So, Cleanflix, premieres on Friday, but it's been getting early buzz since we posted the announcement that we would be playing the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.After an article in the Salt Lake Tribune, we were informed that Sean Means, film critic at the Tribune, would be making a special trip to Toronto just to see Cleanflix.
The first filmmaker interview was with Producer Kynan Griffin (Pride & Prejudice, Moving McAllister) at The Examiner. Subsequent filmmaker interviews followed in several print publications. You can listen to our first audio interview on A Damn Movie Podcast (warning, explicit language).
There have been some great blog posts anticipating the film from all over the world from Canada to Mexico. We've also been mentioned as top picks by guest bloggers on the TIFF09 documentary guide including David D'Arcy, programmer of the Haifa International Film Festival in Israel and both David Courier and Basil Tsiokos of the Sundance Film Festival programming staff.
We've also been featured nicely in little blurbs within other articles about TIFF09:
The Hollywood Reporter refers to Cleanflix among "high profile" and "heat seeking" films.
IndieWire features Thom Powers talking us up.
Atlantic City Weekly puts us up there with the big boys.
Variety didn't have much to say, but they said it in Variety!
The Hollywood Reporter announcement includes us in the title.
The Torontoist features only our photo and George A. Romero's photo.
Buzz is weird. Of course, we are excited about all the attention the film has been getting (we haven't even hired a publicist yet), but almost nobody has actually seen the film. It seems that we're just getting great word of mouth from the few people who have seen it. Also, supposedly there is good buzz and bad buzz. You want some buzz, but not too much that you become over-saturated. It is all a bunch of stupid marketing stuff that is totally antithetical to the creative process. I guess it is important if you actually want to make art for a living, though.
All that aside, I'm looking forward to the festival. It is a real honor to be playing at a festival as prestigious as Toronto and we hope this is just the beginning of many wonderful film festival experiences. We're super excited to be screening alongside films from a myriad of talented filmmakers that I have looked up to for years. Not to name drop, but other filmmakers in attendance will be The Coen Brothers, Steven Soderbergh, Geroge Clooney, Chris Smith, Todd Solondz, Michael Moore, and Werner Herzog, and George A. Romero--to name just a few. The whole thing would be pretty over-whelming if the reality of it would actually sink in.
If you are interested in tracking the progress of the film, you can become a fan of Cleanflix at Facebook or join us on our struggling MySpace page. Cleanflix poster design by Natty Coleman of Worker's State.
