COVID-19 Denied ‘Fourteen’ A Theatrical Release. Can The Movie Become An Indie Hit Anyway?

Dan Sallitt was about to have a moment. 

It was March of 2020. His latest feature, Fourteen, had enjoyed a rapturous reception at the Berlin Film Festival a year before. Indie distributor Grasshopper had recently acquired U.S. distribution rights, and had prepared a late March or early April release. Sallitt had spent 2019 taking the movie all over the world, and was excited to give it its proper American debut. This was a quiet, delicate movie about women’s friendship that spanned a decade, in a time where those stories were too rarely told. Fourteen was the biggest movie of a proudly, authentically independent career that had spanned nearly four decades. 

And then, the hammer fell. 

Theaters closed across the country over the span of mere days, thanks to the ravages of COVID-19. Distributors were left with an upcoming slate of movies that no longer had homes. Independent theaters were forced to furlough or lay off staff, their cash reserves running on fumes. The future of independent and arthouse cinema hung in the balance. 

Necessity is often the mother of invention, and as of May 15, Fourteen is now available to watch on demand here in the United States, thanks to Grasshopper’s virtual cinema program. Multiple distributors have taken up the cause, releasing their films to streaming platforms and splitting the gross with independent theaters. What seemed hopeless in mid-March has become a rare opportunity to keep indie movies and the theaters that show them in the public consciousness. 

But those movies are now faced with the task of finding the same eyeballs that are watching Netflix, Disney+, Universal horror movies, and the entirety of linear television. In a world of Tiger King, Frozen II, and Trolls World Tour, the idea of a $100,000 movie about a female friendship finding an audience seems impossible when it no longer has the distinction of living inside a movie theater for a few weeks.

How could Fourteen not only survive, but flourish in that kind of landscape?

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I’ve known Dan Sallitt for more than a decade. We ran in the same critics circles in New York back in the day, and thanks to Sallitt’s generous spirit, we bonded. As such, in the interest of further disclosure, he decided to cast me in small roles in a couple of his films, including Fourteen. (Keep an eye out for me as David, the smarmy literary editor who takes the protagonist, Mara, out to dinner near the movie’s beginning.) 

I’ve learned a lot about Sallitt in those intervening years. For one, don’t let his demeanor fool you. Behind his gentle eyes and lilting tone lies a fiercely tenacious spirit. The soft-spoken 64-year-old may not appear to command a room, but the clarity of his vision is rarely in doubt. “I’m a meticulous planner,” he recently told me over the phone. “It helps me to know exactly what I want when I get to set.” 

It shows. He meticulously plans every word, shot, and cut beforehand. His heroes are post-French New Wave giants of the 1970s and 1980s, not the Americans of the 1990s and 2000s. “I’m a Bazinian,” he says, referring to midcentury French critic and theorist Andre Bazin. “I’m interested in a realistic, minimalist image. If something doesn’t need to be in a scene, it won’t be there.” 

Sallitt keeps his audience on their toes narratively as well as visually. Ten years pass in Fourteen, but it’s not immediately noticeable. There are no dissolves, onscreen text, voiceovers, or fades to black to mark a new phase of the story. There are no overt hair, makeup, or costume changes to cue the viewer that the characters have aged. “That’s something I borrowed from Maurice Pialat’s Á nos amours,” Sallitt said. “I want the audience to figure it out. Whether it’s emotion or story, I want them to try and piece it together.” 

A commitment to this aesthetic means that Sallitt has to do things his way. He’s only made five features since his debut in 1986, a pace that puts old-school Terrence Malick to shame. Sallitt currently works in IT for New York City government. He has self-financed the most recent four features. It’s hard to imagine how he would have been able to make them the way he wanted to if he was suddenly dealing with somebody else’s money. “I’ve rigged my life such that I can save and put that money back into the movies,” he says. 

That philosophy extends to Fourteen. The movie follows Mara (Tallie Medel) and Jo (Norma Kuhling), two best friends from adolescence who navigate their relationship in adulthood. The story’s decadelong arc is seen primarily through Mara’s eyes as she tries to help her increasingly unstable friend, and learn how to find her own way in the world. The camera hardly ever moves. Sex and violence is rare, and almost always occurs offscreen. Pulp Fiction, this is not; hell, it’s not even Wendy and Lucy. 

