Why Nobody Wanted Super Size Me: A Distributor Remembers

Documentary First, Episode 128 · with Joe Amodei, founder of Virgil Films, and co-hosts Jason Rugg and Jeff Kurtenacker · 39 minutes · August 19, 2021

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How does a film distributor decide which documentaries to take on?

Super Size Me came to film distributor Joe Amodei after nobody else would touch it. As Joe tells it, the studios didn't want to hamper their Happy Meal deals, and everyone else thought McDonald's would sue. He took it anyway. McDonald's never sued, and the film went on to be nominated for Best Documentary.

In Episode 128 of Documentary First, Joe's first visit to the show, Jason Rugg hosts with Christian Taylor and Jeff Kurtenacker, the composer of The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Joe, the founder of Virgil Films, tells how a job at the first video store in the Philadelphia area turned into more than 40 years in the film and home entertainment business, from VHS through DVD to streaming. He remembers the phone call when Netflix asked about streaming, and what he told them.

Joe explains why "the film business is mostly bad news," why a buyer's no usually has nothing to do with quality, and how many films Virgil buys from the 20 to 25 it is pitched each week. He remembers Restrepo and its co-director Tim Hetherington, the afternoon that changed his mind about We Are Columbine, and which genres sell best. Before Joe joins, Christian shares updates from Laurel, Mississippi, on The Girl Who Wore Freedom playing on Delta.

In this episode, you’ll learn

  • How a job at the first video store in the Philadelphia area led Joe Amodei through IVE, Turner Home Entertainment, PolyGram and USA Films to founding Virgil Films
  • Why the studios passed on Super Size Me, as Joe tells it, and why he took the risk
  • What Joe told Netflix when it first called asking for titles to stream
  • Why a buyer's no usually isn't about quality, and how many films Virgil buys out of 20 to 25 pitches a week
  • How screening Patriot Act for soldiers led Virgil to release films about soldiers coming home, including Restrepo
  • Why Joe first turned down We Are Columbine, and what changed his mind the same afternoon
  • Which genres sell best, why documentaries sit near the bottom, and where Joe thinks theaters and streaming are headed

Questions and answers

Why did nobody want to distribute Super Size Me?

Joe Amodei of Virgil Films says nobody wanted Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock's film about eating nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. The studios didn't want to hamper their Happy Meal deals, and everyone else thought McDonald's would sue. Joe took it anyway, imagining the headline "McDonald's sues Joe Amodei." McDonald's never sued, and the film went on to be nominated for Best Documentary.

Why do distributors pass on good films?

Joe Amodei says the hardest thing for a filmmaker to hear is that nobody wants their film, and they assume it is because buyers didn't like it. Most of the time, he says, that has nothing to do with it: it has everything to do with budgets, and with whether the buyer already has films with a similar storyline. After a dozen films about soldiers coming home, buyers told him each new one felt like the same thing.

How many films does Virgil Films acquire?

Joe Amodei says Virgil Films gets pitched 20 to 25 movies a week and buys maybe one or two of them. Virgil does not release a lot of movies every month, he explains, because it likes to work the titles. He adds that if he thought buyers wouldn't like a film, he would not have acquired it in the first place.

Which film genres sell best?

According to Joe Amodei of Virgil Films, genre films, action first, work best across the board, and having some kind of recognizable cast really helps. Horror still works. Romantic comedies sit very much toward the bottom, and documentaries sit even below romantic comedies. He adds that streamers like Netflix have different divisions for different genres, so a distributor with films in several genres needs several meetings.

Will streaming replace movie theaters?

Joe Amodei says his biggest fear is that people stop going to the theater, but he does not think it is going away. He expects the theater experience to change somewhat, with a large art house circuit still showing good films, while streaming and transactional sales keep growing, a shift he says COVID sped up. He also points out that movies have always been the perfect date, and that is still happening.

