Doug Liman
Doug Liman, director of Swingers, dicsusses the strategy behind selling his movie that resulted in one of Hollywood's most notorious recent bidding wars
Did you expect to sell the film as successfully as you did?
You never know whether a film's going to sell or not. But I knew it was a good movie and that I would get work off it - and from that work I could pay the investors back. So it was a pretty safe investment, and I ended up with three investors. I raised US$275,000. We used US$200,000 to get to the first cut and then I put in another US$50,000 to take us through to a fancy distributor screening. We had US$25,000 in reserve.
Then came the bidding war. Does that just happen?
We weren't dumb about screening the movie. We hadn't shown the film to anybody, even though we were really excited about it. We decided to have one special event. And we wanted the screening room packed full of friends when we showed it to distributors. We picked a slot in between Sundance and AFM. You have to pick the right day of the week: if you do it on a Tuesday you have the whole week to try to sell it before you lose the energy over the weekend. We ended up screening on Wednesday because the film wasn't going to be ready until that day.
We prescreened an unfinished colour-timed print two weeks before for my agents, and some producers came. I was offered a job off that screening, which was far better than any of the hype the agents could have achieved. I didn't take it, but that's the best kind of buzz you can get. It was pouring with rain the night of the screening, and all the distributors showed up. Everyone was telling me, 'Your movie's great': but that doesn't mean anything. Sometimes Itell people their movie's great but it's not.
Michael Cole from Miramax saw it, and he took us to dinner [the next day]. One of the things that I knew was that the people the distributors send to see the movie can't write a cheque, and they always tell you they love you. They always wine and dine you if they think there's a chance their bosses will want to buy it. If Michael Cole calls Harvey Weinstein the next day and says 'I like this movie' he can say 'I'm already friends with the producer'. And if Harvey says he doesn't want it, which happens nine times out of 10, it only cost them a dinner. So it didn't mean anything to me that people were trying to take us out..
The first real news we had was on Friday. Miramax paid for the film to be sent to New York on Thursday night, and since it was there we set up some other screenings. Harvey was going to see it first thing in the morning, but some of his other people saw it first. They told him he should start watching it, so he went in. Somebody from the projection booth called us and said it was looking good - no-one's allowed to be in the room with him. He had to stop the movie because he had a meeting, and we had to take the print away because we had another screening. He started freaking out.
Did you worry about taking the print from Miramax?
Definitely not! I learnt in film school that if you show your short and you get calls, then no matter when they want to see the film it's not available then. You make them choose another slot. It's one of the hardest rules in the world to follow. Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted to see my short, but it wasn't available as it wasn't back from the lab. But because of that it got ten times the buzz it had before.
So we sent the print to another distributor, who made an offer. We had just decided that CAA and Carlysle Management should represent the movie, as we were out of our league by doing it ourselves.
Miramax made an offer that evening, but John Ptak, who was going to be the sales agent, was in Florida and wasn't due back until Sunday. So there was no-one to field the offer. Harvey kept calling me the whole time, and it was driving him crazy. I was furious with CAA because the sales agent wasn't even calling me back, and Ithreatened to take the film away from them. I was afraid it was all going to die down. But it actually worked really well. Harvey called me on Tuesday morning and said, 'If I can ever get your damn agent on the phone I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.' He quadrupled his offer between Friday and Tuesday.
Things had completely heated up because no-one could field offers. Everyone was camped out at my house and offers were coming in. Cary was trying to broker a deal with Miramax. People were scrambling to see the movie. We were cancelling screenings for people who couldn't compete; I felt bad, because four days before I had been begging them to see it.
The numbers kept going up, and Harvey called me and asked why I wouldn't take their offer, which was an outrageous sum of money. I was a basket case: all I knew was I wasn't taking it because John Ptak told me not to. I handed the phone to Cary and Harvey said, 'What do I have to do to close this deal?' And Cary said: 'You have to do something bold.'
And Harvey said, 'What's bold?' Cary threw out a number, and Harvey said: 'You're killing me.' But they worked it out.
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