The annual American Film Market (AFM) has landed once again on the shores of Santa Monica Beach, at the Santa Monica Loews Hotel where convention-style lodging comes with the pleasant amenity of great ocean views.
Every year, members of the global film industry descend on this sunny seaside city for eight days of deal-making and schmoozing about films and television at every stage of development and production.
An interesting dichotomy was evident in the fact that this year’s market opened with over 8,000 participants, a six-year high, including over 100 new buying companies and 357 exhibitors in attendance from 33 countries.
With such a high level of participation, it would seem that everything is rosy in the independent film business.
Well, hold on. The talk of the town was that buyers couldn’t find enough good product and sellers couldn’t deny the film business is harder than ever.
Case in point was the surprising announcement at the start of the market that Focus Features International, a respected distributor of high-end art house and specialty films, will be closing its doors at the end of the year.
Despite going out of business, Focus Features International was still peddling its remain stock of films, even screening a few of them, such as the horror picture “Oculus” and “Sunshine on Leith,” a tale of two Afghanistan war veterans returning home to Scotland who take jobs in a call center.
One of the amazing things about the AFM is the ambitions screening schedule of more than 400 films during a short period of time. Of course, there’s no way to see that much product and even if you could, massive brain damage would likely ensue.
On sale are far more films than offered at screenings. I was most intrigued with “FDR American Badass,” if only because the artwork showed Barry Bostwick as Roosevelt, puffing on his cigarette holder, in a wheelchair outfitted with blazing rocket launchers.
It gets better with this film, which is promoted as FDR riding his “Wheelchair of Death,” tricked out by the CIA and Einstein with rockets and machine guns to stop the world from being taken over by polio-carrying Nazi werewolves during World War II.
Who needs history lessons when the film’s synopsis describes the “Axis of Lycan Evil,” consisting of a deadly menace led by Werewolf Hitler, Mussolini and Emperor Hirohito? Bill Murray’s “Hyde Park on Hudson” comes up empty against this cinematic classic.
Relying on the many screenings won’t give the full flavor of the weird, bizarre and truly offbeat offerings. You have to visit the distributors’ hotel rooms and suites where independent films are peddled in a sort of high-end flea market style.
No visit to AFM is complete without dropping in on the purveyors of schlock cinema at Troma Pictures, the masters of creepy sleaze and oddities with masterpiece classics like “The Toxic Avenger” and “Surf Nazis Must Die.”
You can rely on Troma to produce the worst possible films. Imagine my disappointment to find that their big push this year is for a sequel to “Return to Nuke ‘Em High,” which is peddled as Volume 2. It’s a strange combination of “Carrie” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School.”
Just as I reported last year, Troma continues to rest on its laurels, still selling from a thick catalog of junk films. But all things considered, “Return to Nuke ‘Em High” is chock-full of maniacs, mutants and half-naked girls, so it has that going for it.
Zombie films are still the rage, so much so that the estimable Hollywood Reporter featured a “Zombie Edition” to highlight the most amusing and over-the-top promotional materials from the market, focusing on four zombie titles.
Robin Hood Films is still pushing “101 Zombies,” a tale of a small southern town that finds itself the center of a zombie apocalypse when tainted local moonshine transforms half its residents into the flesh-eating undead.
I think “Zombie Fight Club” looks most promising, and not because the promotional material added colorful interest. It’s just the thought of the first rule of “Zombie Fight Club” is not to talk about it. I mean, zombies are not naturally garrulous types.
The British film “Zombie Resurrection” promises a zombie Messiah with the power to bring the undead back to life. But “Ninja Zombies” has potential for combining fast-paced martial arts skills with the sluggish zombie method. I wonder how that will work.
More than usual, this year’s AFM was drawing more celebrities just as likely to be raising funds for their own projects as they are pitching films in which they star. There were sightings of Vince Vaughn, Russell Crowe, Don Cheadle and Blake Lively.
Comedian Adam Carolla was on hand to give the keynote address to the AFM’s Production Conference. In a press release, Carolla said he was looking forward to sharing his experiences and “eating free deli food.”
Speaking of cuisine, Elton John and actor Tom Hardy kicked off the AFM by hosting a beachside breakfast for buyers, where they pitched “Rocketman,” a biography of Elton John starring Hardy as the iconic pop star.
Meanwhile, though they may not show up in person, the forgotten stars of old, even of the immediate past, turn up in a myriad of product that is standard fare at AFM. It used to be a game of seeing how many Baldwin brothers would appear in these independent films.
Now we’ve got tough guy Michael Madsen as a gun-toting banking mogul falsely set up by organized crime as a sex trafficker in “Ice Agent” and pulling off a Las Vegas casino heist in “Dirty Dealing 3D.” Even Wesley Snipes is attempting a comeback in “Gallow Walkers.”
This year’s award for the best rip-off of a well-known film goes to “God of Thunder,” for which the promotional material shows a guy wearing a red cape and holding a large hammer, in a pose that is almost identical to Chris Hemsworth’s Thor.
The American Film Market is a fun place to get the full flavor of films from around the world.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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