUMMINGS, NYWIFT member
Are you a NYWIFT member with a story to tell? Drop us a line at nywiftblog@gmail.com.
Related Posts
My First Ever Sundance Experience!
"My first time covering the Sundance Film Festival in-person was everything I expected it to be. Fun, intense, inspirational, exhausting, and such an honor. Overall, the experience lived up to indeed be the experience of a lifetime. A journalist’s dream, especially mine." Tammy Reese shares her favorite star-studded moments from her trip to Park City for Sundance 2023!
READ MORENYWIFT at Sundance: In Conversation with Jess Jacobs
In director Tracy Droz Tragos feature documentary Plan C, a hidden grassroots organization doggedly fights to expand access to abortion pills across the United States, keeping hope alive during a global pandemic and the fall of Roe v. Wade. With abortion restrictions and bans going into effect, Francine Coeytaux and her team of providers established Plan C — a grassroots organization dedicated to expanding access to medication abortion. NYWIFT member Jess Jacobs, the film’s executive producer, has a career-long history of activism – including work with the Plan C organization before the movie was even made! She spoke to us about Plan C’s Sundance premiere, her passion for reproductive justice, and the power of community.
READ MORENYWIFT at Sundance: In Conversation with Valda Witt
Many children – and more than a few adults – dream of long-distance space exploration. But what about the real human toll of that kind of journey? The new documentary The Longest Goodbye, which debuted at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, takes a poignant look at the fundamentals of day-to-day reality in space: the isolation, confinement, and lack of privacy and social contact. Executive producer Valda Witt spoke to us about the project, her childhood dreams of space travel, favorite moments making the film, and getting to know scientists and astronauts in a deeply personal way.
READ MOREWomen Write Now: 2nd Year at Sundance Celebrating Women Writers
Developed in partnership with Sundance Institute and Founded by Hartbeat CEO Thai Randolph and Head of Film Candice Wilson Cherry, WOMEN WRITE NOW is a comedic writing fellowship designed to champion the next generation of Black women in comedy through mentorship, advocacy, production, and exhibition. Now in its second year, this year’s fellowship brought in three emerging writers, Mayanna Berrin, Kianna Butler Jabangwe, and Danielle Solomon to develop and produce their comedic short scripts under the guidance of some of the most influential Black women in comedy. The resulting projects were then brought into production by Hartbeat studios. Cherry and the writers spoke to us about their experience.
READ MORE