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The Rise and Fall of the Bay Area Film Magazine by Doniphan Blair
Most people agree, at least since journalists were hailed as the "fourth estate," that societies need media. Although bloggers and people's media is all the rage now, it's not that different from the seizing of the presses in the French and American revolutions, or the rise of the indie weeklies in the '60s. A common concept back then was: Everyone is an artist and entitled to express themselves and reflect on society.
While entirely natural and understandable, the problem remains: who is going to critique the artists, be the "artist's artist." Someone has to go the extra distance, in research and reflection, to stand outside the house to see if it is burning. The absence of an adequate fourth estate among the hippies brought us Altamont, Jonestown and the Haight-Ashbury's heroin-amphetamine fueled demise.
The third issue of The News, from 1962, was edited by Alexandra Ossipoff and carried film festival listings. photo: from "Canyon Cinema," by S. MacDonald
In the last three years, three Bay Area film/video magazines, "Film/Tape World," "Release Print," and "CineSource," have closed although "CineSource" remains online (as you probably already noticed). Although small towns of 3000 still support weekly papers of 40 pages and toilet bowl manufacturers have newsletters, the Northern California film/video community can not support a monthly magazine, even though it has an estimated annual revenue of $10 billion or more, if you include gamers ($18 billion nationwide, a third local) and Silicon Valley, with its Apple, Adobe, and YouTube.
Is print just dead, or is there something wrong with these magazines, their readers, or their advertisers? What should be done, if anything, to fix this? So we don't repeat its mistakes, as the saying goes, perhaps now is a good time to review the history.
The Rise: Primitive 'Zines
The first magazine about filmmaking in the Bay Area was called "The News," simply enough. Published by Canyon Cinema in 1961, the year the vaunted film collective started, it was a 'zine: a few mimeographed brown sheets, assembled and mailed by the mother of Canyon's founder Bruce Baillie, Gladys Baillie, who also paid bills and office managed. It became "Canyon Cinema News," in 1965, and "Cinema News," ten years later, when Canyon split into distributor, Canyon Cinema, and showcase, San Francisco Cinematheque, which retained the magazine. Scheduled to publish four times annually, in reality, it followed the editor's prerogative.
A Film/Tape from 2007; early copies could not be found. photo: courtesy W. Dorman
A more industry-oriented and actual magazine, "Film/Tape World," was started in the late 1970s by cinematographer Wes Dorman, who grew it from a primitive online equipment listing. Propelled by advertising from One Pass, Varitel, Western Images, and the other large post-production houses that dotted San Francisco at the time, "Film/Tape" thrived. At its height around 1990, it had offices in the Clocktower Building on Second Street and was publishing over 64 tabloid newsprint pages monthly, often with a lovely color cover illustration.
In 1978, "Film/Tape World" began carrying a column penned by Julene Bair. She was the director of the Film Arts Foundation, which was formed three years earlier when avant-gardist Scott Bartlett got fifteen filmmaker friends to cough up $100-a-year for a 16mm flatbed. Two years later, attorney Richard Lee convinced a reluctant IRS to grant them the tax-exempt status which always eluded Canyon. FAF opened at 30 Berry Street, across from the current ballpark, and started running workshops, renting equipment, and helping with grants.
Early Release Print magazines, published by the Film Arts Foundation, had a journal look, which was only finally updated to magazine aesthetics in 2007, shortly before it folded. photo: Film Arts Foundation
The FAF newsletter debuted in 1979 under the banner "FAF Newsletter," "imaginatively enough," joked Gail Silva, who came on board from publishing and did much of the writing. "It started as an 8 and a half by 11 [inch page,] and then two 11x17s folded, with a smattering of things, lists of events, members in the news, you know," recalled Silva, who took over as director when Bair returned to film production with local documentarian George Csicsery.
Although a majority of FAF members were doc and experimental, there were also indie feature makers like Judy Irving and Chris Beaver who made "Out of the Way Café" in 1979. Narrative filmmakers gravitated to Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope, which was just finishing the arduous "Apocalypse Now," but the community was small and permeable. Bartlett also worked for Zoetrope, as did Andy Moore, who sold ads for FAF Newsletter, which soon acquired, fortunately for him, a more marketable name: "Release Print."