While many filmmakers where the phrase “independent filmmaker” like an artfully distressed vintage cloak, Sallitt embodies the ethos. In addition to self-financing, he predominantly negotiates his own festival and distribution deals. Fourteen was made for $100,000, the largest budget he’s ever had by some distance. Other recent indie movies considered crossover successes have had budgets ten, twenty, or thirty times that size. 

I needn’t mention that Sallitt doesn’t work with movie stars of any stripe. Nor does he actively pursue contacts in the mainstream film industry that could help open other doors to his work. And he most assuredly has zero interest in existing intellectual property of any kind. Kick in the lack of onscreen sex and violence, and it’s quite easy to see that Sallitt’s movies don’t “sell” in the way we traditionally think movies need to. He’s comfortable right where he is, making what he wants to make. 

His visual style is minimalist, his narratives elliptical, and both are potentially disorienting to the viewer. So are his performances. Sallitt works with a mix of professional and nonprofessional actors, and has a very deliberate, methodical casting and directing process. “I know the way Dan casts,” says Tallie Medel.  “He knows that the actor should be really close to their character.” Sallitt is looking for performers who personally possess some of the qualities of his characters, and can slide easily into their skins. Casting becomes critical for Sallitt, and like every other part of the filmmaking process, he doesn’t take it lightly. In fact, Fourteen began as a desire to write a movie for Medel. “The character of Mara was originally named ‘Tallie,'” Medel revealed to me. 

“He always wants less,” says Medel. “Dan is always going to tell me, ‘strip it down, strip it down.'” I can indeed tell you from direct experience that Sallitt prefers as little affect as the scene requires, just as he does with cinematography, editing, and sound design. What might come off as stilted or talentless is part of a very specific strategy. 

Medel is the best at it, of course. “Tallie has a wonderful way of listening,” says Norma Kuhling. “She does it effortlessly. She has a very quiet, deliberate way of being.”

Medel has a difficult task in Fourteen. Mara, a teacher’s aide who writes short stories, is looking for stability and calm. She’s a caretaker at heart, but doesn’t risk showing herself to too many people. “Mara hasn’t been allowed to be the kind of person who gets a lot of attention, who is super emotive,” says Medel. “That’s been reinforced through her relationship with Jo.” Such a person can’t engage in histrionics; otherwise, she can’t take care of the ones she loves. 

Jo, meanwhile, is another matter entirely. A social worker that keeps getting fired, Jo is the id to Mara’s superego, all instinct while Mara is rational deliberation. If Mara is a warm blanket, Jo is a thunderstorm–loud, brilliant, impossible to look away from, but ultimately destructive. Jo and Mara are contrapuntal forces, and Mara is unable to leave Jo’s orbit. Such a character required a different kind of performance than what Sallitt typically sought in the past. In Kuhling’s hands, Jo became that counterpoint. “Norma brings a naturalness to Jo that people really respond to,” says Sallitt. “It makes the movie feel more natural, more conversational than it otherwise might.”

“[Kuhling] is a very charismatic performer,” remarks filmmaker and historian Brandon Colvin. “Her style is much looser, more casual, and more reflexive than most of the performers Sallitt tends to cast.” That variation between Medel and Kuhling’s styles allows for the movie to be even more emotionally powerful, with two conflicting characters mirrored in their performances. 

Ironically, this counterpoint exists within the actors themselves. If Medel is instinctively calm and receptive, Kuhling is calculatingly chaotic. “What I love about Norma is that she’s a very technical actor,” says Medel. “It was amazing to watch her work to find out who Jo was. Everything was so thought out. She is doing what an actor really needs to do. She is extremely loving and generous and was super invested in making sure these characters’ friendship came through.”

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The production schedule immediately reared its ugly head once filming began in March 2017. Part of the reason Sallitt chose to write a story that unfolded across a decade was that his day job would only allow for intermittent shooting periods of a few days each. Spreading out the shoot would naturally emphasize the passage of time. 

