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Mr. Langer suggests that we should “follow the money” on each of these films. It would be good if he did the same. For example, his chart implies that Sony Pictures Classics paid the producers of In the Company of Men to make the film. They did not. The five-figure (not “seven-figure”) budget of this film was raised through the family and friends of the director Neil LaBute. The answer print was loaned to them by the film laboratory. Key members of the cast and crew waived a salary for a percentage of the producer’s net gross, which after prints and advertising costs and Sony’s distribution fee will be very little money. These people gave up their time and creative energy to make a great film. They had no connection, financial or otherwise, to Sony. It is insulting to these people to negate their sacrifice by suggesting that Sony was “lurking behind” the creation of this film. The Sundance Film Festival got them a foreign distributor, but Sony Pictures Classics did not agree to distribute the film domestically until three months after the festival and eight months after the film was “made.”
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