Drifting Clouds Cinema Blog: “Is Crowdfunding Destroying The Magic Of Cinema?”

Drifting Clouds Cinema Blog: “Is Crowdfunding Destroying The Magic Of Cinema?”

I would say Hal Hartley is among my top twenty heroes in cinema. As a viewer, his films are just what I want to see; intelligent, witty, insightful, literate, with precise visual compositions and gentle rythms. The comedy is often subversive with subtle irony, and the characters and subject matter often pertains to me. Hartley is someone who I feel is making films for people like me, which is not  a feeling I get as often I’d like to these days. From my point of view, filmmakers like Hartley are rare and therefore important. If you watch a Hartley film you’ll be immediately struck by his dialogue, it’s structured and crafted to the point where it can sound like “dialogue”, rendering it artistic and provocative. His notion of dialogue as a “beautiful object” is a crucial one because it showed that cinematic speech didn’t have to be “naturalistic”. It was strengthening for me to hear such statements from an established filmmaker because everyone around me told me that dialogue had to be “naturalistic”, even though my instincts told me otherwise.

For years, most his films were not available here in the UK, he was just somebody you heard about, read the occasional interview with, saw the odd still from one of his films every now and then. Over time, this unavailability gives the artist a sort of mystique, which has never been properly dispelled for me when it comes to Hal Hartley. Finally I got to see a couple of his films on a double bill at the Curzon Soho, Amateur and Flirt. Soon after, I stumbled upon a bunch of his films on VHS, on sale as they were for literally a couple of quid in a charity shop. I remember standing their, slightly stunned, these films had reached mythological status for me because of their unavailability, and here was about four of them sat on a shelf at rock bottom prices. I remember feeling like a shoplifter as I gently picked them up off the shelf, glancing over my shoulder, hoping no-one would notice, and half-hoping that no-one would come over and tell me that it was all a big mistake. I went to the check-out to pay for them, trying to act casual, still fearing that something would go wrong. The cashier seemed to take an eternity over the transaction, and as he turned and looked at the beads of sweat which had now formed on my forehead and were rolling down the side of my face, I thought he had sensed the mistake and was about to confiscate the video tapes, but no, he merely handed me my change. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I trotted home like a cat who’d just caught a mouse, and watched the films back-to-back with 20 Marlboro Reds and a pot of freshly ground coffee.

So it was then,  that I heard Hartley was to complete his Grim family trilogy. First there had been Henry Fool, then Fay Grim and now Ned Rifle. Further, Hartley was to undertake a Kickstarter campaign in order to finance the production. Now, my attitude toward crowd funding is one of selection: it depends who’s doing it, and how they do it. Too many filmmakers do it just because they can, they dream something up just to try and shake the magic money tree, they have nothing really to say, and this lack of conviction shows in their campaigning, they often seem desperate and annoying, spammy. However, for a filmmaker like Hartley, Kickstarter seemed absolutely right, his films are basically commercial for sure, but on the auteur wing of cinema, offering a personal, idiosyncratic vision. He is also naturally independent, making his first feature, The Unbelievable Truth for about $30k back in the late 80s, when making your own stuff wasn’t as common as it is now. Personally, I was just excited that a filmmaker as important as Hartley was taking this direct route and that I could somehow, even in a small way, help to bring Ned Rifle into the world. It is an extraordinary journey from not being able to get hold of even VHS copies of his films to actually becoming a micro-patron of his work.

So as I got my credit card out to make my pledge to Ned Rifle, I suddenly felt a very strange resistance which I didn’t understand. After all, I was about to back one of my cinematic heroes but I was hesitant. I returned my credit card to my wallet and went out for a walk to think it over. My resistance to backing the campaign had been rooted in my belief in the magic of cinema. Part of the magic of Hal Hartley and his films had been the mythology which had grown up around them during that time when the work was unavailable to me and how I hadn’t been disappointed when I finally saw the films. In some ways, by getting involved in the Kickstarter I felt that I was dispelling the magic, a bit like Dorothy looking behind the curtain and seeing who the wizard really is. I wanted to keep the magic in place. Childish? Perhaps. I reasoned that Ned Rifle would reach it’s funding target easily, and in any case I would be buying the DVD when it was done or hopefully a cinema ticket if it got into theatres here the UK.

I decided that I would follow the Ned Rifle campaign as an observer rather than as a participator. As it wore on though, I could see that it was more of a struggle to get backers for the film than I had originally thought. The game was changing and suddenly my complacency dissipated, there was now a real chance that the film might not reach it’s goal and therefore not get made. I reviewed my “Magic Of Hal Hartley” thesis, and decided that I was living in the past. That it was a question of whether I wanted to see Ned Rifle or not, whether I wanted to help create the cinema culture I want to participate in or not. My yearning for a bygone era was a complete waste of time, regardless of how romantic it felt and no matter how hard I tried to rationalise it. After all, what is more magical than sitting in a theatre as the lights go down and the opening credits come up on a film which you are passionate about seeing? Nobody gives a fig about where the money came from in such moments.

The Ned Rifle campaign is into it’s closing hours and is so close to hitting it’s target but needs more support. If you were a complacent Hartley fan like me, or perhaps you don’t know his work at all, then check-out the campaign page and back one of the most important filmmakers working in the English language today. The campaign page is here.