Jon Reiss: Speech for DOX:FORUM in Copenhagen
Hello everyone! Here is my recent speech at the CPH:DOX Forum in Copenhagen from last Friday . IndieWire just published it and so I’m reposting it here.
This speech was delivered at the recent CPH:DOX Forum in Copenhagen. Jon Reiss will be doing a presentation today at 6 p.m. at IFC Center in Manhattan and selling his book, “Think Outside the Box Office,” immediately after. The book is also available for purchase on his website.
“Much has been said and written about the current distribution crises of independent films, I am not going to belabor the horror stories here.
But just as a way of introducing myself – I will give you a brief introduction to my own horror story.
In 2007, I was at the Tribeca film festival where I was trying to sell my documentary “Bomb It.” We did everything by the old school book, kept the screeners a secret, we spent $20,000 launching the film at the festival, with the result of packed houses and hundreds of people turned away. After all the excitement, what we had were a few $10,000 all rights deals that we rejected. A week after Tribeca, our film was available for sale on Canal Street — as a bootleg. Continue reading →