Chapters

  • 0:00 Meet Joe Amodei
  • 6:18 First Video Store
  • 10:21 Taking On McDonald's
  • 15:06 An Honest Distributor
  • 18:20 Films for Returning Soldiers
  • 21:52 Restrepo and Tim Hetherington
  • 27:39 We Are Columbine
  • 31:44 Genres, Theaters, Streaming

About the guest

Joe Amodei is the founder of Virgil Films and Entertainment and has worked in the film and home entertainment industry for more than 40 years. He was fixing sewing machines when the first video store in the Philadelphia area, where he is from, opened. Within a week he was working there, and when the business grew to 15 stores he became the buyer. He went on to IVE, an independent studio owned by Carolco, then Turner Home Entertainment, PolyGram Home Entertainment and the home entertainment division of USA Films under Scott Greenstein. He then started Hart Sharp, a joint venture named after the independent filmmakers John Hart and Jeff Sharp, and in 2008 bought the company from its investors and renamed it Virgil Films. Virgil has released Super Size Me, Restrepo, We Are Columbine, I Am Chris Farley, I Am Paul Walker, I Am Heath Ledger and Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am?, and also develops films and series with filmmakers to present to streamers. When the episode was recorded he had been married for 40 years and was a grandfather of two girls.

More from this series

All of Joe's Documentary First conversations are gathered on the Joe Amodei on documentary distribution page. Joe came back for the history of distribution (Episode 183) and five film business tips (Episode 194).

About Documentary First

For people who make documentaries and people who love them. Discover how documentaries actually get made, paid for and seen with filmmaker Christian Taylor. Plus DocuView Deja View, where every guest recommends a documentary worth watching. One week, a long-form conversation about a guest's journey, projects and lessons; the next, The Deep Dive, Christian's short solo reflection on one idea from that conversation. Guests have included Ken Burns and PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy. Christian directed the award-winning documentary The Girl Who Wore Freedom. Nearly 300 conversations. Listen Notes top 5% worldwide. 4.8 on Apple Podcasts. New episodes every week. Follow the show · About the podcast · Support the show on Patreon

Resources mentioned

Full disclosure: Joe's company, Virgil Films, distributes Christian's film The Girl Who Wore Freedom, and it now sponsors Documentary First. This 2021 episode has no sponsor read.

Full transcript

Meet Joe Amodei

Jason Rugg: Welcome to Documentary First, an inside look at a first-time filmmaker's journey. I'm your host, Jason Rugg, filling in for Josh Lindsay, and with us is our first-time filmmaker, Christian Taylor.

Christian Taylor: Hello there, Jason.

Jason: Good to see you, Christian. And then also joining us, uh, in and to... taking my seat is Jeff Kurtenacker, the composer of the movie.

Christian: And Jason... Hey, Jeff, nice to have you here.

Jeff Kurtenacker: Hey, Christian, it's good to be here. Thank you. I don't have any buttons to push, Jason, sorry, but I can fake it.

Jason: It's okay, I fake it too. Well, so I guess we'll just dive right into it. Christian, I hear you have some fun updates for us.

Christian: You know, again, I am still here in Laurel, Mississippi. I'm helping my dad. I'm hoping to go home in a week, so I'm super excited about that. We did sell my dad's house, and we did find a place for him to live, so we'll be doing that move tomorrow. And, you know, I'm really happy to kind of move that ball down the track. I've missed my life. I've missed working on films and stuff that I'm typically doing. I've missed my husband, so I'm really looking forward to getting home.

I've spent time this week... the thing I'm most proud of is that I am trying to put a deal together, I've talked to you guys about this before, between L'Oréal, Delta, Fort Bragg and Michelin, and that's all kind of coming together. So this week I made the pitch to Fort Bragg. And, you know, this whole idea is that we partner with Delta to bring over Danny and Flo, as well as bring in some veterans, and then they go about with the film at an event at Michelin in South Carolina, at L'Oréal in New York and then at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. And that way people get to meet Danny and Flo. That is, if they can get out of France, which is still up in the air thanks to the Delta variant. So I'm not exactly sure how that's all going to shake out, but I was excited to get that pitch off that I was working on.

And yeah, so we're still receiving lots of text messages and emails about people watching the film on Delta. I even received messages on YouTube from people, just random people that watched it. I received a phone call because they went to our website and called me and told me how wonderful it was. So it's really rewarding to have the [unclear] be on Delta and have it exposed to so many different people, and then find out that they're going to our website, they're subscribing to our newsletter, they're doing stuff like that. So I never realized how impactful your film getting on an airline was, but apparently it is. And so that's been super encouraging, and I think it's good for our reputation going forward with The Brave Dutch. I would hope that as our movie gets traction here, it will cause other people to follow us on other projects that we're doing.

