Reel power

On the surface, Free Enterprise should have been an easy sell: Two friends, Robert (Rafer Weigel) and Mark (Eric McCormack, or Will of NBC's Will and Grace), try to squeeze out meaningful relationships in between seeing midnight showings of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, trading Star Wars dialogue, and having brief encounters with the hero of their childhood visions, Captain Kirk himself. It's a charming, often hysterical little movie that ought to appeal to a dozen different audiences, among them the wannabe-hip Swingers crowd, the Star Trek-Star Wars legions, and the Will and Grace audience. And anyone who would enjoy watching William Shatner play a drunk, lecherous egomaniac prone to doing rap numbers about Julius Caesar.

But writers Robert Burnett (also the film's director) and Mark Altman couldn't find anyone interested in their movie, even after it cleaned up at the AFI International Film Festival in Los Angeles. Distributors worried that Free Enterprise wouldn't play outside of the Trek crowd. They stayed away, until Colichman met with Altman and offered to distribute the movie through Regent, which began picking up films to both aid worthy young filmmakers and build Regent's inventory.

Regent had gotten into the distribution business when it picked up director Waris Hussein's Sixth Happiness in April of this year. Hussein's film is based on the memoirs of Firdaus Kanga, who actually stars in the film as a man suffering from what's known as Glass Bones Disease, which renders him as fragile as a dried twig. But Regent's partners and John Lambert, the company's head of theatrical distribution and acquisition, agreed that Free Enterprise, also acquired by Regent in April, was a far more accessible film to release first. Frankly, it wouldn't be such a tough sell.

That means Altman and Burnett's film has been something of a guinea pig as Regent learns the distribution end of moviemaking. And the transition hasn't been a smooth one. In early June, Free Enterprise opened in several theaters throughout Los Angeles but could not play in Regent's own theater, since the company didn't close on its purchase until July. The release didn't garner the buzz the duo hoped for; they had wanted to get the movie into local art houses, then build word of mouth. Hence, the film came and went, despite generous reviews and some good national press.

In coming weeks, Free Enterprise will roll out in New York, Chicago, then Dallas and a few other top markets. But it will not be this year's Swingers, despite the Kirk-in-a-cocktail-glass poster Regent has put together and the fact that Regent sent Shatner and the filmmakers to the Cannes Film Festival.

"We were up against Notting Hill," Altman says. "They played [Free Enterprise] like it was a mainstream release and not an indie film, and it has hurt us a little bit. But it's getting us out there with the big boys. I mean, we had a respectable per-screen average, but look at what Artisan did with The Blair Witch Project. They opened on one screen and built word of mouth and expanded...I almost wonder how it would have fared if we would have opened smaller."

Jarchow and Colichman, not surprisingly, agree with Altman. But they're just learning. Wisely, Regent gave Altman and Burnett money to push the film on a Web site and tour the sci-fi conventions.

Hussein's film will be an even tougher sell; he describes Sixth Happiness as a cross between My Left Foot, My Beautiful Laundrette, and The Tin Drum. But his film is hardly the stuff of high concept. Indeed, it's such an intimate film that at times it's hard to watch. Hussein, whose credits include the first Dr. Who episodes for the BBC, never even considered U.S. distribution. He thought it unlikely that someone would want to release a film about a disabled man in Bombay struggling with his homosexuality.

Then Regent came calling, after Mark Harris saw a screening of the film at Outfest, a gay-and-lesbian L.A. film festival.

"This is a film that doesn't have any stars and isn't an easy-selling film," says Hussein. "I am happy Regent is taking a gamble. They did the same thing with Gods and Monsters, which has its own texture. I admire them for building their repertoire slowly but surely, and hopefully they will continue on this track. They deserve it. I admire their courage. They're competing with Miramax now."

Maybe, maybe not; it's too soon to tell.

Jarchow and Colichman insist there is no pressure after Gods and Monsters to turn out another prestige art-house picture. They say they're just trying to build up inventory, keep the foreign guys happy with their TV movies, and, by next year, get 12 movies into the theaters, ones they have either produced or picked up for distribution.