By John Tozzi, June 10, 2008
As they waited in line outside Cinema Village, the art house theater in downtown Manhattan, Carol Frohlinger and Lindsey Pollak didn't know they were part of the transformation of the film industry. They just thought they were going to see a movie.
But the pair, both authors and bloggers on women's issues, had encountered no advertising, no reviews, and no film festival buzz about What's Your Point, Honey?. Instead, they came out after Pollak got an e-mail about the film, which documents an effort to get young women involved in politics. "It was the topic, the subject matter that got me excited about it," she says. After the sold-out screening, Pollak and Frohlinger endorsed the film on their blogs and encouraged readers to buy the DVD.
Documentary filmmakers once needed luck as much as talent and business sense to succeed
. Breaking into festivals, getting picked up by distributors, and doing well at the box office depended heavily on chance. Most independent films never get distributed, and many that do languish in obscurity after brief appearances in theaters. Nearly 1,000 documentaries competed for 16 slots in the 2008 Sundance Film Festival (BusinessWeek.com, 1/24/08), and of the 105 documentaries released in U.S. theaters in 2007, the median box-office gross was about $25,000 for the year, according to the movie industry tracking site The Numbers.
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