J. Neil Schulman
@ Agorist.com
Alongside Night and Libertarian Movies
I write this the day after the 2015 Anthem Libertarian Film Festival closed without playing the most focused, hard-core and just-released libertarian movie — the one based on my novel of the same title, the only one where the libertarian author also wrote, produced, and directed the adapted movie — my own movie, Alongside Night.
So why should anyone else give a damn? Why should even I give a damn when Alongside Night was one of the opening-night movies previewed in a rough cut at the 2013 Freedomfest that hosts the Anthem Film Festival and a few days ago my movie just had its commercial release the same weekend as the 2015 Anthem Film Festival/Freedomfest as a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack … and from all indications my movie has a bright future in multiple-venue and multiple platform distribution?
It’s because I’m one of that rare breed of novelists, screenwriters, and directors able to package a commercial-grade story with core libertarian themes that can also entertain people who disagree with its ideas. People who haven’t done any of this but are in positions of critical judgment over the artistic output of those like us who have done it need to pay attention.
I have four decades in as a celebrated libertarian novelist with major celebrity endorsements, awards, and reviews on my books; also as a libertarian editor and book publisher; a journalist and opinion writer published in major newspapers and magazines; screenwriter for primetime network TV; and I also won three film-festival awards for the first feature film, Lady Magdalene’s, that I produced, wrote, and directed — including a “Special Jury Prize for Libertarian Values” given to me at the 2011 Anthem Film Festival. Got that? The very libertarian film festival that I’m calling out here already gave me an award and its parent convention already played my movie that they rejected as unworthy.
Here’s the Anthem Film Festival’s description on Amazon.com’s Withoutabox website inviting filmmakers to submit:
U.S. Narrative Feature
Narrative features must highlight a libertarian theme. They can be any genre–comedy, drama, action, mystery, etc. They must present a problem created by authoritarian control and resolved by personal innovation or free enterprise. The theme may be subtle. The authority could be a parent, employer, or school board, for example; it does not have to be a government. We are looking for films that celebrate individual initiative, personal accountability, and self-reliance.
Say what else you want about Alongside Night as a movie. Maybe you don’t like my storytelling, my directing, the acting performances, the editing, the music, the visual effects. But if you’re a libertarian wanting your values to compete in the marketplace with movies carrying anti-libertarian content and promoting anti-libertarian themes, you still have to acknowledge that the Anthem Libertarian Film Festival’s call for entries describes Alongside Night. If Alongside Night had played at the 2015 Anthem Film Festival it would have been the only narrative feature film this year.
After receiving 300 film submissions the Anthem Film Festival did not select to screen a single narrative feature film — that means a feature-length movie telling a fictitious or fictionalized story, whether drama or comedy — at its 2015 festival. It played only documentaries and short films that usually appeal only to academics and indie film buffs — movies that with rare exception never have commercial appeal to a wide audience.
For a thriller like Alongside Night with a star-driven cast of actors with major film and TV credits, a film score by a composer with credits in dozens of major Hollywood movies and recorded by the National Symphony of Ukraine, visual effects done by a team that did effects for James Cameron’s Titanic, and produced, written, and directed by the only libertarian-feted author who crossed over into being a libertarian feature filmmaker — the only major libertarian movie release this season — not to play at the only film festival claiming to be libertarian is disgusting. That’s a true statement even when made by the subject of that observation, himself.
I don’t need the Anthem Libertarian Film Festival for my movie to succeed both in finding its audience and getting noticed in the media. See my article “Making Liberty Go Viral.”
But I already saw a previous attempt at a libertarian film festival — Jason Apuzzo and Govinda Murty’s 2004-2008 Liberty Film Festival go under as soon as it aligned itself with the neocon David Horowitz Freedom Center.
This year’s FreedomFest, run by Anthem festival director Jo Ann Skousen’s husband, Mark Skousen — allowed GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Marco Rubio a keynote platform speech at the convention without having a libertarian interlocutor to challenge them on their anti-libertarian positions.
A festival representing itself as pro-liberty — and that’s both Freedomfest and the Anthem Libertarian Film Festival — needs what Andy Levy said about me on Fox News’ Red Eye — “full-on” libertarians who don’t soften their expression to appeal to liberals in the media or conservatives inside the beltway.
As I already said, I don’t need Freedomfest or the Anthem Libertarian Film Festival. I can get my movie out without their help.
But we do need libertarian conventions and film festivals in general to popularize libertarian ideas and get them traction in the mainstream culture.
If Jo Ann and Mark Skousen are not to follow Jason Apuzzo and Govinda Murty into having their outreach diverted by statists in libertarian clothing, they’d better pay attention to why I have a successful four-decade career as a libertarian breaking through into the mainstream media: New York and London book publishers, the Los Angeles Times book review and opinion pages, magazines like National Review and Reason, CBS prime-time network television, and now commercial movie outlets.
I already posted on the Freedomfest Facebook page a suggestion for next-year speakers.
I strongly advise them to stop using trivial differences of personal taste or marginalization of the undiluted libertarian expression as a reason to sabotage their own core mission of popularizing “free minds and free markets” and to take my decades of experience into account.