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a challenge. “I’m a naturally nervous filmmaker, but this was hard,” Sallitt said. The film only shot for 22 days, but those days were fit into six separate shooting periods, spread out over 18 months. Right as things got off the ground, Kuhling was cast as a series regular on NBC’s Chicago Med. Kuhling also got sick mid-production, pushing the schedule back even further. “It became this interesting juggling act of filming Chicago Med in Los Angeles and going back to New York to film Fourteen whenever I could,” said Kuhling. 

Such a schedule meant that Medel and Kuhling needed to be extra vigilant about getting back into character. “It was a very long filming period,” Kuhling recalls. “[Tallie and I] both had a lot of stuff happen in our lives. Every time we saw each other again, we had to get back into this relationship. We had to lift each other up. It made the process so much more rewarding to have each other. Luckily, every time we reconnected, it mirrored the film [with time passing]. It was pretty organic.”

Production finally wrapped in August 2018. Six months later, Sallitt, Medel, and Kuhling were fêted with rave reviews and rapturous audiences at the Berlin Film Festival. Distributors noticed. Sallitt made the conscious decision to bring the film to festivals around the world and take his time. “I definitely wanted to wait to premiere it in the States,” he said. “We had some exciting opportunities in places like Spain, Chile, and Uruguay. An American premiere after that would make it feel like a homecoming.” 

Ryan Krivoshey was willing to wait. He had acquired The Unspeakable Act when he was at Cinema Guild, and now he was running his own shop–Grasshopper Film. He had the chance to make Fourteen‘s release an even bigger deal. “We threw our hats in early,” he says. “We came on board late in 2019, and we were ready to make a big announcement in the beginning of the year.” 

Grasshopper announced the acquisition of Fourteen in January 2020. An early spring release was planned. When COVID-19 scuppered the original release strategy, Krivoshey quickly pivoted. 

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Several small distributors all decided at about the same time that their spring releases shouldn’t be left in the lurch while theaters remained physically shuttered. They partnered with independent exhibitors across the country to stream movies online, hosted by the distributors. An audience member could then choose which theater at which they would like to “watch” the film, and half their ticket price would go to that theater, just like a normal theatrical booking. Companies like Kino Lorber, Magnolia, FilmMovement, and Grasshopper all moved multiple titles online. Several other distributors followed suit. Soon, an entire alternative Premium Video on Demand (PVOD) ecosystem–the Virtual Screening Room–had sprung up to counter the PVOD offerings from Apple, Amazon, and cable and satellite television.

Something is certainly lost in the process. Manohla Dargis recently lamented in the New York Times the loss of the commingling of strangers in the dark that a movie theater offered. For me, a movie projected onto a large screen on 35mm or 70mm celluloid film, or a DCP at 2K or 4K resolution, is always going to be a far richer audiovisual experience than a Roku and a fancy LED monitor, much less a laptop, tablet, or phone screen. 

Krivoshey recognizes this. “Grasshopper is a company that believes in a traditional theatrical experience, and we are committed to that.” The claim is often made that independent and arthouse films would be better served to go directly to a streaming service, in order to draw a wider audience. Krivoshey’s comment hints at the counterpoint: smaller films have a harder time drumming up awareness and publicity. They need the buzz from film festivals and theatrical runs in large and midsize markets in order to garner attention for a VOD or streaming release. 

Without theaters, filmmakers are at the mercy of a smaller competitive pool of distributors to pay for their work. If Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu are the only companies bidding on your movie, the acquisition price isn’t going to go up like if those three companies and a dozen theatrical distributors were also involved. What’s more, if the movie does go directly to a streamer, it is beholden to an algorithm that doesn’t guarantee that people will be able to find it. 

“I profoundly miss that physical space and would take those limitations in a heartbeat to get back to the intimacy of watching art with a rapt audience,” says Jesse Trussell, a film programmer at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Trussell was the person who booked Fourteen‘s virtual cinema engagement–and New York premiere–at BAM, and for him, movie theaters matter. 

Medel feels similarly. “A big part of the experience of someone who loves independent film is going to that arthouse and getting to support that institution,” she says. “You know the staff and the projectionist. You want to be there. I love the validation of an audience, not just for myself but for everyone who worked on the movie.”

