The better 'Half Nelson'

(SAG-nominated film triumphed over troubled production)

By STEVEN ZEITCHIK

"Half Nelson" with Philip Seymour Hoffman as the teacher, half the budget and no distributor?The little secret of the year's indie-film success story is that, for a long time, it looked like a failure. Investors fell out, buyers got cold feet and its twentysomething filmmaking team scrambled to write, helm and edit their first feature.
But the plucky indie has stayed on the radar, quietly winning slots on critics' top 10 lists and, as of Jan. 4, a lead-actor SAG nom for star Ryan Gosling.
Even the film's origins were a roll of the dice: Writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (who are also a couple) wrote and shot scenes around songs from Canadian mood-rock band Broken Social Scene -- even before they tried to get the band's approval.
Luckily, the rockers agreed to license the songs for next to nothing.
Other snags arose before production.
The $800,000 budget had producer Jamie Patricof of Hunting Lane Films and a private-equity investor sharing the costs. But the investor dropped out, leaving the film without half its budget just weeks away from shooting. Patricof rustled in indie producers like Charlie Corwin and Paul Mezey to get the coin in under the wire.
Gosling -- who worked for scale and is regarded by many as the movie's most powerful asset -- wasn't even supposed to be in the film.
His character, an idealistic but drug-addled teacher, was written as a 35-year-old -- which is why Hoffman and Mark Ruffalo were sent the script. Gosling's reading persuaded the filmmakers to rewrite the role.
Selling the movie wasn't any easier. Despite buzz after its Sundance screening, buyers were nervous about distribbing a movie about a crack-addict teacher.
Miramax came close, but the sides couldn't agree on a price, and other distribs hemmed and hawed. That left ThinkFilm, which despite having limited funds, made an impassioned pitch that landed the pic.
ThinkFilm developed an unorthodox release strategy for the pic, gambling first on an August release to beat the fall glut of prestige pics. It made Gosling and Fleck the centerpiece of the promo campaign, pitching the movie as an early chance to see new talent. And, perhaps most significantly, it never, ever, mentioned drugs in any of its literature.
The logic: "If we had focused on the subject matter it would have kept the film in a ghetto," says ThinkFilm's U.S. distribution prexy Mark Urman.
Of course, how much it got out of the ghetto remains a question.
"Half Nelson" is one of those movies whose box office everyone has an opinion on -- its nearly $3 million to date has some shouting success but others wondering if, given the buzz, it could have taken in more.
As for its kudo campaign, ThinkFilm is circumspect about how much it's spending; it has taken out print ads and reacts strategically to every new bump in interest, like Gosling's SAG nom last week, which prompted it to spend a piece of its preciously small budget on a table at the ceremony and an ad in the guide.
ThinkFilm hopes it can stretch its few dollars by being creative. "If you start spending, you stop thinking," Urman says. And the exec consoles himself with his mission." Of all the awards candidates out there, only two movies are indie films -- "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Half Nelson," he says. "Both went into Sundance indie. And only one came out indie."

Source:Variety