So, you know, that's where we are. We are still promoting the word that the film is out on Hoopla, and people can find it in their libraries. So make sure you get a library card, and if you want to borrow the film from your library, that's possible. And yeah, the other stuff I've been working on is The Brave Dutch.

Jason: Christian, I just wanted to say, for the airline thing, I don't know if we've talked about this, my sister actually works for one of the companies that supplies the airlines with the equipment to put movies and things on airplanes and cruise ships and a couple other things.

Christian: I did not know that.

Jason: My dad actually used to work for them too. That's how my sister got in there. And he built their network operation center, so they would keep track of, okay, this one is having trouble talking to the satellite, getting internet, okay, how do we fix that? So a lot of how the technology works is they have a really small library of onboard content. That's content that's actually loaded on the plane. It's not like it's streaming it from somewhere, it's actually loaded on. So a lot of the airlines have a really limited library. Like, I flew Southwest about a month ago, and there were like 12 movies, and that was it. So it's a very small library, and so I think that's probably why it's a very selective thing. And when you get on a whole airline, that's a pretty big deal.

Christian: So, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I didn't know that, but now that you mention it, I do. You're right, it's not like this huge, vast library like Netflix that you can scroll through endless movies to find. It's always a very limited supply. And thankfully we did work out a deal with them where we were in the spotlight. And what that means is when you sit on the plane and you turn on the equipment, you know, they spotlight the films they really think you should watch. And we had to, um, I don't know what the word is, there was a cost for that. You know, we probably received less money or something like that in order to be in the spotlight. I don't know how it works. I'm not a distributor. I just know there is a cost for that. It's more expensive to be in the spotlight than not be in the spotlight. So cool, thank you for letting me know that, Jason. That's odd that I didn't know that, but now I do.

Jason: Yeah. Well, all right, I think... is it time to move on to our guest?

Christian: Let's move on, because our guest is an awesome one today.

Jason: All right, so I'm going to welcome Joe Amodei to the show. How you doing, Joe?

Joe Amodei: Pretty good. Glad to be here. Nice to see everybody.

Jason: [unclear] We are so happy for you to be here. So I'll just give a quick bio for Joe here. Joe Amodei has enjoyed a career in the film and home entertainment industry for more than 40 years. Under Amodei's leadership, Virgil Films has released such award-winning hits as I Am Chris Farley, I Am Paul Walker, I Am Heath Ledger, Super Size Me, Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am?, and he's a proud grandfather to two young girls. So, Joe, that's your bio, but we would love to hear what your perspective on your history is.

Joe: I'm old, that's my perspective. I think I started [unclear], you know, maybe Harold Lloyd. But no...

First Video Store

Joe: Thank you for mentioning my grandkids. I've also been married to a wonderful woman for 40 years, so I'm very, very fortunate when it comes to that. But I started in the business in the infancy stages of home video. I was actually fixing sewing machines for a living, and a video store opened up, the very first video store opened up in the Philadelphia area, where I'm from. And being a film fanatic and a film geek since I was a child, I walked into this store, and we all know what it was like. I just looked around, and it was like [unclear]. And within a week I wasn't fixing sewing machines anymore. I was working at that store, because you could bring home as many movies as you want, you know, I didn't have to pay for.

And so, you know, the progression, it was a natural progression. That one store turned into 15 stores. I became the buyer. That chain got sold. I went to work for a studio, an independent studio called IVE, which was located out in California. It was owned by Carolco, and we had the Terminator movies, we had the Rambo films, and we were also run by a gentleman who was my boss by the name of José Menendez. So that name might ring a bell to you in a bad way. Unfortunately, José and his wife Kitty were murdered by their sons, Erik and Lyle, who worked with us. That was a crazy, crazy time for all of us that worked there.

