Diary of an Aspiring Filmmaker

A hobby or a business? Arizona judge's ruling threatens documentary filmmakers

Arizona tax judge Diane Kroupa ruled that director Lee Storey could not deductexpenses for her documentary, "Smile 'Til It Hurts: The Up with People Story,"because documentary filmmaking is a hobby, not a business.
Director Lee Storey.

Editor's note: Ford Gunter periodically chronicles his journey in making his first film, Art Car: The Movie. In his latest column, he explores the latest threat against documentary filmmakers.

It's hard to understand the motivations of Diane Kroupa. A judge in the United States Tax Court, appointed in 2003 by then-president George W. Bush, Kroupa made a statement earlier this year that could literally spell doom for the independent documentary filmmaker (ie., 99 percent of all documentary filmmakers).

Kroupa was presiding over a trial in her Arizona courtroom in which the IRS was objecting to Lee Storey trying to deduct business expenses incurred while making her documentary, Smile 'Til It Hurts: The Up with People Story.

It's a common practice in filmmaking and any other business. You write off your expenses. Hotels, airfare, travel, equipment, meals, etc. The money CultureMap spends on this website is no doubt written off every year, and if it's not, this sentence will no doubt be removed by an editor.

But on March 9, Kroupa said that documentary films could not be considered a business, because their primary purpose is to "educate and expose" instead of make money. She said they are a "hobby." (Cheers to the Huffington Post for the best rebuttal: "Which of course means Harvard University is a hobby.")

The decision is not final, but if accepted, Kroupa's stance could all but erase the documentary film industry overnight. Not only would filmmakers not be able to write off expenses, but there's even talk of the IRS going after some filmmakers for back taxes — hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the case of some films, including Storey's. The International Documentary Association is understandably concerned and filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Tax Court to recognize documentaries as for-profit ventures.

To contest Kroupa, one needs to look no further than this year's Academy Award-winner for Best Documentary Feature, Inside Job, which has so-far grossed more than $10 million on a budget of $2 million. I don't know about you, but I could definitely get down with a hobby that brings in $8 million. For. Fucking. Sure.

Of course, the vast majority of documentaries don't make a profit. But then again, the vast majority of all movies don't make a profit, independent or otherwise. Hollywood's batting average is paltry at best, with their relentlessly rolling shitbomb after shitbomb off the studio assembly line, each packaged behind expensive stars, fueled by marketing campaigns that reach into the tens of millions of dollars (written off without question), and shoved down our throats in sterile megaplexes that offer six summer movies on 14 screens and might get artsy once a year with a run of Black Swan.

(Full disclosure: I have not seen any of the aforementioned shitbombs, but then again, why would I? They're shitbombs.)

But the studios exist to make money, and if they make it on people willing to pay to see bad movies, more power to them. Honestly. Maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to make my very own, very expensive shitbomb. Then I'll know I've arrived.

In the meantime, the real question is, with the dearth of alternative choices in the theaters, do we really need to be going after documentary filmmakers?

The entire industry is a lot like the American economic demographic. The very top earners, the Michael Moores, the Alex Gibneys, the Werner Herzogs, the Morgan Spurlocks, are getting their movies funded anyway. They are like the top 1 percent of America that controls 42 percent of the wealth, but it's probably even worse.

The rest of us are scrambling to apply for the same grants and use the same crowdsource funding sites (like this and this), all while trying to support our local film industries and filmmakers by forwarding around their campaigns, all while trying not to cannibalize or fatigue our potential revenue streams, however slight they may be. In the documentary film world, the rich may not necessarily be getting richer, but the poor could soon be getting a lot poorer.

So again, what is Kroupa's motivation? I really don't know. Surely she can't think that all these back taxes will make a dent in anything related to our federal deficit, which is rising so fast I couldn't even get a read on how far it had climbed in the time it took me to cut and paste the link. (Let's put it this way: The hundreds of thousands the IRS is seeking from Storey would have stopped the counter for less than two seconds, but that's not factoring in the money the government is spending to prosecute her.)

What I do know is that I hope someone is already making a documentary about this case. And I hope they are spending good money to do it. And I hope they are writing their expenses off. Left and right. Like a motherfucker.

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Movie Review

Spielberg-inspired movie The End of Oak Street is a dino-snore

Photo by Daniel McFadden

Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in The End of Oak Street.

Steven Spielberg is the iconic director of the last 50 years, so it’s no surprise that many other filmmakers have borrowed from his classic films. But most of the time those come in the form of references or homages, not straight up theft, which is what it feels like watching The End of Oak Street play out in front of your eyes.

Set in the early 1980s in an idyllic suburban neighborhood of an unnamed city, Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are parents to two teenagers, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). They’re also possibly heading toward divorce, as Audrey is secretly writing a novel with a thinly-veiled plot about their life, and Brian is cagey about having to earn extra money with a pizza delivery job.

That all gets put on the backburner when a mysterious event takes their entire neighborhood back to the time of dinosaurs. Armed with little more than a shotgun and sledgehammer, Audrey and Brian do their best to keep the family safe in their house. But the longer the ordeal goes on, circumstances force them out onto the streets and into the increasing danger that’s all around them.

Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, the film tries immensely hard to be like the Spielberg movies its filmmaker clearly adores, but fails at almost every turn. It never earns the broken family in ‘80s suburbia vibes that were prevalent in E.T., going all in right away in the opening scene with a neighborhood block party that feels forced. Other elements like a bully who has it out for Brian, the family dog that disappears, and an angry neighbor come across as the tropes they are and not as organic parts of the plot.

When it finally gets to its dinosaur sequences, they pale in comparison to those found in Jurassic Park. The strange manner in which the dinosaurs appear is a big part of that, but the action involving them forgoes ominous moments that could build tension for those that play up gore in an unexpected way for a PG-13 movie. Many of the attacks have so little emotional meaning that they come off as comical, which is entertaining but in a hollow way.

As if those weren’t enough, Mitchell — perhaps at the behest of producer J.J. Abrams (who made his own Spielbergian film, Super 8) — tries to honor Spielberg in other ways. Just like in Jaws, he employs the use of a split diopter lens, which keeps characters in both the foreground and background in focus. But instead of using it judiciously, it’s brought out in three separate scenes, including a laughable one with the four family members where it turns into overkill.

Hathaway, coming off of a role in The Odyssey that could earn her an Oscar nomination, is the best part of this film. But even her evident skills are dragged down by the ridiculousness of the story, which requires hysterics that even she can’t sell. McGregor can normally be counted on for a good performance, but he gives several line readings with strange cadences that make his already-underwritten character come off worse. Stella and Convery are okay, but their roles are unmemorable overall.

Mitchell and his team can never settle on exactly what type of film they were trying to make, and so even though The End of Oak Street has a few moments that work, they’re surrounded by many others that don’t. In trying to emulate Spielberg — there’s even a blatant Back to the Future (produced by Spielberg) rip-off towards the end — all Mitchell has done is show how difficult it is to be the master.

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The End of Oak Street opens in theaters on August 14.