Live from NYFF with Film at Lincoln Center president Daniel Battsek

12:01Ryan Lattanzio:lion but it deserved a prize it was an odd choice for that movie to win the one but whatever we don't need to talk about Venice anymore.

12:08Anne Thompson:So now we get to the box office, which was thrown for a loop by the arrival of Taylor Swift. And it was, and this has happened before, where she completely dive-bombed the box office. And then we have the fall off of our battle, one battle after another. And then we have Smashing Machine, which didn't do well. But I want to bring up our special guest and get him to talk about the box office, because he knows it better than we do. This is Daniel Bassett.

12:40Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, and Daniel is a longtime producer, but he now is the president of Film at Lincoln Center. When was that announced? May? I started in May, yeah.

12:50Anne Thompson:So tell us, why do you think, is 49 % fall off on one battle after another a decent hold or a not good enough hold? I mean, I think when you take it in context with the overall international numbers, it's pretty good and given the competition that it had here it's pretty good and I think it actually demonstrates as even you know just from talking to one's own friends very good word of mouth I mean I think it is getting very good word of mouth it's quite specific as to where the film is performing and it will probably continue that way but I think it's good enough box office for it not to be damaging if you see what I mean in terms of its awards I guess that's why you're sort of I mean both awards and you know there's about awards there's the economics of it of course which are never going to make sense um but then they they must have known that when they gave um you know a director who has never chased box office that that amount of money in in production but I think given the circumstances as you say the Taylor Swift factor which is not something that filmmakers often have to deal with but they've had to deal with two years running now where it just comes in like a, you know, like a sort of bomb into the environment and takes whatever it did,$35 million out of the overall box office.

14:07I mean, that's going to affect everybody. It affected Smashing Machine, and it probably affected the holdover of one battle. But I think, you know, it's now over$100 million for a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, which is perfectly respectable. And remember, I mean, Onora only did like$20 million at the box office. So I know people are always trying to work. It was cheaper. It was cheaper, but I think ultimately that sort of, you know, the perception of whether something has been a success or not at the box office, it plays a sort of weird role. You know, people judge things by completely different kind of circumstances as to whether they think it's going to be damaging or helpful or whatever.

14:45I think right now, One Battle remains a very, very strong candidate, both in the box office and in, you know, whatever comes through on the award side of things.

14:55Anne Thompson:And it's doing better internationally. It's doing great internationally. And I think we'll continue to do so. I think it's the sort of movie that tends to do well internationally as it has a sort of critical look at this country. So it doesn't have to, there's no sort of blue states and red states. Well, maybe there are in Europe now, but not quite the same as it is here. And it also is possible that this Taylor Swift won't have legs like the other Taylor Swift.

15:20Ryan Lattanzio:Well, this one also is a one weekend only event. And when you talk about competition with Taylor Swift, in the Venn diagram of One Battle and Swifties, I don't see a lot of overlap there. But it took a lot of the screens, the premium venues. It takes screens. And I think you'd be surprised, actually. I think Taylor Swift has quite a broad – I mean, yes, it's not that specific. But it has a reasonably broad demographic, I would imagine. but it's really just the overall effect of a sort of a massive movie that wasn't there and suddenly was there. It just sucks some of the air out of the whole environment.

16:00Ryan Lattanzio:It's interesting that this, look, I don't need to get us down on the Taylor Swift road and then plus that does put like a target on me if I disparage her in any way. So I don't want to implicate you in that but it is interesting that for once both this visual album movie that I only saw clips of and it looked like it was just sort of slapped together on a deadline. Whereas I thought the Aristarabh movie had some actual skill to the filmmaking. Both that visual album and the album itself were not well received by critics, which normally they're slavishly agilatory toward her. Even my daughter didn't like the album.

16:34Anne Thompson:I did not either.