That company lasted... I stayed there for another few years, ended up going over to Turner, Turner Home Entertainment, which was owned by Ted Turner. I actually followed a mentor of mine to go work there, and I worked for Ted Turner for four or five years until he sold the company. And this is when the home entertainment and the VHS business was flourishing. Stores were opening up every single day. They all needed 20, 30,000 tapes to open up their stores. It was an amazing business. Blockbuster came to be, Hollywood Entertainment came to [unclear], Walmart started selling videos, and the business flourished.

So I was at Turner until Ted sold the company to AOL, and I worked for a couple other companies, PolyGram Home Entertainment, and then I got the opportunity to run the home entertainment division for USA Films and a gentleman named Scott Greenstein. USA Films released movies like Traffic, Being John Malkovich, Gosford Park, you know, quintessential independently made films. And I learned the independent film business through Scott Greenstein and the people that I worked with at USA. USA was owned by Barry Diller, and Barry Diller, like everybody else, sold the company. And at that point I didn't want to deal with the mechanisms of corporate America. I knew this could happen again. It didn't have anything to do with our success.

So I went out on my own, found some partners and started a company called Hart Sharp. Hart Sharp was named after John Hart and Jeff Sharp, independent filmmakers that made movies like Boys Don't Cry, You Can Count on Me, a lot of great indie films. And we started a joint venture that was bought and sold a couple times. Then we get to 2008, and I took over the company myself, bought the company from those investors and changed the name to Virgil Films, after an old friend of mine in the movies. And we started acquiring movies. And at the same time, within six months of me starting this new business, Blockbuster [unclear] Hollywood closed, and the country went into a recession. So my timing has always been perfect during these times, but we survived.

Taking On McDonald's

Joe: Our first major acquisition was Super Size Me. And if everybody remembers Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. Nobody wanted the film. The studios didn't want to hamper their Happy Meal deals, and everyone else thought that McDonald's would sue. And, you know, I'm a guy outside of Philadelphia owning a company, saying, "Sue me." You know, I was imagining the headlines in USA Today: "McDonald's sues Joe Amodei." You know, never sued. The movie went on to be nominated for Best Documentary, and McDonald's stopped their [unclear] Super Size brand. Never set foot in McDonald's since, to be honest with you.

So we started buying a lot of documentaries, acquiring a lot of documentaries, and we were very fortunate. We signed a deal with Oprah Winfrey to take out a whole bunch of documentaries [unclear] going to be on her TV station, the new OWN channel. We landed Restrepo, a film about Afghanistan and our soldiers fighting there, that went on to be nominated for Best Documentary. And throughout the years we were able to acquire some pretty good docs, some very award-winning docs, some big, some small and some in between.

We've also, as a company, been able to ride with the many changes that the film world, or the film distribution world, has brought us. We were one of the very first companies that got a phone call from Netflix asking for a group of titles to stream. And I remember asking what streaming was, and it would be... what streaming was, and, "You're out of your mind." And I remember saying this. I said, "No one is ever going to stop going to video stores." So you [unclear], really. Like, I remember saying it.

And so we were able to morph from a VHS company to a DVD company to a streaming company, and now still a firm that buys films, [unclear], tries to sell them to the streaming companies. We put all of our movies up on all the transactional sites. And the biggest addition and the major change for us is, on top of continuing to do all that, we develop films along with filmmakers, films and television projects, series, and present them to those same accounts, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple, you know, Disney Plus, and try to get them to finance those projects.

We've been doing it for a very long time. It's been, you know, the film business is a pinnacle of fun and success and glamour. I have been very fortunate. My wife and I have been to the Oscars a couple times. I've been to film festivals all around the world, things that I never imagined I would get to do as a young kid. So I've been able to experience all of those things, and I'm very lucky. At the same time, as everyone says, it's a business. That's why they call it the film business. And, you know, you acquire movies, and sometimes they work, and a lot of times they don't. And keeping up with these changes, it sounds like it was easy, but it's not.

But, you know, I've lived by the creed that you never take advantage of... you treat people fairly. And that's enabled me to stay in this business, and people remember that when it comes to Virgil Films. And I think probably my proudest part of all of this is when a filmmaker comes back to me with their next film, even though the film that I released for them didn't work, didn't make any money, but they applaud the effort. Because that's really what it's all about, you know, when you get right down to it. I'm a firm believer it's families first, and family always comes first. But I love movies. I mean, I try to watch something almost every day. I've been like this for as long as I can remember, and I love all kinds of films, and I'm working in that business, so I am very, very fortunate.

