They say there are no more original ideas in Hollywood, but filmmakers Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar want to give something new a try. At least as far as independent film financing is concerned.
The duo have directed, written and produced two films — Sing Sing, out this weekend via A24, and 2021’s Jockey — using a model that sees everyone who works on the film, from the PAs to the director to the star at the top of the call sheet, paid the same wage. Additionally, everyone involved in the production above and below the line received equity. Now, they are starting a company, Ethos, with the goal of using their model to help other independent filmmakers do the same.
“When I came into the business, one thing I was very aware of was just the lack of transparency and therefore, a growing mistrust on behalf of all the people involved in making the film,” says Kwedar.
As with any workplace, pay disparity is a common occurrence on film sets, with women and POC creatives occasionally making headlines for speaking out about receiving lower wages than their male and white counterparts. Actresses such as Jennifer Lawrence, Viola Davis and Michelle Williams have spoken about the experience of finding out they were paid less than colleagues.
But in an industry full of opaque practices, payment on independent films and the film’s financing can be a particularly black box.
While there are innumerable ways to get a film made independently, the prevailing wisdom when financing an indie feature is to attach an A-list star. That star is likely taking a pay cut from their regular fee but nonetheless gets paid far more than the rest of the cast and crew because their name is used to attract financiers. When a film sells, investors then get paid back and will, ideally, see a return on investment when the movie is profitable based on the equity received. After this, the money (usually minimal on independent films) flows to the creatives who have been given equity in the film (also, usually minimal on independent films).
Bentley and Kwedar had already successfully financed a feature, the 2016 thriller Transpecos, using a traditional independent route with private investors. When they started searching for financing for Jockey, which follows a veteran horse racing jockey with deteriorating health, the process proved different.
“There were things that were so special to us about the project that were not being valued by the industry, as a whole, in trying to finance the film,” remembers Bentley. The filmmakers wanted to cast Clifton Collins Jr., whom they worked with in Transpecos, but potential investors wanted a star they deemed as bigger, among other creative changes. (Collins Jr. later won the top acting prize at the Sundance Film Festival, where the movie premiered, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.)
Bentley says they started thinking about answers to questions they and their friends from in the indie filmmaking world often faced. Then, they asked a question of their own: What if everyone was paid the same, liveable wage? The answer: Everyone who worked on Jockey was paid the SAG daily or weekly rate as determined by the film’s budget.
This payment structure meant that PAs and other below-the-line positions were ensured a livable wage. It also meant that more veteran talent and top-billed actors would be taking a pay cut, even more than is typical for working on an indie. (As of July of this year, the current SAG daily rate for low-budget films costing between $300,000 and $700,000 is $421. For films with budgets below $2 million, the rate is $783.)
Kwedar notes they then had another question to answer. “If we’re standardizing pay, a lot of people are working oftentimes beneath what quote they now earn as professionals in this business. So how do you reflect that sweat equity that’s being put in?” The answer was to offer ownership stakes in the film.
To determine how equity was received, filmmakers divide the phases of the movie into cycles: development, prep, production, postproduction and promotion. “There was a point value for each of those phases,” explains Kwedar. For a sound recordist on the film, equity would be collected through the production phase, while for a position like a producer or a star, who was with the project from ideation through release, equity from all phases would be unlocked.
“Essentially we are hacking the financial waterfall,” says Kwedar. “The only reason things are continuing to be done the way they’re done is because they’ve been done before. A lot of this language around how these financial structures operate is so baked in they’re almost boilerplate language with every entertainment law firm in town.”
As for investors and financiers, the risk has proved lower because. With everyone agreeing to be paid the same, the budget came in far lower than would have been typical for a feature of Jockey’s size. Says Kwedar, “On Jockey we had over a 47 percent return on investment for our investors and issued more than the budget of the film to the cast and the crew.”
When it came time to make their next film, Kwedar and Bentley wanted to see if their model could scale up.
Sing Sing centers on the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program run out of the eponymous prison that sees the incarcerated producing and acting in stage productions. The film had five times the budget of Jockey, and necessitated a much larger cast and crew. (The filmmakers declined to disclose the specific budget.)
When pitching the story to their eventual star, Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, Bentley and Kwedar also pitched their model. “The model doesn’t function or work without the number one on the call sheet buying into it,” says Kwedar. Domingo did buy into the concept and signed on.
Monique Walton, Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley, Colman Domingo, Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin on set of Sing Sing.
