Miramax looks for Joe Six-Pack
by Steve Ramos
It was opening night for the 2008 Heartland Film Festival and Miramax Films President Daniel Battsek took to the stage Thursday night to introduce his company's upcoming film, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," writer/director Mark Herman's World War II drama about the young son of a Nazi commandant who befriends a Jewish boy at a concentration camp via repeated visits to the camp's barbed wire fence.
Battsek told the 1,000-plus crowd at Downtown Indianapolis' Murat Centre, a 1909 Freemasons temple turned into an entertainment venue, about the enthusiasm for "Boy in the Striped Pajamas" expressed by Heartland President and CEO Jeffrey Sparks and how much he wanted the film. More importantly, Battsek spoke about the Heartland audience, their support for moral message dramas like "Boy in the Striped Pajamas" and the important role they could play in helping the movie find its audience.
Listening offstage were Herman, "Striped Pajamas" author John Boyne, actor David Thewlis, who plays the Nazi commandant, and various Miramax staff -- all who have a lot riding on Heartland. Battsek and his Miramax team had made the decision to come to Heartland for the film's North American premiere. Reviewing solid box office stats from the United Kingdom and Spain, the film's debut foreign markets, Battsek and his staff were confident that with Heartland's help they could generate positive word-of-mouth in time for the film's Nov. 7 U.S. opening. They also knew the Indianapolis crowd would be different from typical film festival audiences; void of the buyers, press and industry vets who populate other fests, more Joe Six-Pack than Joe Hollywood.
Battsek is the first company exec to come to Heartland and form a partnership that extends far beyond a one-time festival screening. The historic theater complex, used for concerts and stage shows, was temporarily converted into a movie theater complete with surround sound, a 35mm projector and a towering screen at sizable expense.
Battsek also approved the call to partner with the 16-year-old festival on a single-night, 31-city screening program to promote "Boy in the Striped Pajamas" to Heartland partner organizations like the Boy Scouts of America in an attempt to build national awareness for the film.
The timing was perfect. Samuel Goldwyn's "Fireproof," featuring '80s TV sitcom star Kirk Cameron as a firefighter who saves his marriage through faith; just passed $20 million in box office after debuting no. 4 on the weekend box office charts Oct. 3.
FoxFaith, a boutique arm of News Corp.'s Fox Filmed Entertainment, and Sony Provident-Integrity continue to do steady business via small budget films targeted towards the evangelical community.
"I admire hugely what Goldwyn has done with that movie," Battsek told us, talking during the premiere screening at an adjacent hospitality room. "It's amazing and when something like that happens you look and think is that something we can do? I don't think there are the quantum shifts that some people are trying to find but I do think just doing what one has done for years and years is not gong to cut it in an increasingly competitive environment, not just for specialized film but films in general."
As specialty companies struggle with skyrocketing marketing costs and increased competition for theaters, the Heartland variety of family values stories and its ability to generate a groundswell of support with its numerous partner organizations might be the best hope for improved profitability for some specialty film companies in a year that saw the demise of Picturehouse, Warner Independent and Paramount Vantage as an autonomous, stand-alone unit of Paramount Pictures.
At least that was the thought behind the collaboration. "It felt to us that in order to start the film on the right foot in the U.S. we wanted to go somewhere where we felt that the film would be welcomed with open arms," Battsek said, sipping a can of Budweiser Select.
"And the approval of this festival has opened many doors across the country," Battsek continued "It's amazing how much the support of this festival has meant for this film. America, as we are finding more and more through this political campaign, is made up of extraordinarily diverse people and vastly different points of views on many, many subjects. It's rare to get anything never mind a movie that actually connects some of those dots. What we found with "Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is that it does exactly that - it finds support north, south east and west."
Read part two, "Heartland looks for a brand" here.
The Truly Moving Best dramatic feature and best doc went to Alejandro Monteverde's moving "Bella" ($100K) and Irene Taylor Brodsky's true "Hear and Now" ($25K) at the 16th Heartland Film Festival.
Michael Jones is the film festival editor at Variety.com. 