The Go-Go '80s
With doc grants rolling in, advertising agencies booming, and substantial feature production, the Bay Area became a fecund location for film writing as well as making. Kayhan Ghodsi and Margaret White put out a half a dozen issues of "Reversal" in the 1980s before moving to Modesto to start a family and a spiritual healing/teaching practice. There were a number of small publications like "Celluloidall," a xeroxed 'zine put out from 1993-1995 by Timoleon Wilkins, a filmmaker now living in Los Angeles. It focused on actual film, as the name suggests—alternative processing, labs, and the like—as well as articles, like "Television Assassination" from Bruce Conner, arguably the most acclaimed alt filmmaker in the Bay. Meanwhile, voices for the video uprising also abounded, like "Video Networks," published by the well-known public service-oriented facility, the Bay Area Video Coalition.
With over 1000 members by the mid '80s, FAF became the biggest independent filmmaker service organization in the US if not the world (it peaked in 2003 at 3400). "Release Print" was well respected, printing up to 64 pages and over 10,000 copies monthly, with lively reportage and opinion, as well as an extensive back page listings of festivals, grants and jobs, which many found indispensable. Reagan was in office, the culture wars were heating up, and filmmakers were tackling the issues, meaning a lot of establishment bashing and ideological arguing, encouraged by Robert Anbien, who took over as editor when Silva moved to FAF director.
Bruce Baillie and Lawrence Jordan, co-founders of Canyon Cinema, which published Canyon Cinema News, examine a more recent offering of Bay Area film/video reporting, CineSource. photo: D. Blair
"One of the arguments was about CPB [the financing agent behind the Public Broadcasting Service] giving most of their money to stations for production and not to filmmakers to make the movies," recalled Silva. By the '90s, "Release Print" had diversified and articles ranged from "Karl Cohen's Forbidden Animation" by Thomas Powers to "Heroin Chic Meets the Breakfast Club: Interview with 'High Art' Director Lisa Choledenko" by K.M. Soehnlein or "On-Line Marketplace Courts Independents" by docmaker Csicsery.
Meanwhile, Canyon's "Cinema News" had folded. Although it started with general reporting and little polemics, according to filmmaker Lawrence Jordan, who helped found Canyon with Baillie, by the late '70s things were getting nasty. Distribution was under the sensible direction of Edith Kramer, who went on to run the Pacific Film Archives for decades, but the magazine had been usurped by a small cabal interested in analytical "art speak" which had little bearing on the more intuitive art cinema of the West Coast. Gary Doberman, a cineaste acclaimed by the "crowned king" of alt-film, Stan Brakhage, was penning little more than ad hominem attacks.
Around 1981, local filmmaker Ben Van Meter wrote "Cinema News" to suggest the next issue feature a Scratch'n'Sniff of Brakhage's "asshole." Meter also demand Canyon return all his films. When Conner heard that, he closed the magazine: why should Canyon's overstreached dues-payers cover such dialectics, he reasoned.
A collection of early Canyon Cinema News, some saddle-stitched, others "perfect" bound, and of varying sizes, veritably shout anarchist film collective. photo: Canyon Cinema
Fortunately, Dominic Angerame, who began running Canyon distribution in 1981, started the newsletter "Canyon Cinema News Revisited," and Wilkins put out "Canyon Cinemanews," another 'zine in the '90s. Moreover, for almost the next twenty years, many of the issues of interest to Canyon's constituency were addressed in "Release Print" while "Film/Tape World" covered the commercial waterfront. Eventually, however, both ran into trouble.
The Fall: Mags Take Hit as Online Rises
In 2005, Silva, by then the multi-decade director of FAF, felt obliged to leave. "Rumors about factionalization on the board had made her job untenable," according to "CineSource" editor David Hakim in the article "Film Arts Rescued" in the September 2008 issue. In June of 2004, "Film Arts" hired Fidelma McGinn from Seattle to executive direct but she resigned after a year and shortly thereafter Eric Hayashi was brought in. A producer of feature films, including "Only The Brave" by Lane Nishikawa, as well as docs, theatre and music, Hayashi was a rainmaker with bona fides in both art and industry.