An Honest Distributor

Christian: Well, you know, it's interesting that you say about your reputation. That's really how we met, because I've told the story on here before: when I was at the Julien Dubuque Film Festival, I met Donna Reed's daughter, Mary Owen. And she came back to me one day and said, "You know, Christian, I just have to tell you, I watched your movie. It's phenomenal. I've shared it with my friend Joe. He helped package and distribute The Donna Reed Show. He is an awesome guy. He is one of the good guys. You really need to talk to him."

And I've known you now, I would say, at least since late May, and everything she told me is true. I mean, it's why you're here on this podcast today. And, you know, I did talk about where you're working on The Brave Dutch with us. And every interaction that I have had with you, it has been about honesty, trustworthiness, truthfulness, and it is so rare to find that kind of relationship in this crazy film business. I don't ever want to let you go. I already feel like, you know, whatever I want to do, I want to do it with Joe. And truthfully, filmmakers that listen to this podcast, that's one of the biggest questions that I always hear: how in the world do you find a distributor that you can trust, that's going to tell you the truth, it's going to be honest? And, Joe, I'm sorry to tell you, but you're the only one I've found so far.

Joe: You know, it's... you gotta sleep at night. You know, it's pretty simple. And the hardest part about it is, you know, the film business is mostly bad news. I mean, most films don't make it. For every film that you see open up at your local theater on Friday, there's 30 that didn't. It's a very, very hard business, and it's becoming harder because of the technology. You know, everyone seems to think that, oh, there's 20 new streaming sites out there, so it must be easier to sell movies. Well, no, because there's 20,000 more filmmakers out there, because they could... some of them are making movies on their phones. It's not like it used to be. You know, a lot of the filmmakers we come across haven't even gone to film school.

Christian: Like me.

Joe: So it's... yeah, so it's [unclear]. But that's why, when I watched your movie, now that I've heard that, it is even more amazing that you're able to pull something like that off without having that training that, you know, a lot of other people have, that probably couldn't have pulled off what you pulled off with Normandy. So it's a miracle.

Christian: Yeah.

Joe: So it's being honest. It's saying to a filmmaker, "It's not working. You know, nobody wants it." And that's the hardest thing in the world for a filmmaker to hear, that nobody wants it, because I automatically think nobody wants it because they don't like it, or they don't think it's any good. But most of the time, that has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with budgets. It has everything to do with, do they have other films that are even a little bit like it, storyline-wise?

Films for Returning Soldiers

Joe: And that's, in the case of documentaries, you know, when we released Restrepo... I'm sorry, it actually started before Restrepo. I got involved in a film called Patriot Act, and Patriot Act was directed by a comedian who went on a USO tour, Jeff Ross, the comedian Jeff Ross. And he went on a USO tour [unclear] to Iraq, and he filmed it, and it was very funny. And we took that out, but we took that film first, we actually took it to Walter Reed Hospital and Bethesda and gave copies of the film out to soldiers, wounded soldiers, which was life-changing. And remind me to tell you a funny story about that visit. But then we also took the film to Guantanamo and showed it to the soldiers in Guantanamo.

And just being with the soldiers at all of these places, you know, we vowed at Virgil to start releasing films that pay tribute to the soldiers that are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. And obviously the pinnacle of that was Restrepo. But, you know, when you get to number 12 and 13 of these films, the buyers like, "Joe, you know, it's only been a different group of soldiers coming back. It's all kind of like the same thing." So again, that goes back to: your film is getting passed on, but it doesn't mean they didn't like the film. If I thought they weren't going to like the film, I would not have acquired it anyway. You know, it wouldn't have gotten past me. You know, we get pitched 20, 25 movies a week, and we buy maybe one or two of them. And very rarely do we [unclear] 20 films that I'm buying seven or eight. It just doesn't happen that way.

Christian: I want to go back to Restrepo.

