Eric Kohn of IndieWire quotes Jim Cummings as saying, “Agencies don’t actually care about independent film,” in Your Agent Is a Con Artist: ‘The Beta Test’ Director Jim Cummings Wants to Liberate Indie Filmmaking.

Cummings’s thesis is that no one can do a better job monetizing your film than you. He says, “You have to have some business savvy in order to do anything. The film industry is no different, and you shouldn’t give your movie to people who don’t really care about the thing.”

His new movie The Beta Test is about how agencies package deals with their talent. Cummins explains, “The point was to inoculate independent filmmakers to not want to participate in that world — to not be fucked over by the way this culture is built. That has been my raison d’être over the last 10 years.”

Kohn asks, “If the movie is a cautionary tale, what would you like to see filmmakers do instead?” and Cummings replies:

“Exactly what we did. The story of the movie is that agencies don’t actually care about independent film. They care about money and power. But the way we made the film was completely circumventing that system. We ran a Wefunder campaign. It’s a crowd equity platform. We made the movie in our offices with our friends cast in all the parts. We did all of the distribution by ourselves without sales agents. The future is going to be a lot more like talented YouTubers making 90-minute pieces of content. That’s what real democracy is. You can waste a huge amount of your life working for people who don’t care about you.”

My take: This is a great read, and advice to heed. For review, please see Mark Duplass‘s seminal presentation The Calvary Is Not Coming.