Attempting a makeover, "Release Print" was redesigned and renamed, simply but elegantly, "Film Arts," and targeted at a nation-wide audience. Indeed, the first issue's cover story was "Indie Nation." It highlighted the "13 film colonies that have declared independence: Austin, Boston, Chicago, Detroit ..." and featured "topical columns by seasoned movie makers and industry insiders called 'Ask the Documentary Doctor,' 'Cutting Room Law,' 'Show Me the Money' ..." Its second issue had a cover shot of Ang Lee and an interview about his edgy WWII story, "Lust, Caution."
Alas, Hayashi was unable to right years of poor financing, exacerbated by the cost of "Release Print," and FAF collapsed in the summer of 2008. Fortunately, folks across the film community, including Stefanie Coyote of the SF Film Office, helped broker a takeover by the San Francisco Film Society, which manages the City's international festival, and was under the ambitious new directorship of Graham Leggat. FAF's crushing debt was covered by its quarter ownership of the 9th Street Independent Film Building, the purchase of which it had organized.
In addition to taking one FAF board member into its board, SFFS took over most of FAF's services. Equipment rental didn't make the cut, however, the argument being that digital gear was cheap enough filmmakers could simply buy it outright. In truth, the loss of FAF as the budget rental house and workshop provider of choice for low-rent cineastes, where a lot of them took their first classes and cut their teeth, was devastating. SFFS said "Release Print" would continue, and hired its last editor, Michael Reed, but it was not to be. Although SFFS has an online magazine, SF360.org, it caters to a slightly different clientele, more movie lovers than makers.
"Film/Tape World" suffered as well in the new millennium. The Bay Area's big post houses "went the way of the dinosaurs, due to competition from LA, major shifts in video technology, downturns in the local economy for film, advertising, and dot-com sectors," explained Michael Pickman-Thoon in the "CineSource" article "Tales of Post Past"(Oct08). He owns RoughHouse, one of the post houses that hung on, albeit in diminished digs.
"At that time, there was a lot production flight to Canada, particularly commercial production, which was a big advertiser for the magazine," recalled Carrie Lozano, who edited "Film/Tape" from 2000 to 2002. "What [publisher Dorman] hoped to do is be a bit more technical. There were a number of articles about Pixar and new cameras. I wrote about the production flight. It was the height of the first dot-com boom, which also hurt print, but we were probably breaking even. The big issue we did every year, over 32 pages, was the postproduction survey, which covered the attributes of all local facilities. That would be unnecessary today with increased of online search."
Powered by a color ad from Snader and Associates, Film/Tape's skeleton staff hustled to put out this colorful Christmas issue in 2007. photo: D. Blair
Dorman also began to drift, often absenting himself from "Film/Tape"'s offices for long periods, while garnishing its income for his production company, which exacerbated making payroll. "Film/Tape" was still drawing almost $10,000 a month in advertising—on the books—but advertisers often paid late and sometimes not at all. By 2005, it was operating out of a single room on Townsend Street, publishing only 16 pages, produced by a two-person part-time staff, plus freelance writers, for whom getting paid could be tricky. Indeed, it would sometimes require a call between the bank and Dorman to unlock an account long enough for a check to clear.
At the end of 2007, David Hakim, a producer, assistant director, writer, and teacher, who had been editing "Film/Tape" for two years, and myself, who had been designing it for a year, put out a colorful, dolled-up Christmas issue, the first color issue in years. But we were fed up and owed thousands, so Hakim announced, at the end of his editorial, that we were quitting. Unfortunately, Dorman didn't read his own paper, no one told him, and Hakim was loathe to spoil the surprise. When Dorman finally found out, we offered to do the next issue under pseudonyms but with one caveat: we would have to be paid. Allergic to such profligate check writing, Dorman terminated the thirty year-old "Film/Tape World" on the spot.
CineSource Resurrects the Dream: An Autobiography
Alas, the dream of a Bay Area film/video magazine didn't die. Since graphic studios love monthlies, to anchor schedules and bring steady work, since I owned such an institution, A Media in Oakland, and since I was also a filmmaker with writing experience, it seemed like a no-brainer, and Hakim was game. I would publish, art direct, and lay-out; he would edit and deliver all content, except for in-house photography, which I would shoot. I would also do ad sales. Although I took nothing from "Film/Tape," not even Dorman's mailing list (indeed, he still owes me $3,000), I had been doing his ad sales, hence knew most of his clients personally.
