Alexandre Rockwell and Hal Hartley on Why You Don’t Need a Million Fans to Make Your Film
Two veterans of NYC’s independent film scene discuss success, failure, and building a following that really cares.
Kickstarter just turned 10. This creator-to-creator conversation is part of a series that celebrates past projects and introduces a few new ones. Read more here.
Since the ’80s, independent filmmakers Alexandre Rockwell and Hal Hartley have crafted personal, cinematic stories. From Rockwell’s Steve Buscemi-starring In the Soup, which won the 1992 Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize to Hartley’s Long Island Trilogy (The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, and Simple Men), both directors have built careers based on their own unique sensibilities and a dedication to maintaining ownership of their films.
They’ve remained true to that, most recently, with the help of Kickstarter. Since 2011, Hartley has used Kickstarter to fund the retail end of his business — which includes subtitling and distributing his impressive back catalog. And in 2014, Rockwell used Kickstarter to fund the post-production of his black-and-white 16mm film Little Feet. He’s currently back with another film, Sweet Thing, which stars his children and his wife, actress and producer Karyn Parsons.
Here, the two filmmakers discuss the changing definition of success, how to move past failure, and how they’ve both used Kickstarter to make the movies they want to make, the way they want to make them.
Hartley’s Surviving Desire, a DVD/blu-ray release of his 1991 film, is live on Kickstarter through May 1. Rockwell’s Sweet Thing is live through May 10.
Kickstarter: You’ve both run multiple projects on Kickstarter. How did you arrive there?
Hal Hartley: A couple of years ago I said, “If I could get my films subtitled in the five big languages that my films have usually done business in, then I could sidestep all these sales agents and all these distributors,” which is always a lot of work for me, and I don’t really make much money from it. That was my inspiration for starting to work with Kickstarter.
Back in the ’90s, distributors would always say to us, “Your audience is college-educated people between the ages of 25 and 35.” It would change from film to film and from month to month. These days, I really know who my fan base is because they are the people who contribute to my Kickstarter [campaigns]. I really built a whole worldwide database through Kickstarter. I mean, they really demonstrate the love, they put up $25, $40, sometimes $100 nine months in advance of getting the thing we’re promising. I’m feeling pretty good about that.
Alexandre Rockwell: Hal and I are veterans of these wars. The middle guys came and destroyed what we used to call independent film. I was not in touch with my fans or people who supported my work. Kickstarter has really allowed that to be a more direct line. It’s kind of difficult for me, because it feels like I’m begging on a street corner sometimes. But the reward of being in touch directly… I’m so stunned every day that someone who I’ve never heard of donated $100 and believes in the kind of films I make.
I’m humbled by the thought there might be 10,000 people in the world who actually appreciate something I did at one point. I don’t need a million people. And that’s what everything’s become, all marketing is toward “the bigger thing.” Whereas, I think Kickstarter brings it into a much more intimate group of people. You really identify with who supports your work.
What kind of advice would you give fellow filmmakers who want to run a Kickstarter project, knowing what you know now?
Hartley: Preparation. I undertake it like the production of a television show going on every day for 30 days. About 60 or 90 days out we begin to design it. In some cases, like the Henry Fool trilogy and the Long Island trilogy, we probably produced about 15 or 20 minutes of original video interviews with people, mashups of scenes. It’s a little like Jerry Lewis Telethon back in the old days: you have to sing for your supper. You’ve got to get up there every single day and stay in people’s faces in pleasant way.
Rockwell: I agree completely with Hal. It’s almost like a film shoot. You’ve got to give 100% with no guarantee. Especially your first Kickstarter. Don’t think it’s like a game that you play. It’s like Hal said, it’s a barrage. You don’t sleep at night, you’re thinking there’s something you missed. And I think it’s stressful as hell. I’m like Hal, I love it, but I was raised to deal with stress.
Making a low-budget independent film is dealing with putting out fires. I am like Hal that way, I kind of feel good after I do it. Kickstarter is a new frontier, and it’s extremely stressful, but if you give 100% you’ll do well. At the end of the day, I would much prefer it to wasting three years of my life going to dinner with people who I wouldn’t even want to hang out with. That’s not who I am. At this time of my life, I am tired of wasting time. I won’t waste time anymore.
Hartley: I agree. Time moves slower when you’re younger. At 60, not without a sense of humor, I often think of my 20s as this barren and terrified decade of constant striving and self doubt. Now that I’m restoring the work [from that time], I have to go back into my writing from that period and it was incredible. I was busy, constantly making, whether I was getting paid for it or not. I was making films, I was writing scripts, I was working on TV commercials and whatever, and work on my friend’s films. I’m just shocked to see how active I actually was in my 20s. But you remember it all wrong. All you remember are those long dull afternoons of doubt, and you forget about all the actual productivity.
Rockwell: [Kickstarter is] kind of a perfect thing for a young filmmaker to do because it’s not a waste of time. It’s a great thing for 30 days. It’s exhausting, but it’s kind of great. You really have to think on your toes.
In terms of making creative work, what does success mean to you?