Joe: Yeah. I'll give you a very quick ending story on Patriot Act. So I [unclear] Super Size Me, and Morgan and I, Morgan Spurlock and I, became very, very close friends, [unclear] to this day. And obviously I'm telling Morgan Spurlock, "I am never walking into McDonald's again for the rest of my life." And I don't, and it's kind of like a badge of honor. At this point, four or five years later, still not eating at McDonald's. Jeff Ross and I are in a car, and we leave Bethesda, I'm sorry, we leave Walter Reed Hospital to drive to Bethesda, and the only place to stop and eat is at a McDonald's. And I said to Jeff, "I can't." And he's like... Jeff said a few words I don't want to say on this podcast. He says, "Well, we'll go to the drive-through." So me and Jeff were at the window, and my phone rings, and it's Morgan. And I'm not thinking, I put it on speaker, and the very first thing Morgan Spurlock hears is, "Would you like your Big Mac," or whatever the woman is saying. And I am like, busted. And he says, "Are you at McDonald's?" And I just handed the phone to Jeff Ross, and he just took it away.

Christian: Genius. Oh, timing is everything.

Joe: Yeah, yeah. But you had a question about Restrepo.

Restrepo and Tim Hetherington

Christian: Yeah, so I wanted to say a couple things about Restrepo. Number one, I did have a son that fought in Afghanistan, as most of you know, and he came back. Recently he said to me, and I even think it was, Joe, when I was talking to you and he found out you had distributed Restrepo, he said, "Mom, you've asked me a million times what it was like to be in Afghanistan. Watch Restrepo, because that's the closest thing I've ever seen." So it was a... I've been too scared to watch it, actually. I've never seen it, and it's because it's so close. I mean, my son was almost killed there, and when he turned in his flak jacket, you know, there were shrapnel holes in it. And so he's told me those stories, and so my imagination, of course, as a filmmaker, is so vivid that I've been afraid to watch that film.

But the other interesting thing about that film is when our film released on iTunes, every hour of every day, almost, I was checking the charts. And I was checking the charts before it released on iTunes, I was checking them after. Every time, Restrepo was in the number one spot. And at this point I hadn't even met you, and all I could see was just Restrepo was all the way at the top. And then I was like, it was released in 2010, like, how is that even possible? And I mean, it's still in the top charts on iTunes. It's not at number one today, but it's always up there. And, you know, I'd love for you to talk about your journey with that film.

Joe: You know, the journey has ended up being very emotional and sad, to be honest with you. So Tim Hetherington, award-winning, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, and Sebastian Junger, you know, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, wrote The Perfect Storm and a bunch of other great books, they decided to co-direct this film. And they embedded themselves in with a group of soldiers that were the furthest into Afghanistan valley, the furthest into Afghanistan that you can go. And they're at the bottom of a valley, and it's just nothing but mountains filled with Taliban shooting at them almost all the time. So it was crazy. And Restrepo was named after Juan Restrepo, who was the cool soldier, the guy that played the guitar, that everybody looked up to, that was killed almost the first week they started the film.

So they made the film, and it came out, and we were lucky enough to go on that journey of having the film released theatrically. You know, we attended the Spirit Awards because [unclear] nominated, Spirit Awards, won the National Board of Review. We were able to go with Tim and Sebastian, and I became, you know, pretty good friends with both of them. And a year later, Tim was in Libya and was tragically killed. And it put, you know, to this day, it's put a pall over everything. It's a sad ending. Tim was a wonderful man, a very handsome guy, a guy that women and men loved. Sebastian, [unclear] reserved, still a great guy. But Tim was just the life of the party.

And, you know, he was shot in the leg, but where they were at, there were no facilities, no medical facilities, I think for like three or four hours away. And they put him in the back of a pickup truck and tried to get him help, and they didn't make it. Sebastian, from that point on, promised two things in his life. One is that he would never put himself in harm's way, because of his family, because he's witnessed what Tim's family went through. And then he started this movement to really protect journalists when they go into these sites.