16:35Ryan Lattanzio:No, that album really has me really questioning a lot of what I was thinking. I think we should. You're definitely using up my Taylor Swift knowledge, so we should probably move on from this. Sorry about that. Sorry, that's my fan. Daniel, why don't you tell us about, are there films that the festival chased that weren't in the lineup? Or, you know, another way into that is how you ended up with some of these world premieres, like Gava Guy, which I saw, which is directed by Ulrich Kohler, who's the husband of Maren Adda, the director of Tony Eerdman, and then Anemone and Is This Thing On? But then something that curiously wasn't here.

17:13Ryan Lattanzio:And Rebecca Miller's. And Rebecca Miller's. And Ben Stiller. Yeah, exactly. But then curiously, something that wasn't here was Anne Lee, even though I kind of thought it would be because The Brutalist was such a to-do here last year. And she's in New York. But then that's at Beyond Fest now. I mean, we, that is Dennis Lim, who's the artistic director and the selection committee. And we don't really comment on what we selected or why we selected or what we left out. I do think that it's not a terrible thing for certain people to think we should have played this or we should have played that. I don't want the festival, and I'm sure Dennis doesn't want the festival, to just simply be a sort of accumulation of all the other films that have done well at other festivals.

17:54So I think that's kind of why it's so curated and I think what gives it such strength. yes there are films that we would have liked to have shown but for whatever reason they didn't want to play this festival or the festival circuit at all as you know One Battle played no film festivals whatsoever but you know it's yes there is some disappointment in that but we're very happy with the overall selection we're very happy with the world premieres that we do have I think it's fantastic to have Bradley Cooper's film as our closing film, you know, which will probably be the world premiere for most of the people working on it because I know he's he's been working on it, you know, sort of right up to the last minute as he tends to do.

18:43So that's incredibly exciting. And, you know, the movies, several of which you've mentioned tonight, I think represent what we want the film festival to have, which is this huge variety of films, a feeling of having really selected the best of the best and always to have interesting films. I mean, it's funny you mentioned Pillion. I mean, what I take from Pillion is this extraordinary Britishness about it, that the Harry Melling character going on these sort of extraordinary adventures still comes back to his, you know, sort of mom and dad and his sort of very suburban English kind of normality, if you like, if that's the right way of describing it.

19:29And I think that is so symptomatic of kind of a certain British sensibility. And yes, you talked about the Jarmusch, which even though obviously I love all of our films, equally happens to be a real favorite of mine. And I do love the end, but then maybe the last piece. But then I have twins, so maybe that's why it spoke to me particularly.

19:51Ryan Lattanzio:And to remind, I reviewed this movie extremely positively. I know, you did. I do love it as well. You're allowed to have criticisms of it. There's nothing wrong with that.

19:59Anne Thompson:So let's talk about the New York Film Festival business. You guys seem to have been doing very well over the past few years. How are you doing this year? How are the sales? What are the big, big, big titles that are selling out? I think what's so kind of positive is the kind of spread, you know, and the fact that, you know, we put tickets on sale quite a lot in advance of the festival. when none of the films have actually been, I think maybe we'd already announced your favorite film, our opening film, but very few of the others. And, you know, we already built up a kind of foundation of advanced ticket sales before anybody even knew what we were showing.

20:45So I think that the reputation of the festival goes ahead of it. It's been really, really good this year. You know, I think we're up to something like 80 ,000 tickets issued, which is ahead of the final number for last year. And we've still got four days to go. What's sort of particularly encouraging is we did a survey of last year's festival and I think, you know, like 35 or 50, 60 % of the tickets were sold to a kind of 20 to 45 demographic to quite a young audience, which is, again, something that we're seeing throughout the year with our seasons at the Walter Reed and here, indeed, at Eleanor Boonin, that a younger audience, an audience that might previously particularly been seen as either not a cinema-going audience or a downtown audience are actually coming here.

21:43So there's a lot of things to be encouraged about. But the most exciting thing for me, having been on the other side of this, you know, I've had films that have opened the festival, I've had films in the festival, is to kind of be behind the velvet curtain, basically, and seeing, you know, just wandering around the lines outside, the standby lines, looking for tickets for sold out shows, being in screenings, coming out with audiences, as I always used to do when I had films in, that was one of my sort of little tricks, was just to wander out with the audience and listen to them chatting to each other.

