Geoff Gilmore on Venice, Toronto and the Changing Nature of the Marketplace

Tribeca Chief Creative Officer Geoff Gilmore shares his thoughts on the stigma associated with VOD, the phenomenon of festival favor, and, of course, cell phone usage at the movies.

When you have a resource like Geoff Gilmore merely a phone call away, you take advantage. After over twenty years in the film business (UCLA, Sundance), Gilmore came to Tribeca in 2009 and has continued to be a force in the world of film and media. After he returned from his trips to the festivals in Toronto and Venice (where he served as a member of the jury), we jumped at the opportunity to pick his brain.

From the seemingly common practice of standing ovations at film festivals to current buying trends in the marketplace, Gilmore candidly discusses a wide array of topics. Want to know his opinion on the state of independent films, the current lack of critical prestige, and whether or not 2013 is truly the year of the documentary? Read on.

Tribeca: Movies like 12 Years a Slave and Dallas Buyers Club received standing ovations at this year's Toronto Film Festival. When so much of the Festival atmosphere is pomp and circumstance, do you think that a standing ovation really means anything anymore?

Geoff Gilmore: It's kind of a fun question to talk about because the truth is that the answer is yes and no. You're absolutely right that standing ovations are in some ways a dime a dozen at festivals. They are given often. Audiences at certain festivals, like Toronto, give them even more frequently than audiences do at Sundance or Cannes.

That said, often times, standing ovations communicate respect more than awe. However, a standing ovation for a film like 12 Years a Slave probably does mean something. Sometimes ordinary films tend to get overhyped, and one has to consider whether an over the top response to the film constitutes what's called festival favor. Whether films that get standing ovations at festivals will be films that the Academy celebrates is a very different question, because festivals and the Academy are very different organizations that don't always share the same sensibility. The place that the standing ovation means the least is the mainstream marketplace.

I think that the "year of the documentary" phrase gets thrown around too arbitrarily.

Tribeca: Another hot topic that came out of Toronto was the cellphone incident that occurred during the press and industry screening of Ti West's The Sacrament. As a buyer, is the ability to use your cellphone at an industry screening really that necessary?

GG: I'll give you the answer that I really believe in yes, it is. However, there's a difference between having to use your cellphone and being on your cellphone for the whole screening. There's a difference between doing it like I do it I actually put it under my coat so as not to bother other people just clicking away on it out in the open regardless of whether you bother anybody.

I've come out of movies ready to make an offer just to find out the film already has been sold.

If you're a buyer, you may very well want to be communicating about bidding on the film, getting something arranged very quickly, even connecting with a sales agent. There are many cases where films have been bought during the screening. I've come out of movies ready to make an offer just to find out the film already has been sold.

Even in this hyper competitive atmosphere, you still should try to be discreet. Also, people at festivals don't just use their phones during P&I screenings; they use them during public screenings, and really annoy people. So cell phones are sometimes necessary, particularly at P&I screenings, but what happened at Toronto this year was out of the ordinary.

Tribeca: I remember when David Edelstein wrote that piece for Vulture about two people who wouldn't put away their cell phones at a Mother of George screening in Brooklyn.

GG: I think that's totally different. People have gotten so used to using their phones whenever they want that they don't recognize that they are disturbing people. Or if they do recognize it, they decide to ignore it. Obviously, there's a degree to which this is not just a film or film festival problem; it's a social problem.

The amount of money that's spent on a film is never indicative of how good the film is.

Tribeca: Since you were able to take in movies at both Toronto and the Venice International Film Festival, what do you think when people dub this the year of the documentary? Our own Festival seems to put an emphasis on documentary filmmaking.

GG: I think that the "year of the documentary" phrase gets thrown around too arbitrarily. Someone sees a documentary that they like, a jury decides to award a prize to a documentary, and the next thing you know Venice put two documentaries in their competition this year for the first time. That was unusual, that was a big deal. People didn't necessarily expect for them to win, but they did. Does that make it the year of documentary? No. That just makes it something that happened in a specific situation.

I think documentaries have established themselves as part of the film festival marketplace in general. It is no longer important or necessary to talk about this or that year being the year of documentaries because that kind of silly moniker doesn't help us think about what goes on in the world of documentary filmmaking.

Tribeca is not a documentary festival. Far from it. Do we treat documentaries here seriously? Absolutely, and maybe that's important in the sense that many other festivals sometimes do not. At Tribeca, we highlight independent films, international films and even in some ways traditional, mainstream Hollywood story telling that we think is interesting. So our festival is eclectic, and that's okay.

Often times, s

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