The premiere issue of CineSource, April 2008, featured its distinctive tall portrait, in this case a shot of Orinda director/producer, Julie Rubio, on top of a skateboard with her camera, which evoked the balancing act of film. photo: D. Blair
When I told them about the new magazine, they seemed interested. We would cover both art and industry (a good move with "Film Arts" about to go under); print all issues in color; add drama, both visually and editorially (as befits a film mag); be completely interactive and archived on the Web (which "Film/Tape" was not, even in 2007); and have skin in the game. As owner-operators, we would do a better job.
Alas, only two-thirds of the advertisers joined and, of those that did, about half placed smaller ads. But that was just to see if we died in child birth, we told ourselves—surely they'd come on board when we started walking, right? We convened a meeting of ex-"Film/Tape" writers at A Media's studio, a similar summit of graphic designers, and bought every film/video screed we could find at De Lauers, Oakland's 24-hour newsstand, while also researching magazine websites and software. I liquidated my small retirement account and, by March 2008, we had a name, a logo, a lay-out, and a mascot, Diane-the-Detective, played by actress/filmmaker Diane Karagienakos.
Admittedly, Karagienakos was one "thing" we took from "Film/Tape," although borrowed is more like it. Dorman paid neither Karagienakos (pronounced ka-RA-gi-na-kos) nor myself for the photo of her reading "Film/Tape" for the promo I designed. In fact, Dorman told me, "You don't need a model—just grab anyone to hold the paper and slap up a light!—it'll take you fifteen minutes" We went with more art direction not less, albeit on our own dime. Hakim contacted his old friend Karagienakos; she arranged to shoot in the famous North Beach bar Mario's; we took three hours and used a couple of lights. The final sepia photo, with the headline "Will She Find You Here?" (see above left) was the most dolled-up image on the cover of the last "Film/Tape"—its best issue in years.
We carried the same image interest over to "CineSource," attempting to inject graphics, glamour, and drama into all aspects of the magazine, assuming that was essential since the subject was film, after all. Whether you loved it or not, "CineSource" achieved a unique look with its serge blue logo and Francophile name, and its extra large lefthand photo, which mimicked CinemaScope's wideness but vertically.
CineSource's first promo starred Diane Karagienakos. She looks startled because the photo was, in fact, the first test frame from the "Film/Tape" shoot, but she may have intuited what the headline implies: impending financial catastrophe. photo: D. Blair
An important part of our image was Karagienakos, who posed for five different mini-campaigns, in exchange for publicity only. The most notable was Diane-the-Detective clutching a "CineSource" (actually it was a "Film/Tape"—the image was the first test frame from the "Film/Tape" shoot). The headline "Some bad things have been happening 'round here—I wouldn't want them to happen to you" was prescient considering it was six months before the economic collapse. That ad was black and white but the next featured a blond Karagienakos in blazing red lipstick on the Golden Gate Bridge holding binoculars. The headline, "Life is narrative, search it out," to publicize our Caligari Narrative Film Contest. Both became promo ads, postcards, and six foot-wide banners.
Content-wise, "CineSource" also kept up. The first few issues featured articles on the making of Gus Van Sant's "Milk" in the Castro, Rob Nilsson's "Imbued" south of Market, and Logan and Noah Miller's "Touching Home" in Marin, a perfect mix of Hollywood North, indie, and hybrid. Docs were well represented with an article by documentarian David Brown on the Maysles Brothers, whose "Gimme Shelter," 1970, largely shot at Altamont Speedway in Tracy, symbolized the end of the '60s. Hakim penned pieces on the Hollywood writer's strike, the demise of San Francisco's film incentives, and, at the top of the second issue, "Film Arts: Not Fade Away." There was a roundup of MacWorld 2008 by alt-film/new tech expert Tony Reveaux, a CineSource senior writer inherited from "Film/Tape." "The Many Locations of Northern California" two months later, replete with a tasteful shot of skinny dippers on the cover, rounded out "CineSource"'s art, industry and human interest approach. Ah, the halcyon days of early 2008.