22:16Anne Thompson:So we haven't done a proper introduction of you. You have been, you started out at Palace Films, right, in the UK. And then you came over to the States and you worked at Miramax. You worked with Harvey Weinstein. You survived Harvey Weinstein. With, not for. And the Cohen Media Group. Charles Cohen is another notoriously not easy person to work for, with and then National Geographic Films and then for a while now I have associated you with UK's Film 4 so now you're back here in New York, welcome back Thank you, thank you I've had a sort of varied career I've worked for a lot of different companies I've kind of done everything else except this, I mean I've done distribution marketing, publicity development, finance, production the works really so and that's kind of what i'm bringing some little pieces of all of that to this a sort of you know real connection to the audience a connection to kind of the business i mean not that that film at lincoln said didn't have that but but maybe not someone who's quite as sort of um i don't know streetwise i suppose but it's still early days we'll see whether how whether they respond well to that.

23:42But it's been really, really good so far. And yeah, I've enjoyed, I mean, it's been very interesting. It was very interesting for me to be, there's a kind of church and state in terms of the selection committee for the festival myself, but I can't resist getting involved. And it's just been great watching how kind of conscientious and diligent Dennis and his team are, which sort of slightly made me, you know, I mean, And I've had films that have been rejected here, and I kind of thought, oh, they probably just didn't even watch them. Now I discovered that they did watch them and still rejected them.

24:15So it's a slightly double-edged sword.

24:19Anne Thompson:What was the opening night one that you had that you remember? Well, The Queen, that was pretty much my first film that I produced at Miramax. And it was, yeah, like one of my, you know, definitely my proudest moments is to be here for that. I mean, I'd never been to a festival that, treats, apart from Cannes, I suppose, that's the only other festival where I feel like the filmmakers are really put on a pedestal. It's all about them. It's not about the festival. And just that moment where at the end of the film, you know, there's a kind of, you know, sort of a light box and the spotlight shines on the filmmakers and the audience just kind of look up.

25:03And, you know, for those for Stephen Frears and Helen Mirren I mean they'd never really experienced anything like that I mean this is quite a way back obviously that was the year that Helen won Best Actress Oscar but at that point this was a film that had originally been made for TV and was now given this extraordinary kind of theatrical launch and yeah it meant a huge amount

25:26Ryan Lattanzio:Julia Roberts said that the premiere was one of her top three New York favorite moments I don't know what the other two were but uh obviously nyff isn't a market festival and a lot of films do come into this festival already with distribution that pressure is sort of off but i wonder as a as a longtime producer and many other industry roles now turn festival director what your thoughts or observations are about the fact that there it is a compressed time for acquisitions and we there's movies dating back to sundance this year that we still haven't seen a distributor on And obviously one genre that's really impacted by this is documentaries, which you also have done a lot of work in.

26:05Yeah, you know, I think that the business of independent film has always is eternally a rocky one. This is for documentaries appears to be one of the more difficult times. We do have, you know, we do have a few documentaries. Maybe we should do more. But I think the festival as a whole, as I said, kind of tries to span as much of the films from around the world as it possibly can. But as you say, it's not a market. It's not trying to be a market. There are other festivals that have somewhat of a transition. I mean Sundance of course quite literally is in a period of transition as it's about to leave its home base for the first time in however many years it was there.

26:55Toronto is I think about to turn itself I've always thought of it as a market but apparently it's now actually going to be a market it's just it's just a tricky time but I don't think I've ever known a time that anyone in independent film has kind of gone oh great it's all sorted now everything's fine I mean I just that's sort of not the nature of that particular beast.