So it's still one of our proudest experiences, one of my proudest experiences of ever releasing a film. And soldiers have said the same thing to me about Afghanistan, that it's about the only film out there that really portrayed it as it was, because they just had the cameras rolling on these guys. And they would be like sitting around smoking a cigarette, and then all of a sudden, you know, there's bullets all over the place. It was crazy. And it was also indicative of why... I used to ask them, "Why are they there?" Like, I get it, we can talk all day about why we're in Afghanistan, but why are you in that Korengal Valley? You're kind of just pissing everybody off, you know. And if you move back 20 miles, you're not defeating anything. So it was a crazy time, but it was great. And then we were fortunate enough, they did make a sequel called Korengal. We were able to release that as well.

Christian: Well, so can you...

Joe: Sometimes you get these...

Christian: Go ahead, go ahead.

Joe: I was just gonna... sometimes you get these experiences of releasing certain films, and they become lifelong experiences. Super Size Me obviously was one. Restrepo was another. The I Am films...

We Are Columbine

Joe: You know, you talked about I Am Chris Farley. We've done, gosh, I Am JFK Jr., we have a whole slew of them. You can go to our website and see them all. But there's other films. You know, here's an example of a film that we struggled with, called We Are Columbine. And I got a call from these producers, another just true story, got a call from these producers, and they said, "We got this film, We Are Columbine, and it's directed by a student that was there, hiding under a table while the shooters were walking around the cafeteria." And I said, "I don't... you know, there's a limit, and people are going to want to watch this movie? I mean, it's too depressing. People are not going to watch this movie." And I remember I said, "So I'm not sure I will meet the filmmaker, but please tell her my reservations. I'm not sure I want to release this movie."

And I hung up the phone, and I walked downstairs to make myself some lunch, and I turned on the TV, and CNN was on, and the Parkland shooting was happening at that moment.

Christian: Wow.

Joe: And I went back upstairs and called these guys, the Chicago guys, called him back and said, "We need to release this movie." It was just weird. Try selling that to Netflix. I mean, nobody wanted it. Everybody was scared to death of it. But, you know, one buyer stood up at Hulu and said, "No, we'll take this film. It's important." And Hulu had it for a couple years, and I think the license just ended, and it's available on, you know, Amazon and iTunes and stuff like that.

But, you know, we had a premiere in Littleton, and I got to meet a lot of the kids that are now adults, and they all started telling stories. And one of the stories that came out of the film was, the director, Laura Farber, was hiding under a cafeteria table with two other students, and there was a backpack under the table as well. And they just thought, you know, with all the commotion and chaos, somebody left their backpack, and actually thought, you know, "If we get out of here, let's grab the backpack, because it's somebody's backpack." And there did come a time where they were able to run out, and they did, and the backpack blew up. It was one of the bombs that was placed, and they could have been sitting right there.

So you get to experience these things. So, you know, we are a type of distributor, we don't release a whole lot of movies every month, because we like to work the titles. And because of that, we do get to live some of the stories, and some of them are very uplifting. And, you know, like this Christmas, we're releasing a movie about the making of It's a Wonderful Life. I mean, that's nothing but joy, you know. And so you get to... you know, if you do it right, they work. But we have all these relationships all over the world with filmmakers that, you know, most of them are good. There's a couple that I would question, but most of them are pretty good.

Christian: Well, you know, I promise you, I know you've got somewhere to go, and I have so many more questions, but we really only have a few minutes left, and we want to save some time to do some special things for our Patreon supporters. So I'm going to try to wrap it up here now, but I want to ask you if you would be willing to come back, because I have a whole host of other questions. I'm sure the rest of us do too. Would you be willing to come back?

Joe: Great. Yes, my pleasure.

Genres, Theaters, Streaming

Christian: Yes. So, Jeff, Jeff, since today you're standing in, guess what, you get the first question to ask Joe. So you've been listening so patiently, I want you to have your shot.

Jeff: So one question that comes to mind is, are there unique challenges in trying to sell movies based on genre? Are comedies different than horror movies, different than documentaries? Are there unique challenges based on the genre of film that you're dealing with?

Joe: Yes. The mainstay has been, for such a long time, that any kind of genre film, action film, works best, more than anything else, across the board. As more and more films are being made, you know, having some kind of cast really works. So if we go out and make an action film, and the four of us are kicking butt, yeah, it's okay, but we'd rather be Bruce Willis or somebody of note. Horror, I don't know why, but still works. Romantic comedies, down very, very much towards the bottom.