Rockwell: I would say it changes. That’s one of the advantages of being around for a while, success means something different than it did when I was young. I remember I cried when I got into the Venice Film Festival for the first time. It was such a big deal to me. And now I’m kind of like, “I just want to make a good film.” It’s the most gratifying thing in the world when you believe in it and love it. I feel [Hal and I] are brothers in arms in some ways, that’s why we do it.
Hartley: I’ve always been terrified that the film I’m making will be my last film. [Even] when I was making my very first film, there was kind of fanatical energy which I’m glad I had because I was making a very small film, and it had some success. I wanted it to earn back its money and pay everybody, and make another film possible — that was really as far as I looked. It’s only in recent years, now that I’m into my 50s, that I really have relaxed.
I do want my films to be shown, but it’s always been very important to me to make a living. I come from a working class background and I wanted to be an artist. I never lied about that to anybody; I really did want to support myself. One of the things that I’m proud about in my life is that I have been able to support myself through my work. It’s as simple as that. That’s kind of my ideal of success at the moment. If I can take care of the old films, people can see them, and some income comes in from that, that’s all right.
You’ve both had long careers. Is there a piece of advice that’s been really valuable to you, and who gave it to you?
Hartley: [Filmmaker Michael Roemer] spent a day with us when I was at SUNY Purchase in the film department. He said, “In life, no matter what you do, you have to make lots of compromises for everybody else. But just know when you’re doing something for yourself, and don’t mess with that, don’t compromise with that.”
He was a professional for hire, director often, and he brought his skills and his talents to it. But sometimes there was something that he really felt it was his, [and] he wouldn’t compromise on that. That struck me and I’ve held on to that all my life.
Rockwell: My grandfather was a Russian artist, and I was lucky enough to know him a little bit. He said to me that a piece of art and a piece of industry are two different things; that a piece of art is judged for its presence of qualities, whereas a piece of industry is judged for its lack of defects.
There are these moments in films that are just pure, and they last. I think that is a good thing for a young person to think about: don’t always try to remove what’s wrong in your film. Celebrate what you are excited about, fascinated by, and want to get better at, and focus on that, because that will really be what lasts. It’s not removing all the bumps and imperfections and having a committee decide what’s the best way to promote it. It’s going to end up diluting the vision of it. And that piece of advice kind of always stuck with me.
Hartley: Someone said, the difference between craft and art is that a craftsperson knows what they’re making. They’re making a chair, they make a good chair. Whereas art goes further because you have to allow yourself to aim for something you don’t know. You’re searching rather than carrying something out.
Rockwell: I have to say that that’s what’s really wonderful about Kickstarter for me — I am searching. I would never take a journey that I already know the end of. Kickstarter allows me experiment as I go through post production. I even grab shots I need at my own leisure, and it really aids me in that process of discovery and I really appreciate that opportunity.
Let’s talk about failure, which is something everyone has experienced at some point. Can you share a time you failed, what you learned from it, and how you kept going afterwards?
Hartley: There are lots of little failures that the outside world won’t even clock, and I have them all the time, day to day, week to week. The way I deal is to just move on, don’t dwell. Just admit like, “Alright, that’s a very poorly shot scene. What are we going to do?” There’s always a solution.
Rockwell: I invite failure in my world. I actually don’t even mind busting out laughing and saying, “That’s the most horrible scene I’ve ever shot!” Because then I’ll get better and I’ll learn.
Failure in my life has been painful to talk about, but I’m getting wiser about it. I’ve seen failures in terms of not getting my film distributed or almost having a film financed after two years and having it fall through. That’s painful and it’s personally horrific. What Hal said applies to it though, which is to learn from it, it gets you strong. I mean, it’s a cliche, but it really is true.
Don’t be afraid of failure. Just bring it right in the goddamn house and let it beat the shit out of you, but then get up and do what Hal said: just get up and do it again.
We’ve talked about the past, but I also want to talk about the future. How do you see the next 10 years of film? What do you think is going to happen?
Hartley: In terms of myself, I was hired for the first time to direct somebody else’s television show a couple of years ago, an Amazon series called Red Oaks. That was a terrific experience, to direct somebody else’s stuff.
I had a great time not being the boss, just exercising my skill and sensibility and being paid well for the first time in my life — that was good. I became very interested in television as a result. In fact, I had started to write episodic shows a couple of years earlier, but no one would give me the time of day, because everything changes. I initially took Red Oaks because I thought it was an entree into the TV thing. It was a nicely written show and the people were great, it was a good experience. And it has led to something, my future, part of it is that [direction].
Alex, I wonder how you think about this. After 30 years of getting fairly expert at crafting scripts for 90 to 100-minute stories, I’m very excited about writing something that’s 10 hours, 20 hours long.
Rockwell: That idea excites me a lot. I do think that the longer-form narrative is really fascinating. For myself, the one thing that I see in the future is I’m just going to dedicate myself to telling only the stories I want to tell now.
One thing that comes from being on the planet longer and doing what you’ve done for longer is that you are able to see the sand going through the hourglass now. I don’t have entire afternoons to be bored to death. I don’t even worry about that bullshit anymore. For me, I’m going to continue making my little films and hope that people will respond to them.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