It’s not just the filmmakers and audience members that lose something without a theater to go to. The theaters themselves lose an even more vital revenue stream. “Virtual cinema is not going to replace the types of revenues that theaters can bring in, especially once you factor in concessions,” Krivoshey says. “As much as this is helping, it won’t be sustainable for them long term.” 

Ever wonder why concessions are so expensive? That’s where theaters actually make their money. They don’t share concession revenue the way they do with tickets, and thanks to wholesale prices, they can mark up their snacks to get themselves into the black. Without that business model, they’re in trouble. Economically, virtual cinema is a mere stop-gap for filmmakers, distributors, and theaters–one that risks impoverishing the entire industry should it become permanent.

It may not matter in the long run. After all, the reason that the all-streaming media universe feels inevitable is that consumers seem to be content only going to the movies three or four times a year. Sallitt is a serious cinephile, and spends a lot of his movie watching time in a theater. So I was surprised to hear him say that he was not committed to a “correct” format in which to see Fourteen. “I’m more curious to see how many people see it this way [in virtual cinema],” he says.

Loath as I am to admit it, he may have a point. Take another of Grasshopper’s virtual cinema releases, Vitalina Varela. Made by Portuguese master Pedro Costa, the film is a tough, challenging masterpiece that even a lot of arthouse patrons might not take an interest in. (It happens to be my pick for the best movie of 2020 so far.) The film played in theaters for three weeks before being pulled thanks to COVID-19. At the time, it was only showing in five theaters nationwide. 

Grasshopper moved the film online, and two months later, Vitalina Varela is “playing” in more than 75 theaters. Most of those theaters have been showing the film for weeks. In a normal context, venues outside major cities might book the film for a single screening, or perhaps for a weekend. Many cities don’t have a theater to support such a release, but might play it once or twice at an annual festival. Now, the film is all over the place. “It is a wildly successful release for us,” Krivoshey admits.

The same might be said for theaters. BAM booked the Brazilian thriller Bacurau from Kino Lorber as part of its virtual cinema programming. (Bacurau gets my vote for second-best movie of 2020.) While the grosses tracking relationship has now been reversed–distributors now report grosses to theaters, rather than vice versa–BAM has developed their own internal tracking, and Bacurau is a hit for them. Ashley Clark, director of programming, told me that a documentary from Zeitgeist, Beyond the Visible, raked in nearly $15,000 in net revenue for the theater, a remarkable total. 

In many ways, virtual cinema is a win-win for distributors and exhibitors. Not only do they continue to offer product to audiences in self-isolation, they don’t need to worry about release windows and theater space. A single screen theater with 200 seats, for example, can now program a dozen movies for weeks at a time and theoretically sell far over their theatrical capacity. That theater no longer has to worry about an incoming movie pushing a high performer off the screen. 

Even Krivoshey has to acknowledge this. “We are reaching far more people just through theater partnerships hosted on our website than would have ever been possible through a traditional theatrical release.”

So how do these films break through? A theatrical run was the only thing separating a movie like Fourteen from the endless flow of content emanating from all corners of television and the internet. Even a major studio–Universal–got into the game, moving several of their movies to PVOD. That strategy included a movie that nominally plays in Fourteen‘s sandbox, Never Rarely Sometimes Always. 

So what? After all, even in a traditional environment, arthouse fare knows from the get-go that it won’t be garnering the box office of a major studio release. Jordan Cronk, head of Los Angeles art film series Acropolis Cinema, said that “I don’t think our competition is commercial cinema; our audience isn’t interested in that. They like adventurous work. Our audience is a group of cinephiles.” Acropolis, unsurprisingly, is Fourteen‘s Los Angeles exhibitor. 

“I know Dan’s following,” Medel says. “I have faith that the people who were counting on Fourteen will seek it out.” Similarly, Cronk says that Acropolis members were asking him about booking Fourteen immediately after its Berlin premiere, more than a year before they had locked in a deal with Grasshopper. Sallitt’s a star, just not among the people who are renting Trolls World Tour for the fifth straight weekend; why worry about never getting on their radars? 