27:14Anne Thompson:Do you feel like some things are looking dire or do you feel optimistic about what the potential is? Which way do you go? I'm always glass half full. No, I really am. I really am. And I guess the thing that is driving that optimism is based on the audience, is based on an audience that I believe is growing quite significantly of younger uh of young i mean i know i know my you know to use one's own kids is a very small focus group but nevertheless just very interesting to watch how they have rediscovered cinema and not just blockbusters in fact probably not blockbusters at all more kind of proper movies you know that they want to see they want to see 35 mil prints the same way they want to buy vinyl you know it's kind of there's been a sort of weird turnaround and a return to you know sort of cinema that I grew up on and that got me excited in the first place

28:20Ryan Lattanzio:so I had a kind of fun one for you Daniel which is totally unrelated to NYFF but since we're celebrating PTA these days so I read you were at Miramax during the time when both there will be blood and no country for old men were acquired right so you were you were involved in that So I feel like those two movies there kind of was a I was 17 that year But there was kind of a cultural there was a line in the sand in a way between those two movies that they're both Kind of dwell in Americana and they both are these return to form from respected auteurs that we hadn't heard from in a minute Or at least in the case of the Coens they kind of had some duds around that time.

28:59Ryan Lattanzio:I think Yeah, I don't know was that something that you were kind of and obviously they were jockeying against each other at the Oscars, but was that something that you were one aware of? And then two, did you, do you have a favorite or one that you are partial to? Of course, I guess you're not going to tell me that either. Won't exactly tell you that, but I will, it, it, it, it does both give me a huge amount of kind of great memories and a lot of chills down the back of my spine, because those were the days where you had this thing called the weekend read, where as a, you know, as if you're running a studio, as I was, you would be delivered scripts on a Friday that you had to read and decide on by the Monday.

29:38And this was very early in my Miramax time. I was delivered by another infamous name. Scott Rudin. Both those scripts, I had to read them and greenlight them both in one weekend. And on one hand, looking back now, it seems like, yeah, well, who wouldn't greenlight those two movies? They both went on to, you know, be very successful and to win Oscars. But imagine just reading both of them in a weekend. And I, you know, I mean, I kind of I knew about the American business and I knew a fair reasonable amount, but I'd never worked here before. I really didn't necessarily understand the market. So plus both of them were outside my usual green light sort of budget number.

30:26So there was a huge amount of stress. Then it got even more complicated because we were partnering with Paramount Vantage on both of them. And there was a lot of jockeying about who was going to get... John Lesher. Thank you, Anne. I saw him last night, actually, because he's the producer of the Still a Mirror documentary. Yeah, there was a lot of jockeying as to who would have domestic and who would have international. I had a relationship with the Coen brothers because I had, at Palace Pictures, acquired Blood Simple. So that seemed to be the deciding factor that we ended up with the domestic.

31:02But I mean, they were both co-financed by us. So we had to sort of share the love between both of them. But No Country was the one that went on to win Best Picture and I think four other Oscars, I think. And There Will Be Blood, I guess, probably just one for Daniel, I think, if I'm right. But when I introduced, because we did actually have a screening of One Battle at the Walter Reed a couple of weeks ago, it seems like about a year ago now. And when I introduced Paul, I said, you know, we have this backstory because we worked on There Will Be Blood and I have great memories of it. I hope you do too.

31:43He did get up and he said, yes, of course I have good memories of it. What's he going to say? He doesn't have any good memories. Well, you know.

31:49Anne Thompson:But you know, the New York Film Festival really does have an impact on the Oscar race. It seems to make a big difference if you play well here. Yes, but I like to think we don't position, we're not the ones positioning ourselves as a kind of launch pad or a staging post. We're the New York Film Festival. We stand for what we stand for. The films that we select, if they get a kind of wind in their sails as a result, then great. I'm happy about that. But I guess I don't want to be seen, as I say, as just some sort of staging post that goes Cannes or Venice and then Telluride. And then I want New York to stand out in a sort of unique way.

