This is topic GANG TAPES Blacklisted? in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by James R. Hammonds, Jr (Member # 673) on 08-08-2002, 09:47 PM:
HERE I know Aint It Cool News isnt exactly the most trustworthy outlet for information, but has anyone heard anything from their chains about this?
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Posted by Chad Souder (Member # 343) on 08-09-2002, 09:28 PM:
Sounds like the kind of movie that just wouldn't have widespread appeal to do enough business. That's probably the real reason theatre chains don't want it.------------------
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" - Homer Simpson
Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 08-09-2002, 10:38 PM:
>>Everyone connected to the film wants to see it in theatres. Lion’s Gate wants to open it wide (yes, wide). So what’s the problem?<<Of course they do. Judging from the "review", it sounds like its main problem is that no one can care about the characters.
Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 08-10-2002, 12:05 AM:
That's one small step backward for film production, one giant step forward (out of the trash heap) for exhibition. My guess is that the chains are not as much worried about violence as the are about alienating the majority of their customers by putting this garbage on their screens. There's nothing positive about it and it's certainly not entertainment. Even the review (apparently written by one who has little command of the English language as he constantly resorts to using foul expletives) was both disgusting and depressing.Bob
The Old Showman
Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-10-2002, 10:10 AM:
Absolutely correct -- the chains don't shy away from violence if they think they can sell it. The mistake that a subculture makes is that they assume everyone else is concerned about their microcosum; in reality, most of the rest of the world really is not. The choice the exhibitors have made here would seem to be based on the all too powerful bottom line: they don't think this picture will sell. Period. No more, no less and surely there is no "conspiricy" to prevent it from being shown. What's worse, this thing was probably shot on video and not film, so it may look as bad as the content sounds. Personally, I would rather stare at cloths tumbling in a washing machine than watch anything resembling the bottom of the barrel quality of THE BLARE WITCH PROJECT. Those who are offended by not being able to see this Lion's Gate offering in a theatre will just have hold on to their banger headband colors and wait for it to come to hood (er, I mean home) video. No doubt there it will find its nitch market of all those likeminded "hood" folk that enjoy this brand of "reality" and make Lions Gate some money to boot.
Frank
PS -- If this offends the "reviewer," I suppose I will now need to look over my shoulder to see if I am going to get "capped," as he put it.
Posted by John Daily (Member # 1362) on 08-11-2002, 09:50 AM:
I wouldn't say I'm looking forward to this exactly, but I will make it a point to go wherever I need to in order to see this.
Blair Witch used this as a gimmick; for Gang Tapes this seems to be the best way to make personal (to those of us comfy behind our keyboards) a way of life that we can't comprehend. It is ugly, but people live this way, and that fascinates me. It's like self-genocide, and I don't understand it. I may never, but I feel the need to at least try.
For the record, all people fascinate me. I enjoyed Titanic not because of the lame ficitonal romance, but because it got me into a year-long obsession to learn as much as I could about every documented passenger on board that ship.Gang Tapes seems to me, to be not exactly exploitation (if it did, I'd most certainly be agreeing with the rest of you). It would have been easy to just have these guys ad-lib throughout the whole film ala Blair Witch, but Adam Ripp took the time to have them 'translate' a written script into their vernacular, where he could have just tossed in a bunch of "Yos" and "40s" and called it good enough. Also, it is not just about senseless violence. This is a coming of age story. It's easy to write off an entire subculture, but what about the true innocents who have to survive within it? What about the young children who grow up with it because it's all they've been exposed to? In this movie, we see both sides, loving relationships within this subculture as well as the chaos. This is, by all accounts from those who have seen the film, as close as I'm going to get to understanding short of moving to Compton.
Or Baltimore's Western.
Or Syracuse's East side.
Or...(pick your own metro area here).
Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-12-2002, 01:50 PM:
Well put, John, but I was not putting the film down, well, maybe I was bemoaning the fact that it was filmed on video -- my exerience so far with that method of getting something on the screen has been quite negative -- if you film it in video, then it should be presented on video -- that's what public access cable, PBS and direct-to-DVD are for. When I go into a cinema, there is a certain expectation of a level of quality that offerings like BLAIR WITCH or CHELSEA WALLS simply don't meet. My point was simply that there is no "conspiracy" to prevent this particular film from playing in theatres. Why would anyone expect the chains to play a title that is obviously far off main-stream demographics? Hell, they won't EVER play anything but the top ten grossing pictures of the moment; they won't play foreign films unless they are one of the very few that move into that top grossing magic circle. For the most part, they won't even play indepentent titles. Lion's Gate is smart to play this in art houses which have been the mainstay of just such off-center titles. It is the kind of film that I would run in my theatre. I just don't see what all the moaning is about. Most independents market and play their films this way; the economic reality simply is that small films just don't get picked up by chains unless the distrib decides that he wants to spend 3 million on an ad campaign and see if he can get his unknow stars booked on all the morning talk shows. Short of that, forget about chains being interested, unless it's off season and there is no new product and LG wants to practically give it away. This is a business and it has some harsh realities.
Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 08-12-2002, 01:57 PM:
I notice that Lion's Gate does not have enough confidence in this project to four wall (pay the theatre a flat rate to run it), as many other independant films have to do to get a theatrical run. I guess they do not think that it will make back the cost of the auditorium rental./Mitchell
Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 08-12-2002, 02:48 PM:
Lions Gate doesn't need to four-wall for anything -- it's a minimajor just like Miramax. LG releases niche product (Lovely & Amazing, The Wash) plus the occasional mainstream title (Frailty).Artisan had Gang Tapes and then dropped it, probably for cause: In a lot of small towns police vigilantes and/or religious zealots might want to shut down a theater showing anything they do not like.
Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 08-12-2002, 04:43 PM:
SOMEBODY has to try to preserve decent morals in this country Charles. In the last several decades I have seen far too many exhibitors partner (either willingly or through coercion) with a degenerating production industry to pump garbage into our communities in their quest to create appetites (with some success) for that type of film and in the process contribute greatly to the decline of the moral standards on which this country was founded and doing it all in the name of "freedom of expression". Well, those who object to films like "Gang Tapes" have the same right to "freedom of expression" and it says alot when those who support the exhibition of such films attempt to demean those who object. If "Tapes" had been made to inform the public of a lifestyle for the sake of asking for help it would be a different matter. But it is obvious it was made for its shock value and to feed the afforementioned appetites.Bob
The Old Showman
Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-13-2002, 08:42 AM:
Bob,I appreciate your concern for the morals of the country, but I don't think that judging whether a film meets your standard of morality without first actually seeing it furthers your argument, especially when you make claims that "it is obvious it was made for its shock value...." Sorry, but there is no way for you to make this assumption from reading a review. There is nothing obvious about it, especially since the reviewer can hardly be considered capable of articulating or even understanding the intentions of the director, give the "review" he has written.
There are many serious films, books and even paintings that touch on subjects that are might be personally unpleasant, but reveal part of human nature that we might not approve, yet they remain great works of art. Their validity isn't negated because of the subject matter, and many times it is exactly because of the treatment of the subject matter, as distastful as it may be, makes them important, enduring classics. Even the Bible is rife with stories that focus on aspects of man's immoral behavior. While it sheds light on this behavior, it certainly doesn't advocate it nor does the fact that you can read about adultery, murder, theft of birthrights, infidelity, fornication, etc. in the Bible, make the book "immoral." And in a pluralistic society, one man's immorality very often is another's inspiration. Personally, I find it immoral that certain segments of our society focus only on sexuality as the kingpin of what makes something moral or immoral, yet you rarely hear any complaints from this group about the unrelenting violence that is so pervasive in the media. Hence the old put-down of the MPAA rating system, "Show someone gently caressing a nipple and the film gets an X; show someone cutting the nipple off with a chainsaw, it gets an R."
Suffice to say, the subject of this post was why the film was not picked up by the major chains. There are economic reasons for that that don't seem very mysterious and IMO don't constitute any conspiracy or blacklisting, just the normal economic pressures of the marketplace. As far as the content of the film and the way that content is portrayed, I contend before anyone can go off making moral judgments about it, they need to have seen it first.