CineSource's second promo with Karagienakos was a bit more upbeat and expressed the magazine's theme of looking for the drama in filmmaking. photo: D. Blair
News of the financial catastrophe hit us as we were preparing "CineSource"'s belated launch party, where we would announce the winner of our Caligari Narrative Film Contest. After conferring with everyone I knew with fiduciary knowledge (not many, admittedly), I decided not to call off the November celebration (and save the $3500) but to sail into the storm. Print itself was slowly sinking, as I well knew, and, to quote the prophet Bob Dylan, "He not busy being born is busy dying."
"CineSource" carried on mightily with bold covers, strong articles, long interviews, another film contest (documentary), striking photos, specialty film show calendars, and The Loop (as in, "Stay in it!"), the popular production community review. It was another borrow from "Film/Tape," where it was called "Short Takes," and was compiled by another "CineSource" senior reporter, Roger Rose, also from "Film/Tape," who did it at half pay. The Loop was named by the ever-effervescent Katie Carney, who managed marketing for Snader and Associates, the equipment vendor in San Rafael. Carney was the first person I called after deciding to do "CineSource;" and she placed the full page, back page color ad that anchored it.
When Snader pulled out, after the April 2009 issue, I realized the hurricane had finally hit landfall. I had no choice but to go black and white and part ways with Hakim, who taught me a lot about newspapering, as he called it. I could no longer cover his $2000-a-month editorial, writing and management fees, and he couldn't see his way to a substantial reduction. Also, as much as we were alike—into film, art and esoteric minutiae—we tended to argue, often about the aforementioned minutiae which loom oddly at four a.m., but also money. He insisted on being paid within ten days, a requirement he waived for Dorman, while I felt 21 was fair.
I took over as editor, on top of publisher, not to mention ad sales, photographer, part-time writer, and janitor, cleaning up after the all-night, pizza and coffee fueled-sessions needed to make deadlines at our often-flexible printer Howard Quinn and mail house Ace. I hired Reynard Seifert, a twenty-something writer-filmmaker with attitude, and assigned him the investigative beat. While Hakim had great familiarity with local production, schools, and directors (he was a member of the Director's Guild), and was plugged into LA (where he'd worked extensively), he had some debilitating diseases and was not that keen on shoe leather.
We dug into Oakland for the April 2009 issue and uncovered a cavalcade of film stories. Our cover featured Ami Zins, the hardest working woman in Oakland show business and head of its Film Office, Darcel Walker, a soundman starting his own arts television channel, and Carmen Madden, who was just finishing "Everyday Black Man," her very pro and timely first feature. The issue was well received and Web hits on CineSourceMagazine.com doubled to 25,000 a month.
In addition, I heard rumors that some people preferred "Film/Tape," since it kept the production community front and center, even running articles about their Christmas parties and the like. Some people called "CineSource" the new "Film/Tape," others hadn't even noticed the name change, and still others wanted to know "When the heck is the production survey going to get here?" Alas, as popular as that feature was at "Film Tape," when we did finally build a web page for surveys and ran one, not a single additional company advertised.
Seeking to show the cineaste as hero, "CineSource" situated author, producer, director James Dalessandro striding up the Marin headlands while glancing over his shoulder at his domain. In point of fact, he was standing on a pile of rubble in his front yard and the majesty was photoshopped. photos: D. Blair
On top of everything, the winner of our Caligari Narrative Film Contest, whom we hoped would direct an award-winning short and mention "CineSource" at the awards ceremony, was trying to sue us. Ironically, Leo Maselli didn't even write the winning script, "Lovely Adult Beverage," about a guy on a blind date with a beautiful dwarf, but he had hired the writers. That was OK, we decided, since "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," for which the contest was named, was both a masterpiece and a writer-producer collaboration. Along with a trophy and luminesce front page photo (by Myke Reilly) standing next to the stunning local actress Larissa de la Torre, Maselli was awarded a full day of production replete with RED camera, cinematographer, light truck, grips, etc., which "CineSource" was either trading ads for, paying for, or providing out of staff (I was slated to art direct). It would be one very long day, since the script was 12 ambitious pages—gorgeous dwarf, remember?—but it would be worth it if it hooked CineSource to a rising star of increased production.
