In a Film Courage interview, indie filmmaker Geoff Ryan claims, “Your movie will never compete with Hollywood.”
Given that, what should we do?
“I wanted to create something that people would walk away from thinking I’ve never seen anything like that before. A small indie like this can’t compete with Hollywood for spectacle and star power, but we can try to make much more interesting films at least. Make something that when people walk away from it they don’t just forget about it. I want to say it was Kubrick but some director I remember reading years ago said I don’t care if they love it or hate it, I want them to remember it.“
Looks like he’s done that with his latest feature; see the trailer below.
My take: this is great advice! Lacking millions of dollars, we must have something else to beat Hollywood at its own game. That something is: story, attitude and ingenuity.
Geoff Ryan makes me think of Lowell Dean. Watching Geoff Ryan’s trailer for ‘Blood from Stone’ made me think of Lowell Dean’s ‘Wolf Cop’ and ‘Another Wolf Cop’. Lowell believed ‘story and ingenuity are first and foremost’. He didn’t say ‘attitude’ during his seminar with us in the CineVic Incubators classes, however he showed us clips the few words that dropped from a few people’s mouths were ‘cheesy’, ‘cheeky humour’ and ‘badass’. While I don’t get the sense that Geoff Ryan has ‘cheeky humour’, I would like to see the ‘Blood from Stone’ for the sake of comparing some time.