Are you an indie filmmaker who craves insight and guidance, but…
• Can find film festivals exhausting?
• Panels, distancing?
• Lectures, too far removed?
• And finally, must make movies for a living or will find themselves utterly and irrevocably screwed?
Well, then. Have I got a deal for you.
Lars Knudsen and Ari Aster, the producer and director behind “Hereditary,” “Midsommar,” and the upcoming “Eddington,” are accepting applications for Square Peg Social and the deadline is July 29. The four-day event in Austin, Texas will provide 20 writer-directors and 10 producers with programming, private dinners, and other intimate gatherings all designed to help you make your movie.
IndieWire is the exclusive media partner for the event, which will run October 23-26. Full application details are here and you can use code INDIEWIREGO for a 25% discount on the application fee.
Speaking on Zoom from Chicago, where he and Square Peg partner Aster are producing Henry Dunham’s “Enemies” starring Austin Butler and Jeremy Allen White, Knudsen is wrapping a month’s worth of night shoots.
He knows it sounds cliched to say that he wanted to give back with Square Peg Social (SPS). That said, after making 50 films, it’s true.
“I just remember starting out and not knowing what to do,” he said. “A lot of filmmakers have struggled. Sometimes when I meet them they say it is super helpful just to talk for 30 minutes and give advice about if what they’re doing is right, or if there’s something I would suggest they do instead.”
SPS sounds like a dream: Four days of smart and talented people — a one-to-one ratio of aspiring filmmakers and like-minded directors, producers, department heads, writers, authors, and talent representatives — all hanging around Soho House Austin, with conversations tailored “around what they would want to hear and not what I think they want to hear,” Knudsen said.
The event’s design, he said, came out of necessity.
“There’s some producers that are very good at teaching and talking,” he said. “And I’m definitely not one of those. I think I am much better in a very informal, intimate, one-on-one setting. I can sit with a young filmmaker for two hours and just tell them everything they want to know but put me in front of a lectern and talk for two hours — that’s just not going to be very productive.”
Knudsen was also inspired by the advice that he and his former producing partner, Jay Van Hoy, received from Matthew Greenfield (now president of Searchlight Pictures) in the earliest days of getting movies on their feet.
“Twenty years later, I still thank him,” he said. “He was producing for Miguel Arteta at the time. He was someone that Jay and I looked up to and would always call if we had a question. It wasn’t really about getting advice; it was just to know, ‘We’ve never done this before and we don’t know what’s around the corner. Are we on the right path?’ For him, it was probably just 15 minutes on the phone. That was enough to feel like, ‘Oh shit, we’re talking to a producer who we admire and he’s telling us that we’re doing the right thing.’ There’s a reason why 20 years later, I still remember it.”
Let’s be clear: To the naked eye, Knudsen, 39, appears to have indie production knocked. He’s released 50 films and has nine more in various stages of production (including Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” which Focus will release this fall), with about 30 projects in play at any given time.
However, the reason behind all this activity goes back to the nature of indie film: For everyone, it is and always will be uncertain.
“It’s fragile. It can be taken away,” he said.” You can have an actor attached to a movie for six months and then that actor decides they don’t want to do it anymore and the movie doesn’t happen. That is something these young producers and directors will definitely experience… the only way for me to keep sane in doing this is just to have a lot. Every day, I want one good thing to happen. Ten bad things could happen. We could have an actor fall off a movie or lose financing, but as long as there’s one good thing to happen on a project, it was enough to kind of keep going.”
If you want to submit your application to SPS, you can find all the details here. (Please note that applicants are responsible for travel and lodging.) And if you want to know what SPS is looking for, it’s this: Talent that looks so good it makes them want to spend four days talking about it.
I’ll close this by letting Lars speak for himself. It’s also good advice for all aspiring filmmakers.
“I mean, some of this stuff is obvious, but it’s someone who has originality and someone with a voice. The people who submit aren’t necessarily people whose films we would produce. It’s people who we feel have to say something important and needed. And I think that can be across all genres and all subjects.
“I think we will kind of know what excites us. I remember meeting with Robert Eggers for the first time, and he hadn’t really done anything. Someone had sort of slipped ‘The Witch’ to us and we met him and hadn’t seen anything he’d done. You kind of have that same thing with Ari. It’s just a gut feeling that … this is what they need to do with their life.
“What a lot of directors have in common is there’s nothing else that they can do but this. And I [want] to feel that in submissions. With Jay and I, when we started producing, we both really, genuinely believed that producing is all we can do. There’s nothing else we can do, and if we don’t produce we’re kind of fucked.
“There’s something exciting and dangerous about that where it’s like, I don’t have a plan B. I don’t have anything to fall back on. I have to succeed. I think the reason why we were able to do as many movies as we did together, and also without any money, was that was what drove us.
“It wasn’t even the love of it,” he said. “It was just like, this is essential. It’s all we have to do. We have to keep going. If we don’t do it, then we’re on the streets. That’s that kind of mindset we’re looking for.”
If that sounds like you, apply now.
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