By the middle of March, we were crewed up and scheduled to shoot on a Sunday at a Mission neighborhood bar. But, the day before the final crew meeting, Maselli called to say he was canceling the shoot. Supposedly, Katherine Bruens, the talented and lovely production manager, was not following orders. Bruens told me that Maselli was refusing to pay for the set construction we had repeatedly told him was not covered by the prize. When Maselli would not be mollified, I gave him a half a day's future production, deducting the other half to cover preproduction and re-crewing, since well over half the crew would refuse to work with him due to highhandedness. Maselli felt that was unfair.
When I received the lawyer's letter listing California contest law by statute, I suddenly grew very afraid that a perfect storm was about to swamp "CineSource." But, instead of hiring the $300/hour lawyer recommended by my legal team, Bay Area Lawyers for the Arts, I wrote Maselli's team. In my letter, I noted that, in case they hadn't noticed, "CineSource" was a film/video magazine and that, unless they were going to get a gag order, this embroglio might make good copy. I never heard from them again, although Maselli called to suggest we hash it all out over drinks, which I could not do—too damn busy.
Ah, the benefits of publishing a film/video mag. Of course, there was also the one time I met a woman while on assignment for "CineSource." It was at the San Francisco International Film Festival; she was representing a South American cineaste; they both sailed into the theater rock star-like, hair flying and spouting Spanish, a language I'm familiar with—but that's another story. Suffice it to say, I swore I'd never complain about publishing a film/video mag ever again—check me if I can abide that to the end of this article or the receipt of my next Visa bill!
Unless we did something drastic, I realized, "CineSource" was doomed—only print, of course, the Web was booming. In addition to increasing investigative reporting, I thought we should sparkle things up with celebrity interviews, which were hard to get, and continue our identity development, which was easier. We started another ad campaign, this time with Krystal Nzoiwu, our new office manager and monthly delivery person, who was stunning and had done professional modeling (we called her our Obama, since her mother was white and her dad Nigerian).
We kicked off with the provocative "Does the Bay Area Need a Film/Video magazine?" which ran on the recently-vacated back page. Shot at the Steps of Rome Cafe, just down the street from Mario's, with Coppola's Zoetrope building in the background, Nzoiwu played a French cineaste of African descent. We signaled this by having her reading the '60s French New Wave magazine, Cahiers du Cinéma (a ridiculously ambitious reference, I admit), and smoking a cigarette (which drew complaints—Karagienakos was also smoking in the "Film/Tape" ad but who's counting).
Another solution for saving "CineSource" was to increase my workload. Although I was already editor, designer, janitor, etc., I though that I could master sleep deprivation. While early "CineSources" required some 50 hours, including one or two all-nighters to make press day, I increased my writing in the summer of 2009; took over web mastering in April 2010, when my web guy disappeared; and started doing the monthly deliveries, when Nzoiwu moved on in May.
Despite these deficits, CS May10 was stellar. It had a front page interview with Benjamin Bratt (a certified movie star) and his director/writer brother Peter (a lovely guy who responds rapidly to emails), a 8225 word interview with the master editor-mixer Walter Murch (conducted by Skype from London for five fantastic hours), and a 3000 word interview with Stuart Bowling, Dolby Laboratory's chief technical rep, about breaking news in their reworking of 5.1 sound. Unfortunately, while the first two parties enjoyed their articles, the last complained bitterly that "CineSource" had misspelled a few names, including Bowling's.
Did they give us business cards, or return courtesy proofs before deadline, or compliment us on the 2997 words we did spell correctly? Nooooo. Alas, such is the rough and tumble world of low-budget all-night publishing, which I hope they understand. Although we apologized profusely, ironically, it's only when we let a misspelling slip that we found out about our readership. If the misspellee was someone at a Hollywood North company, we usually heard from their public relations people within 24 hours.
