Mike Horelick Wrote That

A Screenwriter's Festival Experience

Most festivals tend to be an event for directors first, then producers, then maybe actors. But as any real filmmaker knows, writers are a key part of the filmmaking process. Thus, it only stands to reason that they would have a lot to give to and a lot to get from festivals. Mike Horelick has written the feature film Mob Queen and the short film The Barber. He's attended festivals with both films, and in this interview, he describes the festival experience from a writer's perspective.

letsschmooze: Which festivals have you been to with your films?

Mike Horelick: Mob Queen started at Cinequest which is in San Jose. Then we went to the LA Independent Film Festival which has since changed its name. Then we went to the Los Angeles OutFest, and - these are all festivals I went to personally - and then the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival which paid for both of our airplane tickets out to Philadelphia for myself and the director, John, so we got a nice trip. I’d never been there. And I think that’s it for festivals that I personally went to. One more, actually I take it back, I think the New York Avignon Film Festival which is in both New York and France. It’s like a dual festival and I went to the New York one. I think, I can’t remember anymore.

letsschmooze: How about for The Barber?

Mike Horelick: For The Barber I’ve only been to the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival. That’s the only one I’ve personally gone to. And then there’s a group here in LA that shows short films in a bar. It’s in a bar called Moomba. And it’s actually pretty good. They had a good crowd of like 50 people and I had a good time. I don’t count it, it’s not a festival but actually now, they took the best films and this Silver Lake Film Festival is having a screening of the best short films from this group at Silver Lake. So The Barber’s going to be showing there. But I won’t be going because I won’t be in town..

letsschmooze: As a writer, what have you gotten out of film festivals?

Mike Horelick: Well, I’d say the more that I’ve done, the more I realize the most important thing to expect is to be able to see your film with an audience, to enjoy getting your film out there which may be not a mainstream film. And if that’s your expectation level, then you’re usually pretty successful. And we’ve had that, and that’s now when I go to a festival what the main goal is. After the LA Independent, we did meet with a manager and we did get an international sales agent for the film through the LA Independent Film Festival. So we have had some things come through. And I think as long as you’re not expecting them and they’re a nice surprise, then it will be a successful festival. And some people go expecting, I’m going to get an agent, I’m going to sell this film for $10 million, and anything’s possible in this world but if that’s your expectation level, you might be disappointed.

letsschmooze: Festivals seem more director oriented.

Mike Horelick: That’s true. Yeah.

letsschmooze: Do you find as a writer it’s hard to get opportunities for yourself?

Mike Horelick: I would say that as a writer, you have to push more for yourself because often the programs will list just the director. That’s pretty common. And, you know, the director I work with actually supports me. Since we always work together he knows that if he tries to steal all the thunder then I’d stop working with him. So, you know, we share the stage and stuff, but in terms of the festivals they are more director oriented. I think it’s too bad, but some of the festivals have made an effort. Usually they include two people, and it’s usually the director and one other person.

letsschmooze: Has your reception been good when you’ve gone to the festivals?

Mike Horelick: Yeah, people have been good. You know, in a lot of festivals they are film lovers so when you go to the festival they do support you morally. I don’t know about financially. But overall I’ve had good luck and when I’ve gone to the festivals people are respectful. You know, they’re getting ticket money off your film so usually they’re pretty nice.

letsschmooze: Do you have any advice for people preparing to go to a festival?

Mike Horelick: Eat as much food as possible. Seriously, for the LA Independent, that’s where we were hoping to get distribution, we made press books, we had press clippings. That’s another nice thing about festivals is that if you have a small independent film that doesn’t have distribution yet you might be able to get some nice write-ups. And we got a Variety write-up, and then through that we ended up getting a small distributor which got us a New York Times write up, and even an Entertainment Weekly write up. So that was all sort of through film festivals. So I’d say to prepare, you want to have a card printed up, at least a piece of paper with your name and number and e-mail. And I found it’s nice to make connections with other filmmakers. The more experienced I get, the more I realize you can’t know too many people. And you shouldn’t discount people if you’ve done a feature and they’ve done a short because pretty soon they may be doing the feature and you may be back to doing shorts for a while. And also it’s nice to have a support group out there of people you can call and send your stuff too and show your work.

letsschmooze: Any tips about getting publicity?

