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Book Reviews
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Wal-Mart: the high cost of low price
The Inside Story of the Documentary Film Sensation
by Gregg Spotts
(Disinformation Press, 2005; 220 pages, $9.95)
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This engaging book chronicles and illuminates the making of Robert Greenwald’s exposé about Wal-Mart, and in the meantime teaches the reader a lot about how to make a documentary film without becoming, as Greenwald says, “tied to the traditional gatekeepers, the decision makers, or corporate interests.”
This is also a book about the power of deadlines. As the saying goes, If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.
Greenwald, a well-established Hollywood movie maker, had already learned a lot about the process of creating and distributing grassroots films with “Outfoxed” and “Unprecedented.” However, those films’ immediacy and political nature had created merciless creative deadlines. He had used his own money to fund the films, which resulted in intense financial struggles on top of the political and creative ones. Certain that he didn’t want to repeat the experience, Greenwald immediately secured a major source of funds for the “Retail Project,” the working title for the Wal-Mart movie. He also cleared a whole year for production, which seemed long enough.
But Greenwald had underestimated the tremendous scale of the Wal-Mart project, which kept expanding into new territory with every story, ultimately including film crews in other countries, even places in China where it is likely that no Western observer has ever filmed before. Early in the project, his major source of funds backed out, afraid that Wal-Mart would refuse to carry his DVDs. And that isn’t the only time that Greenwald’s project would be stilted by Wal-Mart’s influences and restrictions.
As you’d expect, the atmosphere inside Greenwald’s Culver City movie studio, the home of Brave New Films, is a bit high-strung. As production hours steadily tick away and the deadline approaches, Spotts deftly describes the crew’s sense of urgency. Interns line up sofas for the first viewing of a rough cut, even as the assistant editors are “frantically assembling [it] from the newest versions of the individual segments, some of which are still being worked on by the editors.”
Through careful observation and by writing in the present tense, Spotts, a filmmaker himself, captures the natural suspense of the entire creative process. As “story buckets” are discovered through the diligent research of the Brave New Film staff, the Wal-Mart movie takes shape. Spotts records events and decisions as they are happening in the studio and on various locations. The result is a lively portrait of the layers of creative chaos that eventually wind up as a movie on the screen.
Alongside the chronological telling of the filmmaking process, Spotts lays out the “Filmmaker’s Toolbox” as a sort of book-within-a-book. In these sections, the neophyte can pick up tips and jargon explaining the “how to” of the filmmaking process. Spotts covers everything from creative choices for shooting scenes to how to use the Internet for research and connection to groups that are intensely interested in the project.
The Filmmaker’s Toolbox section on working with nonprofits and political groups, for example, is a mini-lesson about engaging the help of these organizations in the distribution of an independent film. In this section, Greenwald advises filmmakers doing grassroots projects: “You can’t have everything. If you want a splashy premiere at a major festival and an art house theatre run, then you should go for it. If you want to create social change, then you make a different set of choices and focus on working with groups that can help make that change happen.”
One of the changing conventions in the entertainment industry is the “exclusive theatrical window.” This referred to a tight legal constraint on the ways a particular film can get seen. “Exclusivity” allowed indie theater owners to maximize their return on films with limited appeal. Motivated viewers are likely to buy a ticket instead of waiting for the movie to come out on DVD. But grassroots films hoping to influence and educate a large audience can now choose to release their movies in all formats on the same day. Having found an ally in the expansive networking made possible by the Web, filmmakers who want their message heard (and seen) as soon as the film is complete can print it on DVDs and distribute them directly to a world-wide audience.
Greenwald is one of a new breed of creative thinkers operating largely outside the Hollywood box, and Spotts explains clearly the ways in which Brave New Films created, revised, met their movie deadline (almost), and built their alternative distribution system. Though its purpose is twofold: to teach the basics of contemporary grassroots filmmaking and to chronicle the Wal-Mart movie, anyone who enjoys film, political films, or the creative process in general will find this little page-turner a good read. [Copies of the book are available through www.hopedance.org or call us at 805.544.9663.]
Suzanne Arthur writes about alternatives in building, healing and art. She can be reached at sjarthur@gmail.com.
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