Phyllis Kwedar
“A lot of crew are negotiating on behalf of themselves, so you’re having a direct conversation about the actual money. But actors are insulated from that, and you’re having to do these negotiations with lawyers and agents. Rightfully, [reps] try to fight for their actor’s pay,” says Kwedar. “We had some interesting conversations. At first, you get on the phone and they’re, ‘That’s great. I love the model. This is beautiful. We just want to negotiate the side deal now.’” There could be no side deals, Kwedar would counter.
For Sing Sing the filmmakers worked with an established, institutional financier for the first time in Teddy Schwarzman’s Black Bear. Only one month out from filmmaking, with Bentley, Kwedar and producer Monique Walton on the ground in upstate New York, Black Bear agreed to executive produce and fully finance the feature.
“There’s so many projects that people make in the film industry purely for business,” says Schwarzman, whose company also handled international sales rights and is releasing the film in the UK and Canada. “When you find something tender, beautiful, emotional, funny, and that you actually think people will want to see — if one of the hardest things to do is give the people who are actively involved in the making of that film ownership in that, then there’s a problem with the system overall.”
Schwarzman notes that Sing Sing was unlike any set he had ever been on, crediting the fact that every person working on the production had true ownership of the film. “We’ve migrated people from an employee to a partner mindset,” says Kwedar. “What that does is erases that line between above and below the line and in flattening that hierarchy it encourages a culture where the best ideas can actually come forward.”
There were roughly 30 equity holders on the creative side on Jockey and over 80 on Sing Sing, which sold to A24 out of last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Say Kwedar, “Now, almost a year later, we’re about to start writing those checks to everyone who trusted this process— over 80 artists on this movie will see real returns on that sweat equity, pre-release before any box office.”
“We didn’t break any records with either of these,” says Bentley, referencing the massive deals that are touted at every festival. “These weren’t that, and yet, still, they turned over a profit for the investors and delivered back-end pay within a couple of years to cast and crew.” He says a crewmember friend on Jockey was able to finish off a long-gestating bathroom remodel with the check received thanks to his equity in the film.
While paydays for both investors and talent won’t be of the headline-grabbing variety, that’s not the ultimate goal. Says Bentley, “In our industry, we’re all trying to figure out, especially as budgets get lowered and sales get lowered on films, how do we make this sustainable?”
The filmmakers add that cast and crew having an ownership stake was particularly important on Sing Sing, where many of the roles in the film, including Domingo’s co-star Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, are played by formerly incarcerated performers that went through the RTA program themselves. With the equity model used, the actors would further benefit financially from sharing their own stories.
“It’s kind of a beacon or a magnet that I think attracts the right people to it,” says Bentley of pitching the model to potential partners. “It wasn’t for everybody, but it was for the people who were right for our projects.”
After Jockey’s release, Bentley and Kwedar gave a talk about their model at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and were approached by filmmakers struggling to find financing amid a contracting industry that was more concerned than ever about mitigating risk. The duo also spoke at Sundance’s film financing program, Catalyst, while the film school at New York University inquired about how they could teach the model to their outgoing grads.
Nearly five years after filming Jockey and on the eve of Sing Sing heading into theaters, the filmmakers, through their new company Ethos, hope to help other independent filmmakers get their work made. Says Bentley, “We want to take the position of being a financier of films that embrace our model.”
Ethos, which will handle development, production and finance, launches during a time of larger upheaval in Hollywood, as the industry is attempting to find its footing after two strikes where questions about payment, ownership, parity, and equity were at the forefront of the conversation. In 2022, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon announced a new company, Artists Equity, with the goal of expanding profit participation to below-the-line creatives that are often left out of backends on studio-produced films. (Artists Equity projects, such as Amazon Studios’ Air, are orders of magnitude larger than the independent projects that Ethos will be working with.)
As for the independent filmmaking space, a particularly active Sundance and Cannes have wrought optimism, but many veterans are still concerned about the continuing stratification of a market that sees a handful of films land big ticket sales while the majority of other titles contend with fewer routes to distribution. All the while filmmakers and talent, who are already accustomed to living job-to-job, are up against inflation and the rising cost of living that has gripped the economy.
“Independent film feels threatened by lots of forces,” says Kwedar. “But what’s beautiful about independent film, too, is it’s the laboratory where ideas are forged and talent is proven that then matriculates into the rest of the business.”