Mike Horelick: Well, I’d say we got lucky because our actors were on the TV show The Sopranos and we did a mob movie. So that kind of gave us some good luck. I would say you should be willing to do pretty much anything. If you have a friend who works at a paper, if there’s anything unusual about your film, don’t be afraid to just send it off. Put it in the envelope, say this is when the film is, call up the newspaper. I mean, I think you have to have a lot of cajones and you never know what will pay off and, you know, I have no more shame when it comes to publicizing my film. I mean, yeah, you have to draw the line between hassling people and going for it, but if you’re just going for it, I think anything is pretty much acceptable. I would stop short, and I know some people have done this, they’ve made stickers for their film and pasted them all up around town illegally. And I kind of recommend against that. That’s just my own moral take on publicity going a little too far because it’s borderline vandalism. But I know people have done that.

letsschmooze: How about giveaways?

Mike Horelick: Yeah, we did actually do stickers. We didn’t stick them on things. We did stickers, we did buttons. And the buttons were fun and actually, for the amount of money we put in, I think it was worth it for the small buttons that have a pin on the back. Especially if you have either a fun title or a nice logo I think it can kind of get word out at the festival. Usually when people are given a freebie like that, they’ll use it. In fact, I think that’s better than the stickers because they’re more visible at the festival.

letsschmooze: And how about post-festival, any advice?

Mike Horelick: My friend, who’s the director, he says now in Europe, a lot of the times the organizers can recommend your film to other festivals. It’s another thing I didn’t mention before, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a nice relationship with the organizers of the festival. And if something goes wrong with your film or the screening time isn’t quite right, it’s better to try to keep a good relationship with that person rather than unloading on them, thinking, well, the festival’s over, my work with them is over, I don’t need to worry about them any longer. And in fact, one of the organizers of the LA Independent Festival later turned out to be the judge of the Palm Springs Film Festival where we had submitted our next film, so once again it’s about cultivating relationships just like it is within Hollywood so it’s good to stay on nice terms. In terms of what you can do in the post festival, I think you can use your appearance in a festival as publicity for the next one. And that’s with a caveat emptor because some festivals want premiers and they don’t want to be reminded, oh, I was just in this festival. They want a fresh thing. But, if you do a little research, a lot of festivals look for validation from other festivals, too. More so with short films, they’re less critical of it showing in another festival than features.

letsschmooze: What’s the difference between taking a short and taking a feature to a festival?

Mike Horelick: I would say that, although I don’t agree, I think there is somewhat of a pecking order that they treat the feature filmmakers better than the short filmmakers. When I’m saying “they,” I’m talking about the organizers of the festivals. I think it’s also because, I guess, they’re more in need of those features. I mean, there’s usually a lot of shorts submitted. And the features they really need and sometimes they want certain names, if you can put a name in your feature. Or a certain quality level of film. So I have found there is a difference although among filmmakers, I think you’d be well advised not to see a big difference because we’re all filmmakers of some kind.

letsschmooze: You did a gay-themed film that played at several gay-themed film festivals. Is there a difference from a filmmaker’s perspective between playing a general audience festival and a themed festival?

Mike Horelick: The main difference is that at the gay festivals it’s not about distribution, you know, forwarding your career, trying to get an agent. Because the [themed] festivals, I think, are a cultural get together for that either ethnic group or social group. And I think they’re more set up for fun for the people who go or as some sort of social protest or to get their group publicity. And so I have noticed that they were more socially oriented. When we went to the LA Independent Film Festival, that is more business oriented toward getting distribution and the business side of it. And it was also, I would say, more competitive among the filmmakers than either the gay themed ones or even the smaller festivals.

letsschmooze: Any other differences you saw between big and small festivals?

