MOVIE MAN

D Magazine, Sep 01, 2001 by Whitley, Glenna

"It ended up being profitable," Jarchow says. "It'll be making money after I'm dead."

A Boy at Heart

WAS GODS AND MONSTERS a fluke?

Jarchow has now been in the business five years and produced 50 movies. Some, such as I'll Remember April, are nice but small films. (For it, Regent cast Mark Harmon, Pat Morita, and Haley Joel Osment before his breakthrough performance in The Sixth Sense.) Others are like The Brotherhood, shot for under $1 million, a stinker of a horror movie that generated 100,000 rentals at Blockbuster. Regent has finished Brotherhood II and will do three or four in the series.

"You don't build a business on anomalies," Jarchow says. The truth is most Hollywood movies aren't very good. People watch them anyway. The movie you love your neighbor hates. And critics? Jarchow rolls his eyes just a bit.

Regent acquired a film called Sordid Lives, which received a thrashing from Morning News critic Jane Sumner when it was released this summer. Based on a play by Del Shores, who also directed, Sordid Lives is a gay-themed film billed as "a black comedy about white trash" starring Beau Bridges, Delta Burke, and Olivia Newton-John.

Jarchow and his daughter loved the movie. It had been running for weeks at the Regent Highland Park when I saw it on a Monday night. The theater was two-thirds full. Though rude, crude, and not particularly good, it was also very funny. The mostly gay audience laughed uproariously throughout and cheered at the end.

On that Monday, the Regent sold only 26 tickets to A.I. in multiple time slots. Booked in only one time slot, Sordid Lives sold 57 tickets. "We can't kill it with a stake," Jarchow says.

Jarchow can now say that he's a filmmaker, not a real estate guy making movies. "There probably aren't six people who understand independent film production and financing better than I do," Jarchow says. "You must know international law, copyright law, who to sell to, and who is credit-worthy."

An independent also needs to have a good grasp of exchange rates. Jarchow will tap into German tax shelter funds this year to finance a handful of films. The major studios also turn to Germany for funding. But the strong dollar has slashed Regent's overseas take-which comprise two-thirds of the $10 million the company receives from video and TV sales-by 20 percent. Last year revenues for the seven major Hollywood studios shrank almost everywhere in Europe except the British market. "It means it's harder to recoup your investment," Jarchow says. After years of languishing, the Asian market has rebounded and is now the strongest foreign outlet for American films.

An independent must also understand how different cultures will respond to a film. Asia loves action and science fiction; Germany and France like psychological thrillers and mysteries. A movie can be a hit in one country and tank in another. Predicting is the hard part.

"The movie business is a lot like love," Jarchow says. All the piecesscript, actors, director, locations, music-have to come together. Of those elements, a good screenplay is the hardest to find.