Hollywood, 1968. Peter Bogdanovich has managed to get his undistributed film Targets before the eyes of a fledgling Paramount exec named Robert Evans. Planning to sample a reel or two, before Evans knows it the picture is over and he is pimping it to his bosses at Gulf+Western, who aren't persuaded by his championing of this low-budget ($130,000, which, yes, was miniscule even in the late sixties) affair with exploitation subject matter and an arthouse mien.

Bogdanovich decides to show the movie at USC and invite people he knew from his tour of duty as a film critic, writers for DAILY VARIETY and THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. If you like the film, you will review it, if you hate it, you will not, is the deal he strikes with his reporter friends. They exit the screening singing its praises all the way to press, Evans is now vouched-for by the two most influential trade publications in America, and Paramount buys Targets. The studio bungles the release, but that's another story.

As I was listening to Bogdanovich tell this anecdote on the DVD release of Targets, the lightning bolt of inspiration struck. For here I was, thirty-six years after the fact, with a copy of an almost-lost movie in my hands that has been a favourite of mine since the first time I laid eyes on it as a teenager. It filled me with the religious feeling you inherit when you think your keys are missing, and it turns out they were in your other pocket the whole time.

Everybody talks about the motion pictures from the dawn of cinema that have vanished because they were poorly preserved, but what about those born in a coffin? The backwash of film festivals is infested with undistributed movies that will, as their creators chalk it up to experience, their investors return to real estate, and their viewers siphon them off to the subconscious, give lie to the proverb that asks if a tree falls in a forest, etc.

Thanks to the proliferation of DVD, the "undistributed movie" is becoming an endangered species. But still, the promotional budget for some of the home video companies that have taken up the cause all but nullifies the availability of their titles--the problem remains getting films seen. With a currently healthy readership, we at FILM FREAK CENTRAL felt it was time to throw the true, post-/sub-Miramax independents into sharper relief; that's not to say we intend to review only those pictures that find their way into our hearts (please bear that in mind if you contact us regarding the submission of screeners), but we do hope that our support, when it comes, assists a publicity-starved filmmaker.

"iViews" will happen in issues, their frequency dependent upon how many applicable films we see and how many outstanding obligations we have to the mother site.

Join us in this labour of movie-love.

Bill Chambers,
Editor, Film Freak Central
January 19, 2004

© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net

last updated:8/27/2006

ISSUE #8
-Family
-Independent America
-Sidekick
part two: shorts
-live-action and animated shorts from Sundance 06

ISSUE #7
-Alive and Lubricated
-Bums
-find love
-Destricted
part two: shorts
-Broken
-Stranger
part three: miscellany
-The Top 10 Internet Videos of 2005

ISSUE #6
-Worldwide Short Film Festival: Midnight Mania - Freaky

ISSUE #5
-Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession
-Purgatory House
-Getting Out of Rhode Island
-2046
-Return to Innocence

ISSUE #3/#4
part one: features
-Last Exit
-12
-Words
part two: festivals/shorts
-The International Festival of Cinema and Technology
-The Christmas Party
-El Elegante
-Harvie Krumpet
-Investigaytion
part three: interviews
-Jennifer Baichwal, director of The True Meaning of Pictures

ISSUE #2
-Killer Me
-The Debut
-People's Broken Noses Compliment Their Broken Faces

ISSUE #1
-Expiration
-The True Meaning of Pictures