Last year, more than 2,000 feature-length independent films were produced. Of those
films, 97%, give or take, were dreadful, bad, or mediocre. Around 50 were actually
pretty good. And one of them was The Blair Witch Project.
This, then, is the problem facing independent film distributors like
Miramax,
Fine Line, and Artisan Entertainment: How does one locate the handful of
good and, more to the point, commercial films in the midst of all the lousy
ones? After all, it's not as though the videocassette containing the rare gem
looks any different from the one containing yet another amateurish mess.
This conundrum helps explain why, at a party during the Toronto Film Festival in
mid-September, Miss Canada found herself locked in conversation with a large,
mustachioed, sloppily dressed gentleman who was eagerly telling her about two movies
she simply had to see. The man's name is Jeff Dowd, and it was his job to secure
distribution for those two movies. Dowd was at the festival as a producer's representative,
which meant that he was paid to market those movies to critics, to the press, and, most
important, to potential distributors. And what does this have to do with
the lovely Miss Canada? As Dowd explained later, "I dated the Canadian actress
Helen Shaver in the '80s, and every time we'd go to a movie at the festival our picture
would end up in the local papers. The press follows celebrities." A celebrity at
your movie means press coverage; press coverage means buzz; buzz means a sale.
 Dowd spent the ten days of the
Toronto Film Festival working angles like
these nonstop on behalf of two independent
films. To Walk With Lions and Goat on Fire
& Smiling Fish. Watching Dowd in action is
like getting a crash course in Film Festival
101, the main lesson of which, as Dowd will
readily explain, is this: "The film business is
the one business on earth where the worth
of the end product bears absolutely zero
relation to the cost." For every dollar you
spend to make a widget, you know that you
should be able to recoup somewhere between,
say, 80 cents and $1.20. For every dollar spent
on a movie, you can make as much as $100
or as little as nothing. This randomness infects
everything to do with the film business: Because the intrinsic worth of a film is so hard
to gauge, everything depends on the dicey
proposition of creating the perception of
worth. The key to selling a film at a festival
is to build up a crescendo of buzz -- to have
people raving about the film so that if a distribution executive sees it and likes it, he'll
find an enthusiastic chorus of other voices
affirming his own good taste.
 What Dowd does is help orchestrate that
buzz. He has played a vital, if hidden, role in
bringing some of the key films in the independent-film movement to screens: He
helped sell Blood Simple and River's Edge,
consulted with distributors on marketing
tough sells like The Black Stallion and Hoosiers, and helped start the
Sundance Institute with Robert Redford in order to fix
mistakes in screenplays before they're
committed to film. Critic Roger Ebert likens
Dowd to a racetrack tout and says, "You always see him at film festivals, and he has an
uncommon ability to sidle up to you with a title for a sleeper." The title Dowd mumbled
to Ebert at this year's Sundance Film Festival was The Blair Witch Project, on which he
served as an unofficial adviser. (On that film
Dowd supplied a bit of literal buzz as well:
Upon discovering that the film had been slotted in a midnight screening when the
audience  would be logy after a full day of skiing, screenings, and parties Dowd
recommended that the agency representing the
film, Endeavor, give away coffee and chocolate in the lobby so the audience would be
jumpy long before characters started disappearing.) And if all that weren't enough to
make him something of an indie film legend, he has this ace in the hole: The Jeff Bridges
character in The Big Lebowski, "The Dude," is loosely based on Dowd,
with whom he shares a nickname, a cavalier approach to niceties like table manners, and a bit of
history--both are former radicals; both were members of the Seattle Seven.
All of these experiences have helped Dowd build a wealth of connections and expertise in the
independent film world, which he deploys on behalf of the filmmakers
who hire him. He knows, for example, why it's a bad idea for a director to
stock a screening with his friends. (They'll applaud for his name and give themselves away.)
He knows where to stay if you're in Toronto for the festival (the Park Hyatt, because you can network in the
elevators); which restaurants to canvass to find distribution executives (Bistro 990,
Prego Delia Piazza); who coordinates the best parties in town (her name is Party
Barb); and which parties are the best for networking (those hosted by City TV and
Alliance Entertainment). He also knows how to get into parties without an
invitation. (Try striking up a conversation with the bouncer; explain that you have an invite
but have misplaced it; point to the FORTUNE reporter next to you and see if that
impresses the bouncer; if that fails, offer to wait next to the velvet ropes for a friend to
come out and invite you inside; if that fails, wait for the bouncer's attention to drift for
a second and walk directly into the party. These tactics work better than you'd
expect: In the course of the festival, a bouncer only once grabbed Dowd by the belt and
physically ejected him from a room.)
