“Breaking Upwards” — the breakout film by Westport’s Daryl Wein that’s earned raves across the country — got an impressive shout-out today.
NPR’s “Morning Edition” used it to frame a story that examined a new trend in movies.
“Indies On Demand: Now The Festival’s At Your Place” began:
Until recently, if you wanted to work on your indie cred by seeing the Next Big Thing in independent film, you had to hop on a plane to Sundance, Toronto or Tribeca. But a growing number of independent films are also available on cable across the country as video-on-demand rentals — even while they’re playing in theaters and at film festivals.
Case in point: the much-buzzed-about millennials romantic comedy Breaking Upwards, in which 20-something stars Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones breathe life and humor back into a genre you might have given up for dead. Even before the film opened on the big screen in New York, you could watch it all over the country on cable TV, as a video-on-demand rental.
Wein explained why video-on-demand is not only not cannibalizing his audience — it’s helping it:
If someone at home rents it for six bucks, that’s something that might be more appealing to them so they don’t have to leave their house and go spend $12 in the theater, and then if they like it, they tell their friend, who may actually prefer to go see it in the theater. So that right there helps us.
But not even the most indie-friendly 20-something — like Lister-Jones, Wein’s girlfriend, co-star, co-writer and co-producer — is ready to go all-video-on-demand, all the time.
“The ritual is lost,” she admits, comparing watching a movie at home, rather than on a big screen in an actual theater.
(Click here to read and/or listen to the entire NPR “Morning Edition” story.)
Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones -- see them in theaters, and through video on demand. (Photo by Alex Bergman)
