Robert Pattinson’s REMEMBER ME: Indie or Not?

Is the Robert Pattinson’s vehicle Remember Me a true “independent film” or not?

One commenter wrote the following about Remember Me:

“Some of the posters need to look up ‘indie’. … To be truly indie you need a budge [sic] of less than ten mil, not to ever open on more than 500 screens, and have less than three mil in marketing. From what i [sic] understand (honestly don’t really care) this movie had none of that. I just wanted to define what indie means.”

The commenter does have a point. However, “indie” definitions vary widely.

The commenter says that a movie must cost less than $10 million.

But…

This is what the Spirit Awards, the topmost “indie” film award, has to say regarding a film’s eligibility as a bona fide “indie”:

“Cost of completed film, including post, must be less than $20 million. Any variations are at the sole discretion of the nominating committee.”

Remember Me cost $16 million. Therefore it’d be considered an indie by those standards.

Here are a couple of eligibility criteria for the NY-based Gotham Awards (also for indie films):

“Films made with an economy of means.”

“The release can be through a specialty division of a studio, an independent distributor, or via self-distribution. The film must be screened for paid admission in a commercial motion picture theatre in New York City and/or Los Angeles County. The film must run for at least seven consecutive days. The film must be advertised and marketed during the New York and/or Los Angeles County run in a manner considered normal and customary to the industry. The film must be publicly exhibited by means of 16mm, 35mm or 70mm film, or in a digital format, delivered to the screen by an image and sound file format suitable for exhibition in existing commercial cinema sites.”

So, neither the Gotham Awards nor the Spirit Awards have anything to say about specific marketing costs or number of screens.

Summit Entertainment, which has distributed Remember Me in the US, is considered an “independent distributor.” Else, Summit’s The Hurt Locker wouldn’t have been nominated for the Gotham Awards last year or for the Spirit Awards the year before.

Remember Me’s $16 million price tag would be considered “an economy of means,” as The Hurt Locker cost $15 million.

In other words, Remember Me would have been eligible as a true “indie” for both awards. Summit opened it wide because by the time the movie was released Robert Pattinson had become a household name. But Pattinson signed on to make the film before his meteoric rise to fame.
Also, it’s worth remembering that the independently made The Hurt Locker was screened at more than 500 theaters at one point in summer 2009. And I betcha its marketing campaign cost more than $3 million.

Here’s another example: Little Miss Sunshine, shot independently, was later bought by Fox Searchlight. Total indie, right? Well, at one point the movie was screened at more than 1,500 theaters in North America. To be exact: 1,602, as per Box Office Mojo.

Wanna bet Fox Searchlight spent more than $3 million pushing that film?

Just making sure one thing is clear: I’m certainly not putting down the commenter’s remarks. It’s just that the word “indie” can be used for movies made for $20,000 and for movies made for $20 million.

A multimillionaire entity like Summit Entertainment is considered an “independent” distributor. What about really tiny ones like First Run Features, Icarus Films or Cinema Libre?

Remember Me is an “indie” when compared to Green Zone, Repo Men, Alice in Wonderland, The Bounty Hunter, Hot Tub Time Machine, or even She’s Out of My League.

Remember Me is a big-budget film when compared to In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Everything Strange and New, August Evening, La Mission, and Shotgun Stories.

Perhaps there should be another label for movies made under $10 million or $5 million or $1 million. And distributed by entities worth less than $x million.

But in the overall scheme of things, i.e., when compared to Hollywood productions, Remember Me is an “indie” structurally, financially, and thematically.