Alex Gibney Quotes

When you work in film, you learn to appreciate a distributor. You can have this great little film, but if you don't have a distributor, you are sitting in your living room with a great little film.

Anytime you make a movie, the goal is a wide theatrical release, with the right distributor.

To have a film in America means precisely nothing if you don't have a distributor who stands behind it.

I think, it's important to understand how to release a film.

There has been a stigma around letting movies be seen on home screens on the same day as theatrical screens. Universal said they were going to do it with 'Tower Heist,' but they backed off when challenged by the theater owners. I understand where the theater owners are coming from on big studio movies.

It's so many different elements to a film. Just learning the ins and outs and how the machine works.

They say now in America that final cut doesn't mean anything. As Harvey Weinstein said to some film-maker, 'You can have final cut. I'll open your film in Arkansas.'

The average movie-goer in this country sees six films in a year. That's one every two months. What the studios are trying to do is make sure it's their movie.

When I was out promoting 'Selma,' I became aware of so many other films that ought to be getting distribution. And this is a problem I can do something about because of my experience.

I think of 'Beyond The Clouds' very fondly. Yes, it has not been seen by a lot of people in theatres. I had anticipated more people would watch it. But that has to do with something I don't know well: marketing. A lot of people didn't even know that it was a Hindi film.

It makes sense for an actor to space out his releases. But filmmaking is unpredictable.

I have never had the problem of finding a producer for my films. I think I am just lucky because my first film didn't do great box office business.

Movie theaters barely make any money. A movie can make a couple of thousand dollars, or could get lucky and make ten or fifteen thousand dollars, but theatrical releases don't really sustain the work. For me, it's the best sort of advertisement for anything else you'd want to do.

I wrote another wrestling film script. And we finished the shooting [with Lloyd Phillips]. But Henry Winkler came out with his own wrestling film, which did poorly. So the studios passed on ours, and it never got released.

I'm okay for things like theater and stuff but for film, I just didn't think in the right way and I didn't like the business. So I was unhappy. So I was in something that was moderately related to my, what I call my calling or my life's path, which is writing, but it wasn't like the right fit.

I went to film school, worked as an assistant, and wrote several scripts that haven't gotten made.

I write box notes for Kino International, which specializes in distributing foreign films.

Online theft has changed the business model of filmmaking because the DVD market is very soft. So, more ambitious, compelling, character-driven narrative of a certain budget level isn't really a viable business model in the eyes of the studios right now.

I'm always slightly worried if I do a film and we're filming it in Luxembourg. I know it's going to go straight DVD.

If you're clever enough and creative enough to get a good film made, then you should be clever enough and creative enough to find ways to get it out there, one being something like Jameson First Shot.

The movies have a way of seeping out there over time. We don't put them in 2,000 theaters. It wouldn't work that way.

I didn't go to film school. I got my education on the set as a niche publicist in the film industry.

If you look at film, distribution is pre-bought. If you've paid for the distribution, you say, 'I have to make sure it's a film that gets enough butts in the seats.' I think that's the problem: It becomes prohibitively expensive, and you can't develop films for a smaller amount of money.

The studios basically, besides developing some material, their strength is distribution. Distribution in any other business is a cost that you incur. You know, in a trucking business, you eat it. In a film business, distribution is a profit center.

You know, the people who do indie film and decide who gets those little budgets? They're mean, man. They're cold and very cool-oriented.