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| Quad Cinema Elliott Kanbar Filmmakers Beware of the Quad Cinema Package New York, New York |
| 13th of Oct, 2011 by User218267 |
This is a warning for filmmakers about the deal that is offered to screen films at the prestigious Quad Cinema in New York City. The $11,000 package for a week’s run includes a publicist who “would have cost $4,000-$5,000.†That’s not for getting films reviewed by the NY Times and Village Voice – every film they show gets reviewed no matter who the publicist. The publicist had to be doing other things to be worth that much. Anne Borin, the publicist, was inept at producing materials that were her main function to deliver: a press release, an invitation to a press screening, a schedule for the showings and the Q&As, a package for the press. Hardly worth $4,000-$5,000 even if done well, with no print or media pitches for filmmakers or their films, but she doesn’t do it well. It was a time drain to try to get her materials to work, since she didn’t know the basics of how to produce them, so we ended up doing them ourselves. And she had terrible energy. On the phone she sounded depressed -- terrible for someone who needed to be believably enthusastic. And she was defensive, so not only didn’t she know how to do things but she put up arguments and made justifications when corrections were requested. Then, after we fixed things ourselves and asked her to use our corrected materials, she sent out the ones she had done that were full of error. But it was even worse. Anne said, when she first talked to me, that I’d need to do more than what I got in the package to get an audience, and I paid her $3,500 to recruit customers. I agreed to pay her with a proviso that she give me weekly reports on her activities. I never got any. And, beyond the work she did that came with the contract, to the best of my knowledge the only other thing she did was subcontract with Dan Deevy to get me my audience. It is hard to believe, but when I discovered Dan was a movie critic and he asked if I’d like him to write a review, he wrote a bad one. He said he had to be honest – that he reviews bigger movies and sometimes gives them bad reviews. Unbelievable – they aren’t movies that are paying him to get an audience, and he became irate and accused me of being unprofessional when I complained. The New York Times, by the way, gave my movie a good review. Someone savvy about publicity said that with that Times review I could have filled the houses, but my attendance was lackluster. Deevy did nothing to get me audience except give freebies to paper the house. He had a scheme to enroll comic book stores to bring crowds, but only one of the stores even put up a poster. That’s the only thing Anne told me they were doing, as if this hare-brained idea was going to be a big success. And too bad it didn’t work out but of course there are no guarantees. Between no guarantees and the efforts they made there is a chasm! After the movie opened, I went up and down 13th Street, where the Quad is located, into apartment buildings with doormen and into nearby stores on the cross streets. None of them had any of my material and all of them took material from me to post. And the movie had no listings in places like Time Out, where people in New York find out what’s happening. You would think the $4,000-$5,000 publicist – let alone one who was paid an additional $3,500 -- would at the very least have those bases covered. I had no listing in Village Voice, either, which was specifically advertised as coming with the Quad package. I told Elliott Kanbar, who owns the Quad, that it was bad enough Anne didn’t deliver for him, but she used his authority get money from me. And that the review Dan wrote reduced the take I would have gotten for tickets, all of which, according to the contract, was to come to me. I asked him to deal with her about returning that $3,500. Elliott said she was a free-lancer so he had no responsibility. But wait – she was the $4,000-$5,000 lure that was a selling point for his package, and she spoke to me in the name of the Quad. I did Q&A’s after the two evening shows each night, so I had a chance to ask ticket buyers how they got there. One person had come as a freebie through Dan Deevy and had gotten some friends to pay. Aside from that, all the people came through me or my panelists, or they were regulars at the Quad. So much for $3,500 to bring me customers. Dan Deevy’s C+ review still is there: http://www.thecinemasource.com/blog/movies/what-on-earth-inside-the-crop-circle-mystery/. If you read the Comments, mine and his (he did not post the one I wrote in response to him), know that I never hounded him. I didn’t even know he was a critic until he offered to write the review. From the filmmaker who came into the Quad after me: "I wasn't impressed with Anne's skills in terms of drafting press releases and other written material. I had to spend as much time proofreading her copy as I would have spent if I had just written it from scratch. I didn't think her email blasts looked that professional (lots of colors, fonts, and kind of all over the place in formatting). Given my experience with her I would certainly not pay her anything extra. "While I didn't pay Anne, I did pay Dan Deevy, who she recommended, to bring in people for the press screening (we had 30 people total) and to give out run-of-engagement passes for the Mon-Wed screenings and to put up posters and postcards at the same comic book shops he went to you for yours. I went by a couple of the ones he hit, and they did not have the postcards up and even though I sent him the posters, he did not give any to the storefronts.
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Then there is a lie Elliott told me. The International Documentary Association (IDA) sent out a solicitation for the Quad where they offered a discount on the $11,000 package. I had found Elliott when he was on an IDA panel, and, when I saw that solicitation, after I’d paid him, I asked Elliott if I could have the discount. He said I could have it if the IDA mailing brought in business -- but it didn’t. But then, the mailing went out again. I contacted IDA and they said they make a lot of money from Elliott for sending his solicitations – and obviously he wasn’t paying them more than once if they didn’t get results. |
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To whom it may concern:
I previously made a posting on this website that contained false information about Elliott Kanbar and The Quad Cinema.
I apologize to Elloitt Kanbar and The Quad Cinema for any harm this might have caused them. I retract in full all the statements I made on the above post about Elliott Kanbar and The Quad Cinema.
I request that the administrator of this website remove the above post permanently.
Sincerely,
Suzanne Taylor |
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