The intimate, clublike atmosphere that independent exhibitors can foster is the thing no other streaming platform can replicate. “Independent theaters are dedicated to their communities, and are able to reach those audiences in unique ways, something that a studio like Universal doesn’t have,” Krivoshey says. “Places like BAM take their deep connections with their audiences and can use that to help cut through the noise,” Trussell notes. As Medel pointed out, you know the projectionist by name at an arthouse; can you say the same for the poor slob running the DCP computer at your local AMC multiplex? 

How does Fourteen fit into all of this? Pretty darn well, actually. The film’s scope might make it uniquely suited to the streaming space. “For such intimate, human scale works like Dan’s, you can see the importance of having champions – especially in the loud, corporate world of the internet,” says Trussell. It’s part of the reason he felt that a unique movie from a Brooklyn-based artist would speak to BAM’s audience. “It feels like we can help give Fourteen a really special moment for its release.”

That moment will indeed be special. Sallitt’s first three movies were only screened sporadically at small festivals and private screenings. The Unspeakable Act got a run in only one city before heading to DVD. Thanks to virtual cinema, Fourteen “opened” in 63 theaters on May 15th. That essentially makes it the Avengers: Endgame of microbudget indie releases. 

It won’t only be coming to New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, either. The movie has also been booked in places like Boise, Oklahoma City, and Columbia, South Carolina, to name but a few markets. There’s a good chance those theaters will play it for longer than a week, too. And that may create its own kind of buzz. 

“With virtual cinema, we may have a chance to bring movies to people who might not otherwise have seen them, or would have to wait a long time to see them,” Krivoshey says. “Now, they can immediately be part of the conversation and help build the movies up.” No more waiting six months or a year–perhaps never–to see that hot ticket of an indie movie. The groovy cinephiles of Burlington and Winston-Salem can swap posts on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit on the same weekend as the spoiled movie nerds of New York and San Francisco. 

That’s not all. What about the folks who register that buzz, but may not have a theater in their community hosting a virtual screening? Both Cronk and Clark are intrigued by the reach their own theaters might gain from outside their cities. “People outside of LA could be watching [these movies],” Cronk notes. “There are so many platforms, and people make a decision about who they want to support, which is a different experience. They may support us, or they may support another theater because they got an exclusive first-run booking, and didn’t want to wait.”

Clark is slightly more optimistic. “One interesting question is how we build from that and look to communicate BAM’s curation to wider audiences in the virtual space; audiences who don’t live anywhere near Brooklyn!” You can’t help but wonder if a lot of these theaters could transition from a physical space to that curse word of the 2010s, a brand. Given the way that distributors, audiences, and the exhibitors themselves relate to independent theaters, it’s not out of the question. 

The expanded reach may not be the only thing working in virtual cinema’s favor when it comes to Fourteen. As Kuhling sees it, the film’s emotional register may hit harder at home than in a theater. “There is a real voyeuristic quality to the film–very quiet, still waters, and then there’s a storm. That emotional intimacy is somehow more acceptable when you’re aware that you’re not in a public space. If I’m investing my energy in making something that leaves me vulnerable, I feel very uncomfortable with people seeing it. When you’re at home, you can access it more deeply, and are freer to let it in.” 

Fourteen is a movie that inspires passion and devotion, much like Sallitt himself and his body of work. “Dan is a unique voice in American independent film,” says Trussell, “whose intimate work feels almost handmade – with surprising structure and bursts of emotional catharsis.”

“I love his recent films,” says Cronk. “His understated style and character-based work is out of fashion these days.” 

“I love that Fourteen was the movie he felt he needed to make and see–a movie about women’s friendships over time,” says Medel. “There’s nobody else making movies like that. I really believe that he’s one of the best American filmmakers we have.”

Nobody makes movies like Dan Sallitt, and that may mean some people won’t like what he does. It’s too specific, too subtle, too outside the aesthetic and narrative frameworks most audiences are accustomed to in 2020. If you do have the patience and the commitment to give over to its rhythms, Fourteen is replete with boundless riches. Yes, Dan is my friend. Yes, he keeps sticking my goofy face in his movies and giving me lines to memorize. No, I am not an objective observer here. But believe me when I tell you that Fourteen is exactly the kind of movie people should be experiencing right now. 

Thanks to virtual cinema, you can.

Evan Davis is a writer living in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @EvanDavisSports

Watch Fourteen On Demand via Grasshopper's Virtual Cinema