Frank
Posted by Chad Souder (Member # 343) on 08-14-2002, 09:31 AM:
I will simply never buy the arguement that a movie, any movie (or album, book, or whatever art form you choose) will contribute to moral decline. I grew up watching plenty of G.I. Joe, I Spit on your Grave, Saving Private Ryan, Omen, Faces of Death, Jenna Loves Rocco, or whatever else one cares to list as being inappropriate to children. I have never been in a fight, been in jail (except on a tour during a criminology class I was taking), drank heavily, fantasized about doing things with little boys, or whatever. I think people who have the opinion that movies hurt morals are pointing the blame in the wrong direction, away from the parents where it belongs. Desensitization is another issue, however, and I do believe I have been desensitized to a lot of violence, sex, drug use, etc. It doesn't make me want to do them, it just makes me care a little less when I see it happen.
Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 08-15-2002, 03:20 PM:
Thanks for your reply Frank. Perhaps a better choice of words would have been "seems to have been made for it's shock value". However, having been in the exhibition field for more than 25 years I have seen enough of all types of films to have formed an opinion on the information the "reviewer" gave. Garbage is garbage and I don't have to eat it to know it's garbage.Bob
The Old Showman
Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 08-15-2002, 07:10 PM:
But sometimes you can find some pretty neat stuff in the garbage... 
=TMP=
Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 08-16-2002, 10:22 AM:
Gang Tapes is being released by indie distributor Urbanworld Films. Pic opened 8/14 in LA and opens 8/21 in NYC.
Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 08-16-2002, 10:28 AM:
We had a DigiBeta screening of "Gang Tapes" for Urban World Films
back early July.
Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-16-2002, 12:10 PM:
Bill, Where was that? What vid-projector did you use?
And what did you think of the film? The museum is always looking for alternative titles to run. Is it as bad as it sounds?
Frank
Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 08-16-2002, 12:29 PM:
Hi FrankWe have a NEC XT5000 projector. We have used it with D5, HD Cam,
HD Pro, DigiBeta (NTSC & PAL), Beta SP, DVD and Avid formats.
I'm here in Mid Town in the Brill Building.
At the start of the movie with a pretty real looking Car Jacking.
It was a hard R type movie, that one step furth than films
like New Jack City, Juice and those others. We had about 3 walk outs
during the screening. It's the basic gang movie with alittle more
shock value. I've run all those other type pictures before.
One time I was running this Tri-Plex theatre, we had in the 1200 seat downstairs theatre "Menace II Society" and in one of the 500 seat upstairs theatres we had "Blood In, Blood Out" and in the other 500
seat house was just an action film that had opened 2 weeks earlier.
That weekend "Menace" & "Blood" were selling out almost every show.
We had police cars parked in front on the evening shows. I stayed
in the upstairs booth, it was safer.
Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-17-2002, 05:41 PM:
Geesh, I can certainly do without that, as can my patrons. I ran NEW JACK CITY as a preview years ago and I will never forget that at one of the change-overs where I am forced to look at the screen, between the sync (motor) cue and the change-over cue, was a closeup of a gun pointed at a guy's head and in that 10 seconds between cues, in slowmo, the gun fires and you see brains fly out of the other side of the guy's head. I almost didn't hit the change-over; I was nausous for the rest of the film and very, VERY angry that it was cut that way. Plus, I thought it was a piece of trash from beginning to end. Then I see Mario Van Peeples going on all the talks shows hyping it as some kind of "anti-drug and anti-violence" film....yeah, he spends 2 hrs showing drug dealers living in penthouses surrounded by beautiful hookers and piles of money, basically glorifying that life-style, and then in the last 5 minutes has the drug dealer get shot and that is supposed to make it an anti-drug & anti-violence? What a pathetic joke. Well, if GANG TAPES is MORE hardcore than NJC, I certainly wouldn't even consider it as I assume most other art houses won't either. The art house guys in general are a lot more discerning about what they put on their screens than the commercial houses. Not many picked up CHELSEA WALLS, that other lame offering from Lions Gate.
So now we have to deal not only with "gangsta" rap, but "gangsta" movies too?
Frank
Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 10-16-2002, 04:01 PM:
Gang Tapes goes direct to video in December via Lions Gate.