Mike Horelick: The smaller ones are usually more out of the way. We did some even in New York that were actually not considered large festivals. And I think then you really focus on just enjoying seeing your film in front of an audience, making connections with other filmmakers. Because I think that you never know who’s going to turn up at a film, but generally the big people that are in the film business aren’t going to go to the smaller festivals. I think they wait for the films to filter up to the larger, more high publicity festivals. So I’ve enjoyed the small festivals, too, because I went with the expectations of nice people, supportive crowds, and once again, the free food. That can be good.

letsschmooze: Any tips about festival parties?

Mike Horelick: You know, it will be tied into the type of festival. So for example at the smaller festivals they’re strictly social. And the last festival I went to was at Palm Springs and they had really nice organized parties. And I started talking to some people and I could’ve spent the whole time just with them. They were really nice. But it’s good to get out and meet more people so I made an effort to sort of walk around and introduce myself. And I had a good experience with 99% of the other filmmakers and we exchanged cards. In terms of what’s there to do at the parties, I would say you always want to go with an open mind and don’t be afraid to go over and introduce yourself to everyone. You know, it could end up just being an intern who helps organize the festival, but they might be a nice person - they’re working for free, and it’s because of people like that that you even have festivals so I think there’s no harm in trying to meet everyone. I even meet audience members sometimes that have come to the festival parties. And you can get some input on what’s a good film or not according to their viewpoint. Which is interesting because they’re not going to be biased.

letsschmooze: Is there anything that you’ve done that’s helped your success at getting a film into a festival?

Mike Horelick: I think that the more you get out there, these things can snowball. So if you go to one festival and they have a good experience with you, as I said before, they can recommend you to other festivals. And, I would say now, when we make a film, there are already some festivals, which I won’t say 100% they’re going to accept the film, but they’ve become personal friends. For example, the director is friends with the organizer of this New York Avignon film festival. And so if he does a film in French, which is where he does most of them, he has a good chance of getting it in as opposed to a blind submission. And these festivals, it’s not being fair or not fair, but they’re run like anything else. They have people that they know and they want to bring in new filmmakers but also keep their own connections with the old filmmakers which they’ve already had in their festivals.

letsschmooze: Is there something that you wish you’d known before you did your first festival?

Mike Horelick: Yeah, the one thing I would say is that, go, first of all, to show your film, to get validation, not necessarily that people have to like it, because not everyone’s going to like everything, but to say, I’m a filmmaker, I’ve shot something, and now I’m showing it. And if that’s your goal, that’s going to be an achievable goal at a festival because that’s what festivals are ultimately set up to do, which is to share your work with other people. And, you know, if you don’t put too much pressure on yourself to come out with a huge Hollywood deal the first festival, I think you can relax, meet people, have a good time. And that will ultimately help your career as a filmmaker as much as if you are on pins and needles hoping to get the distribution deal from minute one.

letsschmooze: Any other comments for filmmakers going to festivals?

Mike Horelick: I guess one of the biggest dilemmas people have is this whole idea of how to submit your film to different festivals. And a lot of festivals, they do say that they will only show a premiere. Either a North American premiere or a world premiere, so you have to make a decision. Am I going to hold out for Sundance or for Toronto or Slamdance or am I going to show it in a local festival first. And I would say that unfortunately there’s no easy answer to that. But, if you’re first starting out, you know, you may have high hopes for your film and I’m sure it’s a great film, but most importantly you want to get it out there. So I wouldn’t go turning down film festivals just because they’re small because they’re still a great venue to show your film. But that’s a very hard choice and I would do a little research before you go turning people down. And if you do turn people down, it’s always nice to do it in a very polite way because in the future you may be wanting to show your film in that festival. In fact, you may get turned down by the larger festival and it’s nice to have a smaller festival to show it because ultimately, making films you want to show them to audiences somewhere and a festival’s a great first place to do it.