32:38Ryan Lattanzio:I don't think the festival is definitely, it's not curating with awards. Not at all. in mind whereas we see the other there's other festivals that do kind of do that um i'm not necessarily ones you just named but you know that is something that i observe yeah i think that's true um and and you know i think what i've loved about this year's festival is that we've had this incredible variety um and if you look at what we were talking about taylor swift earlier but in terms of music icons we've had a night with bruce springsteen and then the other night uh bad bunny was here so so it's kind of we sort of seem to manage to um hit various uh music uh sort of

33:21Anne Thompson:audiences as well as film audiences no question about him well i think you've uh been very kind to join us here thank you um it's been a long-held ambition of mine and every time i kind of thought I wonder if they'll invite me on. You invite Tom Quinn on. So I kind of, I'm very happy to have got this seat for once. He couldn't make it this year. You're the also-ran, of course.

33:46Ryan Lattanzio:Well, we do want to take a few minutes for some audience questions. So you can just wait till the mic gets to you. Thanks.

33:53Anne Thompson:Thank you. I saw Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, and I love the film and I noticed that each of the three episodes had a Rolex watch and I was wondering since Rolex is sponsoring the film festival, did that contribute to it being the centerpiece?

34:16Very good question. I'll give you an honest answer. They were completely surprised. They had no idea and obviously we had no idea when we saw the film that it was going to have what appeared to be product placement. As you know, there are also various other themes that run through it, skateboarding, toasting, not with alcohol. So it was just one of the themes. But genuinely, it had nothing to do with the decision. And genuinely, Rolex were kind of as surprised as we were to mind that their watches played such a role. But that's a fair question. I hope you believe my answer, which is in fact true.

35:00Ryan Lattanzio:And that movie is produced by Saint Laurent Fashion House. So there obviously is an eye for couture and detail. Yeah, and I was talking to Jim Jarmusch about that. And apparently all the clothes are in fact designed by Yves Saint Laurent, even though they don't necessarily look like that, especially Tom Waits' original outfit.

35:18Anne Thompson:So I was lucky enough to see Sound of Falling last, I don't know, a couple of days ago. But I try to always see foreign films that come here that I don't think are likely to be distributed in the United States. So I commend you guys for bringing some of those. But I guess the question, and I don't know if this kind of falls into the category of you can't comment on the films, but what is your favorite film that you have seen this year at the festival? Or does this kind of fall? I can't answer that. What I will say is that, well, two of my favorite films that I saw in Cannes were Sound of Falling.

35:53that was I think the first film I saw in Cannes. So in a way it was the first film I saw, you know, in this role. And it was incredibly exciting to see kind of just the ideas in that, both cinematic and narrative. And Secret Agent was the other movie that I loved out of Cannes and that has indeed played at the New York Film Festival. So that's a sort of slightly cryptic way of answering your question.

36:22Ryan Lattanzio:and those two at least those both do have distribution so those are in those are in good hands at this point for the oscars

36:30Anne Thompson:thank you all so much it's been a beautiful festival

36:34Ryan Lattanzio:I'm curious as a programmer I'm always fascinated by the themes that I see in films be it color or music or animals and filmmakers don't realize they're all kind of saying the same thing I'm just wondering if you saw anything besides I'm seeing a lot of parental loss and things like that but what what themes you're seeing um yeah it's interesting that i again that's really more a question for dennis limb and his team as to whether there are narrative themes but as you say sometimes you discover as you watch movies that there are themes that you that connect films i'd say probably yeah family is is very apparent um there's a great movie that hasn't shown yet the park john wook film no other choice which doesn't appear to be about that necessarily but the the sense of family is incredibly strong in it and uh and so i think that that's a theme that probably does connect two or three or probably more uh movies that are that have been selected this year i think also apocalyptic end times annihilation the house of dynamite yeah those kind of things are i've seen a lot of that this fall festival

37:52Anne Thompson:season i wonder why thank you everybody for coming thank you it's always good to see your faces

38:07turn it up storm has zero sugar and 200 milligrams of caffeine so you can turn that workout up a notch good energy in good energy out energy for life