Although "CineSource" print was hemorrhaging, I ignored the advice of publisher friends, including Gary Halpern, who has run the glossy PhotoMedia magazine in Seattle for over twenty years. They recommended I simply walk away after the modest 16 page, black-and-white June issue. But I sacrificed thousands to give "Film/Tape" a nice final issue—shouldn't I accord the same honor to my own "CineSource"?
Plus I could get a good work out by turning the Gala Summer Issue into my own ironman triathlon: writing, editing, and designing. Indeed, the mag ballooned to 40 pages, almost triple our standard count, and took me five weeks of up to 20 hour days, powered by quarts of iced green tea, and nursed by stalwart copy editor and sounding board Todd Jones. This was entirely predictable since I had suspended writer's pay in June and had to write two-thirds of the thirty articles myself. One article/interview, on cinema showcaser extraordinaire Gary Meyer, clocked in at a whopping 9122 words (and won CS's long interview contest).
Even Meyer wondered why I didn't do a lot more of the edit part of my triathlon but it was probably the last paper "CineSource" and I thought it best to include every insight, trick, and bon mot he had. As an editor, you're essentially a collage artist, managing, even micromanaging, your content to focus on what interests you. Meyer's anecdotes and analysis were stuff I thoughtt our readers should see, for example: "Sometimes I just want to come out and say: 'Your film is a piece of crap! No one should let you near a camera ever again.'" Plus, he co-directs the Telluride Film Festival, cofounded by Jim Card, a close friend of my father, and I had to take 125 words to tell that story.
The final CineSource featured a scoop about Current TV, breaking news from Kerner Group, and a profile of the queen of the Bay's indie producers, Debbie Brubaker. photo: D. Blair
The Gala Issue also had long interviews (almost 6000 words each) with Hollywood actress and local film school director Diane Baker (another certified celebrity); Lawrence Jordan, a great personal filmmaker and artist, who helped found Canyon; Debbie Brubaker, queen of the local indie producers; and Celik Kayalar, a Nobel Prize-level scientist turned indie director. Essentially, it was an eleventh hour attempt to include articles on every sector in the film/video community, ever single person I knew, even tangentially, in the business, and to clear the "leads drawer" (repeated attempts to get to the Butcher Brothers and Francis Ford Coppola failed).
As fun as that was, it took time. Instead of hitting the streets on the first of July, the Gala Issue staggered in around the 18th, which didn't well serve Key Code Media, owned by Mike Cavanagh, a new advertiser brought in by our old friend Kris Koch (formerly of Advanced Systems). They had time-sensitive events listed in their ad and I should have informed them (sorry).
Krystal Nzoiwu, as French cineaste, for a CineSource promo, shot at the Steps of Rome Cafe in Northbeach. photo: D. Blair
Is a Film/Video Magazine Viable Today?
Ironically, while I was sweating in the trenches, I noticed that niche magazines like Vogue and People were doing well, despite the recession. In fact, the "Magazines, The Power of Print" campaign in Rolling Stone, and elsewhere, claims readership is increasing in the 18 to 34 year-old cohort. Indeed, De Lauers Newsstand is full of new magazines.
In October, "The Hollywood Reporter" will move from a five-times-a-week tabloid, dependent on studio ads, and fawning in exchange over their output, to a feistier glossy weekly that includes fashion and art. "We are not going to be a product that purely strokes the industry because the industry won't respect that," said Richard Beckman, formerly of Condé Nast, where he was known as "Mad Dog," (NY Times 9/13/10). "They can make it a must-read," said Lorenza Munoz, a journalism professor at USC and former entertainment reporter (in the same article). "If they are covering Hollywood and breaking stories, then people will have to read it."
Being a physical paper anchored "CineSource" to its locations, its 400 free drop-off spots across Northern California, but more specifically, the coffee tables in those companies' waiting rooms, where no one has placed a computer for browsing, as far as I know. Sure, "CineSource" Web is doing fine, and with its name, and my Spanish and Portuguese fluency, it could start covering Latino filmmaking from the Mission District to Tierra del Fuego, which is the beauty of the virtual world. But the beauty of real life is its physicality, and, as they say in South America, "Amor de lejos es por pendejos" (Long distance love is for idiots). The ability to hold the love object in your hands is not negligible. And, thus far in art history, no new media has entirely obliterated an older one (marble sculpture is still with us); it is doubtful paper will disappear entirely (the widely ballyhooed paperless office was often accompanied by increased paper use).
