Life Looks Sunny on the ‘Bayou’

“Eve’s Bayou” was blessed every step of the way to $13.2 million.

The debut film from writer-director Kasi Lemmons is, financially speaking, the most successful American independent movie of 1997. While the indie film market on the whole struggled to match the banner year of 1996, this $4-million picture quietly climbed to the top of the list of box-office receipts for specialty films.

“Eve’s Bayou,” which stars Samuel L. Jackson, Lynn Whitfield and Debbi Morgan, chronicles a fateful summer in the lives of the Creole Batiste family. Despite some big names, the film has several strikes against it from a marketing point of view. The plot is not easily summarized. It has a cast that is entirely African American and predominately female. It was the first foray of Trimark, a company best known for video distribution, into the specialty film market.

“I always pitched this as a film that could cross over and could find a wider audience, a more accessible version of a small, black, art-house film,” Lemmons said. “But you never know when you’re being that optimistic if you’re just making it all up.”

In addition, few African American films had proven themselves in the art-house circuit. “We said this could be the film that could attract all kinds of people,” she said. “But on the other hand, you can’t really point to any films and say, ‘This proves that this film will attract a white audience.’ What examples can you use?”

Still, with the help of an innovative distribution strategy and aggressive marketing campaign--not to mention glowing reviews--”Eve’s Bayou” has reached a surprisingly broad audience. Trimark reports that about half of the “Eve’s Bayou” moviegoers are white.

The day it opened, Trimark sent someone to the first screening in Century City, said Ray Price, senior vice president for distribution. “And who’s in the theater?” he said. “It’s Jewish grandmothers. And they’re crying.”

Price is pleased, but also a little surprised by the film’s lasting success. After almost seven weeks in release, the film is still in more than 150 theaters. “Our initial assessment of the market was that we would be chucked out of theaters by Dec. 12,” he said, because of the glut of holiday-season movies. He hopes to expand again in January.

The problem of staying in theaters plagues independent films more and more. Exhibitors are building more multiplexes, but the number of screens dedicated to independent films isn’t growing much. With the number of independent films in release on the rise, competition for those screens is intense. Already foreign-language films have been almost completely squeezed out of the market.

Lindsay Law, president of Fox Searchlight Pictures, wonders if the market will absorb the growing number of indie films. “We’re kind of cannibalizing each other and ourselves,” he said. “We’re duplicating the ills of our big brothers.”

October Films plans to nearly double its releases to 20 in the coming years. But Bingham Ray, October’s co-president, agrees that more films is not necessarily better for the independent film industry.

“When it’s this saturated, where is the air for these films to breathe? Where’s the audience to support these films? Years ago it was a lot easier to find a way to nurture a picture in terms of screens,” he said.

Word of mouth has always been critical to developing an audience for movies--but that takes time. “If you don’t hit that nerve and show off that strong gross in the first weekend, then you might be pushed aside,” Ray said. “ ‘Eve’s Bayou’ is one of the few real success stories of this year.”

That success came with a hefty price tag, however. Trimark has spent about $10 million advertising “Eve’s Bayou,” most of that right around its Nov. 7 release date. Trimark also opened it on 650 screens--a huge number for an indie film. In markets with large African American populations, it placed the film in mainstream theaters. In other cities, the film ran in the local art house.

The fact that “Eve’s Bayou” played successfully in both types of theaters is indicative of another trend: the blurring of the division between independent and studio films. Big studios have bought or started their own specialty film divisions. Companies like Miramax or New Line are putting out films that hardly qualify as low-budget, like “Cop Land” and “Boogie Nights,” respectively. Stars like Jackson, Sylvester Stallone and Robin Williams are taking roles in indie films.

We don’t yet have the vocabulary to distinguish these different films, Price said. “We need categories like bantamweight, featherweight, middleweight, so that we can say that in its class, this film is a champion.”

Using only grosses as a measure, only a few indie films are champs in 1997, passing the $10-million mark, compared with at least 10 last year.

But executives say that what truly made 1996 an aberration was the number of award-winning independent films. “The English Patient,” “Shine,” “Fargo,” “Sling Blade,” “Secrets & Lies” and “Breaking the Waves” all garnered Oscar nominations, for example.

That gave smaller film companies more confidence--and they’ve been lobbying academy members to consider films as small as “In the Company of Men,” which grossed less than $3 million.

So far, though, the award-givers have paid far less attention to independents this year. “L.A. Confidential” dominated the film critics’ awards, and “Titanic,” “As Good as It Gets,” “L.A. Confidential” and “Amistad” topped the Golden Globe nominees. “Eve’s Bayou” did dominate the NAACP’s Image Awards nominations, however, beating out studio films “Soul Food,” “Rosewood” and “Amistad” for a total of seven nods.

The motion picture academy won’t release its nominations until Feb. 10. But an Oscar snub will do little to dampen the spirit of the independent film scene that is growing by leaps and bounds. Feature submissions to the Sundance Film Festival went from 250 in 1994 to 600 in 1997. The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival got 1,200 submission in all categories this year and expects more in 1998. Membership in the Independent Feature Project/West is at an all-time high of 4,500.

Price, for one, hopes that means there will be more movies reflecting a diversity of voices--particularly those of women and African Americans, as in the case of “Eve’s Bayou.”

“Kasi is very talented and we were lucky to work with her,” Price said. “But she is also lucky because this was a doorway that was destined to open up, and she was the first person to walk through.

“But it’s a big house. There are a lot of rooms to look forward to.”