Even though some new filmmakers may assume that the drive towards Do-It-Yourself production & self-distribution in the art/indie/low-budget comedy/drama film world may have started around 2005, the truth is that several filmmakers have been doing their own versions of real indie/outside-of-Hollywood-$s-&-control filmmaking & self-distribution for decades - and Henry Jaglom is one of them. Check out this '07 Film Independent interview with Jaglom - specially questions about how he has handled financing & distribution on several of his movies. Here's a little bit of the interview:
"Q. You're also one of the few filmmakers who self-distributes on a large scale.
[Jaglom] I do that because the Samuel Goldwyn Company did a nice job distributing a film of mine called Always (1985). I watched what they did, and I thought, Oh, I can do that. Put a few people in an office making phone calls to art theaters around the country, somebody else making posters and trailers and sending them out. I'm a little bit of a control freak, and I thought, let's try this. And I tried it, and not just with my films; I've distributed Monty Python's films. I'm distributing a film Maximillian Schell made about his sister Maria, a documentary. When Robert DeNiro had a film he wanted distributed that he had produced called Mistress (1992), and he couldn't get a good deal that he liked, he gave it to me and we distributed it."
Read the rest of the interview here.
"Q. You're also one of the few filmmakers who self-distributes on a large scale.
[Jaglom] I do that because the Samuel Goldwyn Company did a nice job distributing a film of mine called Always (1985). I watched what they did, and I thought, Oh, I can do that. Put a few people in an office making phone calls to art theaters around the country, somebody else making posters and trailers and sending them out. I'm a little bit of a control freak, and I thought, let's try this. And I tried it, and not just with my films; I've distributed Monty Python's films. I'm distributing a film Maximillian Schell made about his sister Maria, a documentary. When Robert DeNiro had a film he wanted distributed that he had produced called Mistress (1992), and he couldn't get a good deal that he liked, he gave it to me and we distributed it."
Read the rest of the interview here.