To explore these issues, we convened a "CineSource" Townhall Meeting on September 16. Attended by some forty media professionals from almost each of the community's twenty sectors, save Hollywood North and Silicon Valley, the consensus was to focus on the Web. Nevertheless, a strong minority insisted that "CineSource" could resurrect, if there was interest, perhaps into a full-color monthly or quarterly, considering we know most of the players. One suggestion was to make the site capitalist, so it could be nimble and sharp, and the magazine socialist, i.e. a nonprofit corporation, with a working board of local luminairies. CineSourcemagazine.com could cover breaking news, and provide blogs, archives, and calendars, while the magazine could feature the softer and more photogenic stories it could better tell.
The "Twenty Sector" chart, developed from CineSource's research, shows 20 distinct parts of the Northern California film community, some of which are barely know of the other. design: D. Blair
CineSource's Gala Issue was both an attempt to model such a magazine and to make a more ambitious point. If Northern California hoped to pioneer the future, I noted in the editorial, not only for America but the world, it would need a fresh and unique media presence. This, in turn, would require advanced media journalism and critique. I reminded the reader of the vast diversity of Northern Californian film/video, even including an illustrated chart of the different sectors. Although this makes a one-size-fits-all publication difficult, it would be a fantastic asset in civilizational modeling.
I have never ceased to marvel that "CineSource"'s West Oakland offices were about a mile from Pixar, to the north in Emeryville, and a few miles west of Jaylani Roberts, whom we discovered during our Oakland research. While "Toy Story 3" entertains both kids and critics across the globe and gallops across the half a billion mark, "Mercury Rules," Ms. Roberts' second feature, about Oakland coke dealers, will have its black tie opening on Saturday, October 9, 7pm at the Delancey Street Theater, 600 Embarcadero (contact ). Ah, what a magical film/video scene, no?
CineSource could cleanup well as monthly glossy, featuring celebrities, indies, tech and DIYers alongside each other to highlight Northern California's unique cinema culture. model: Travis Britzke, photo: D. Blair
If we could just get the synergy flowing between those two poles, Hollywood North and Oakland DIYers, as well as the remaining post houses, the documentarians, the over twenty film schools, the ad agencies, the art filmmakers, the dozens of film festivals, the software developers—twenty separate sectors, all told—we could become more than the sum of our parts and grab for that cultural brass ring.
Alas, less than a third of those sectors advertised in "CineSource." It was production, post, and equipment people, and the Oakland Film Center, plus a few shooters and sound recordists, and a skoach from schools and festivals. Although many larger and more famous companies got front page coverage, often repeatedly, or used "CineSource" to disseminate information, they didn't see the logic of supporting it. Until that changes, there will be no "CineSource Magazine," and, by extension, probably no innovative new cinema movement, as modeled by our gurus Godard and Truffaut in Cahiers du Cinéma, and, by penultimate conclusion, no new civilization. Not to break my oath about whining bitterly but it's simple logic: a new civilization needs new culture.
"CineSource" remains available online, as you can see, for whomever needs it, to read, to submit an article (sorry no pay as of right now, although that may change if Web advertising ramps up), or to place an ad. Averaging 16,000 hits a month, and with approximately 10,000 NorCal media artists and workers, you do the math. It could reemerge as a monthly glossy appropriate to the wealthy Northern California media scene, if that's what the audience wants. It could certainly highlight the successes of the "bigs," the innovations of the "littles," and foster synergy by laying them out side by side.
To those who say "Print is dead, forget print, save the trees," I say: "One month of the paper for our parking tickets or in our toilets dwarfs a quality, niche-market magazine." Indeed, a coffee table magazine can be considered a work of art, and doubly so if serves to improve our mass media, trigger artistic epiphanies, or inspire inter-sector assistance. So the dream of a Bay Area film/video mag continues: You see those mountains, let's ride!
The July 1967 Cinemanews featured a film reel as Buddhist Wheel of life, a fitting symbol for the possible resurrection of a Bay Area film/video mag. photo: courtesy "Canyon Cinema," by S. MacDonald