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Born in Los Angeles November 6, 1952, Producer Gary Goetzman began working in the music industry in the 1980s. He produced his first movie in 1984, Stop Making Sense, the innovative concert film of The Talking Heads directed by Johnathan Demme. Goetzman served as executive producer on Demme's 1991 hit The Silence of the Lambs. He produced (with Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson) the unlikely 2002 hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding. "Made for $5 million, spurned by its original distributor and damned with faint praise from critics when it opened in April, the film has been an under-the-radar industry sensation. Now on 455 screens, the movie has taken in $13.6 million so far and is on pace to equal the success of "Memento," which brought in $25 million two years ago." (LA Times, 6/18/02, Patrick Goldstein) Patrick Goldstein writes in the 6/18/02 LA Times that what has devastated the indie film business is the dramatic decline in their home video and pay-TV business. Because of the rise in marketing costs, theatrical release is a loss leader. As Viacom's Mel Karmazin says: "Without video rentals, there is no studio business." Goldstein notes that the top video retailers have frozen out all but the most successful indie films. "As recently as three or four years ago, indies could still count on chains like Blockbuster to buy two copies for each store of a theatrically released indie film. At $40 a video, that could add up to nearly $1 million in revenue, often the difference between profit and loss for a low-budget film. Today most chains will only pay the indie film distributor a few dollars to cover its video manufacturing costs and then offer a percentage of the rental revenues, shifting the risk from the video stores back to the distributor." (LAT, 6/18/02)
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