They might also take into account that if Pat Heller and I had not run into each other at FreedomFest in 2011 when I got my Anthem award for Lady Magdalene’s, Alongside Night never would have secured the financing to get made.
Alongside Night Executive Producer Patrick A. Heller
with Anthem Libertarian Film Festival Director Jo Ann Skousen
Photo Courtesy of Liberty’s Outlook
Like or not, Mark and Jo Ann Skousen are godparents to the movie production of Alongside Night.
Postscript July 18, 2015:
In email correspondence following our public exchange of comments Jo Ann and Mark Skousen wished to make clear that they do not in any way endorse my films, and I wished to make clear that the film festival run by Jo Ann Skousen judges libertarian content in films to be anathema. Mark Skousen also wrote that I’m quickly becoming persona non grata at FreedomFest. If FreedomFest does not reverse its course and stop providing higher profile platforms for Republicans and Neocons than hard-core Rothbardian/LeFevrian/Konkinian libertarians, that will be a badge of honor.
July 14, 2015 - 10:31 am
At Anthem we have to think of our audience as well as our filmmakers, because they are giving up the opportunity to hear one of a dozen other simultaneous events at FreedomFest when they choose to attend a film screening. If they feel that a film has been a waste of their time, they are not likely to return for other films. Consequently, I rely on more than just my opinion when I select films for Anthem. Read what our programmer said about Alongside Night: “This film was simply NOT interesting. The acting is hit and miss. The ‘shopping mall’ scenes are poor quality. Just didn’t find this film compelling in any respect.” Another judge commented on the poor use of music, saying, “An A-list composer and a professional orchestra, yet the music is used so ineffectively by the director that it becomes an annoying distraction to the dialogue.” Alongside Night was screened at FreedomFest in 2013–not Anthem– purely as a favor to Pat Heller, the producer. Although only one other event was occurring at the same time, only 150 people chose to attend that screening–fewer than 10 % of those in attendance at FF that night. I see no reason to bring it back.
July 14, 2015 - 11:21 am
Thank you for engaging.
First of all, to correct the record, we had over 200 attendees at our 2013 FreedomFest screening of Alongside Night, in a ballroom where Kent Hastings and I had to go to Fry’s in the hour before the screening to purchase a second projector and a splitter — and have the hotel bring in a second screen — because there was a divider in the middle of the ballroom that made it impossible for the full-house audience to watch the movie without doubling the projection.
The other FreedomFest opening night movie playing opposite us in the Planet Hollywood theater was Atlas Shrugged Part II — and as I recall you told me there were technical problems with that screening as well and the audience was about the same size as came to our screening. You even asked me if I’d had something to do with sabotaging the Atlas Shrugged screening. No, but all the technically competent people were at our screening.
You need to hire new programmers if they thought the acting in Alongside Night is “hit or miss.”
Look at the IMDb credits for our stars Kevin Sorbo, Jake Busey, Said Faraj, Tim Russ, Garrett Wang, Gary Graham, Mara Marini, and Valence Thomas. Follow the links from Alongside Night on IMDb. You’ll find major motion picture and TV credits up the wazoo.
I double dare you to review Alongside Night for Liberty and go on the record stating what those acting deficits are for those veteran actors or even for our newer or lesser known actors.
Our two young leads, Christian Kramme as Elliot and Reid Cox as Lorimer, can stand up to performers in classic youth movies like Stand by Me or The Breakfast Club.
The shopping mall sequence is iconically libertarian with pure pro-freedom arguments in the dialogue. There’s nothing like it from the standpoint of libertarianism in any other motion picture. Yes, we used some non-actors in that sequence including Pat Heller, Liberty Coin Service’s Tom Coulson, Stateless Sweets’ Jillian Wemyss, and the Moonlight Bunny Ranch’s Dennis Hof. That we used some real merchants rather than actors is one of the things that makes this sequence work. So does the live-action on animation sequence of a classroom gun defense against a Sandy Hook Elementary School type shooter. Tell me another movie that dared to take that issue head-on. Or is libertarian content defending the rights to self-defense with a gun, buying and selling pharmaceuticals prohibited by statists, and defending the right to engage in sex for profit too libertarian for your “libertarian” film festival that had as its opening-night movie this year a documentary with zero libertarian content?
We’re just starting to get reviews since we had a limited theatrical run and our Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack is just now shipping. But you can find some early reviews linked on IMDb.
Now let’s talk about the music.
The underscore selections were 90% made by composer and conductor Daniel May, not me. Other selections were made by our Sound Design & Supervising Sound Editor, Greg Vossberg of Avilon Audio Studios. Look up their credits on IMDb. But even if I’d made the musical selections — and, yes, as the movie’s director and post-production supervisor the buck stopped with me — I’m the son of virtuoso violinist Julius Schulman — the musical underscore in the dining room breakfast scene is his performance of the Canzonetta from Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto — and my musical tastes were forged by my father. You want to debate me on movie music? You want to discuss how I told Daniel May that the feel of the underscore based on Ravel’s Tzigane should be in the same vein as Bernard Hermann’s score for Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451? Make that an event at the next Anthem Film Festival.
Put your programmer on that movie-music panel opposite me. I challenge you.
But you ran this year’s Anthem Libertarian Film Festival without a single narrative feature film.
You do that and how can anyone take your selection process seriously?