Christian: Wow.

Joe: And documentaries even under romantic comedies. But it's really... yeah, it is. And now, when you go to pitch, it's different divisions. So at Netflix, for example, they have different divisions of different genres, so you need to have multiple meetings if you have multiple genres of films.

Christian: Wow.

Joe: So, but yeah, there is a pecking order. And that's why you see, when you go to iTunes, you're going to see a lot of action films. That's why Liam Neeson has a new career.

Christian: Wow, makes sense. Good question, Jeff. Okay, Jason, you get a turn too. You got a question for him?

Jason: I do. So, like, you've talked about your long history, from all the way at the home distribution start, all the way till now. Where do you think the industry is headed in the next five to 10 years? What do you think is going to happen?

Joe: I can tell you what I hope doesn't happen, and I can tell you what I think might happen. I mean, I love that... I pray, my biggest concern and my biggest fear is that people stop going to the theater. I mean, I'm in the business that wants you to watch a movie on TV, but I don't want you to stop going to the theater. The theater is cherished. The theater is, you know, inside that darkened room, there's nothing like it, and that's what it's all about, and I don't want that to end. I think that experience will change somewhat. I don't think it's going away, but I think it will change somewhat.

And, you know, luckily, here in this country we have such a huge art house circuit that the really good films... and I'm not taking away anything from Marvel movies and all of that kind of stuff, but there will always be an art house circuit to go see movies at. But I think streaming and transactional is going to continue to grow. You know, it was moving at a snail's pace, and COVID changed everything. If a movie's available, if you're paying for HBO Max and that movie that just opened up today is also on HBO Max, why wouldn't you watch it on HBO Max? And, you know, people say, well, the screen's not as big and all that stuff. That doesn't matter. It might matter on those Marvel movies, but, you know, a lot of other movies, it's not going to matter. So I just think it's going to be a rich combination of streaming and also... but the theatrical experience will not go away.

Jason: Well, and I think, you know, we're in the Wild West right now. We really have no way to know what's exactly gonna happen. And I know there's a huge segment of the population that cherishes the movie houses, just like you do, just like I do. And, you know, there will be some segment of our society, I think, that clings on to that. The question is, is that going to be enough to support the industry, you know, ultimately? And the other thing that's happening is, you and I were talking about this earlier, we have this younger generation that has been fed a constant diet of YouTube, where it's free, the quality is low, and they're used to watching it on a screen that they can hold in their hand. So the idea of, you know, I'm going to go and watch something that's very expensive in a theater on a big screen... I don't really want to pay that much money, and I don't want to have to go out of my house to watch it. And so the question is, is the pendulum going to swing back at some point? You know, who knows. But we do know we are in a serious area of change, just like that area of change when the internet was born. You know, we knew it was going to change, nobody just knew exactly how. So I share your, you know, pessimism. Go ahead.

Joe: Well, the last point about that, though, is that movies have always been the perfect date. Okay, since the '30s, when you went on a date, you took a girl to the movies, or you took them out to dinner and a movie. That's still a staple, and that's still happening. And that's when things will really deteriorate, if that stops.

Jason: Yeah, but again, right now they're going to see the Marvel movies, and, you know, they need to see other stuff as well.

Joe: That's true.

Christian: Well, thank you for that, Joe. Jason, will you take us out? And then you people that support us on Patreon, make sure you stick around, or go and visit us there, because we're gonna have this extra content for you. If you're not supporting us on Patreon, doesn't cost that much. There are a lot of really awesome perks there, plus you get to see extra interviews like we're going to have here with Joe. You can watch our film on Apple TV, iTunes. You can watch it on Hulu through your... not Hulu, Hoopla, through your library. And, you know, you can write us if you want to get on the DVD pre-sale list. Go to thegirlwhoworefreedom.com if you want to buy things in our shop. Thank you so much for supporting us. And now, Jason, over to you.

[Music]

Jason: And thank you for listening to Documentary First, where we believe everyone has a story to tell, and you can be the one to tell it. Yes, you can. Bye, everybody.

Christian: Thank you. Bye.

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