While never quite seeming like a pitchman, Dowd spent about 90% of his time at the
festival pitching either the movies he had at the festival or future projects he's hoping to
produce. Even though he ended pretty much every conversation by grabbing fliers for his
two movies and bestowing them on someone, it didn't have the feel of a slick sales
talk. That was largely because Dowd is the antithesis of slick: He shambles up to people
like a tranquilized bear. He sprays spit when he talks. He kept those fliers for his movies
in a ragged overnight-shipping envelope. And as for his clothing, suffice it to say that
he spent nearly an entire day with a giant coffee stain on his pants, only partially
obscured by his untucked shirt. This obliviousness works in Dowd's favor. He is so
rough, so
unpolished in his approach, that he comes off as utterly genuine; you believe in him and his
pitch because, well, if he were just trying to sell you something, he'd at least have bothered to
tuck in his shirt, wouldn't he? In the midst of the angst of a festival, to find
one person so relaxed is a relief, and it's unexpectedly charming. There are so many
films competing for limited attention at a festival like this that being entertaining and
charismatic is not just nice; it's essential. Charm lures people in; once they're
close, you can set the hook and you'd better have one. For a lesson in what can happen when you don't
have a good hook, consider one of Dowd's two movies. To Walk With Lions. It might
have seemed like an easy sell it's a $10 million docudrama about the final days of
Born Free's hero, George Adamson, played by two-time Oscar nominee
Richard Harris. Harris is a born raconteur;
when Dowd took the movie to the Seattle Film Festival, Harris captivated the crowd with his stories
of working with the lions in Africa. Which made it especially unfortunate that Harris,
who was hospitalized with dehydration, couldn't be at this festival. The film's other
star, John Michie, and its director, Carl Schultze, were able to make it, but they
didn't have Harris' ability to command a room. (Indeed, Schultze, though engaging
in one-on-one conversation, all but physically shrank back from crowds.) Dowd
could tell people about what a fine film it was, but without Harris standing nearby,
ready to tell a few stories, he had no hook. "If it didn't go against the spirit of the
movie," Dowd mused aloud at one point, "I'd probably have some lions here. They'd
probably kill three innocent people and make worldwide headlines. That would
probably turn this whole thing around."  Dowd's other movie,
Goat on Fire &
Smiling Fish, by contrast, had plenty of charm and a few unexpected hooks.
Granted, the movie didn't have any marquee stars ... with a budget of $40,000, it
couldn't afford them. And it was saddled with that unwieldy title; one distribution executive
insisted on referring to it as Burning Goat & Bleeding Cats. But what it did have
in its favor was the trio of filmmakers behind it: director Kevin Jordan and his two stars,
Derick and Steve Martini. All three are in their mid-20s, good-looking, and charming
as hell; while Lions' Schultze shrank back from crowds, the Goat trio plunged in. And
once people started talking to them, they found any number of hooks: There was, as
Dowd put it, "the three cool guys angle" Jordan and the Martini brothers are good
friends who've made a warm movie about friendship. There was the Scorsese angle
Jordan served as an apprentice to Martin Scorsese, who provided some input on editing
the film. And best of all there was the lobster angle Jordan's family owns a
Brooklyn lobster farm, so many of his payments to suppliers on the film were made in
the form of lobsters. Ever since Robert Rodriguez made a splash with his story of financing
El Mariachi by volunteering his body for medical experiments, the tale of
going to extremes to finance an independent movie has been a staple of the
indie-film story. Dowd organized
a beer-and-lobsters party to promote the movie; Jordan could usually be seen at the festival in one
of his JORDAN LOBSTER FARMS T-shirts, the best of which had LOBSTERTRICIAN written
across the back. People would ask about the shirt, and pretty soon they'd be learning
about the movie.
All this, of course, fed the buzz for
Goat on Fire. Both the press and the industry like
to feel they've discovered bright new talents, and the Goat crew fit the bill to a T. Of
course, the buzz wouldn't have meant much if the movie hadn't been any good; luckily,
it was very good. It was made on a tight budget, and that shows, but it has an assured
style, a killer final scene, and a terrific supporting performance from a jazz musician
named Bill Henderson. The movie played to enthusiastic crowd response at each of its
screenings, which was good, since the audience was stuffed with those to whom Dowd
had touted the picture, including Ebert, Sundance Film Festival co-director Geoff
Gilmore, and a slew of distribution folks. The movie outperformed even Dowd's
expectations; as Dowd left for the airport, Steve Martini mentioned that he was
staying behind for the festival awards. "The movie screened late in the festival," Dowd
said, "so it won't have as many votes. It deserves to win, but don't be let down if it
doesn't." That evening the movie took the Discovery Award for the festival. At press time neither film had sold to a distributor, but Dowd said he was close to
a deal on each; by the time you read this, both films will probably have been sold. To
Walk With Lions had generated some offers, but Goat on Fire was, well, on fire.
Dowd said he had received inquiries from, among others, Stratosphere
Entertainment, the Shooting Gallery, Fox Searchlight, USA
Films, Fine Line, Paramount,
and the Samuel Goldwyn Co. Once the films are sold, Dowd will take a percentage
of the sale on each. (His usual fee is 10%, but it varies somewhat case by case.) Dowd can't, of course, take full credit for these films'
reception ... nor does he want it. He's quick to praise the efforts of other buzz-generators, like the films' agents and
publicists. And the lion's share of the credit he assigns to the filmmakers. Looking to
describe his role, he cites a comment from a friend, producer Ben Barenholtz. "He
once said to me, 'Jeff, you're a tummler.' You know what a tummler is? At the
Catskills resorts, a tummler is a guy they hire to say, you know, here's a widow and a widower. And the tummler says, 'Mrs. Stein, have you met Mr. Schwartz?' " All
text and images are from the October 25, 1999 issue of Fortune Magazine
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