Filmmakers in Conversation: Michael Tully x George Rush

I first attended the South By Southwest Film Festival back in 2006 with my feature-length directorial debut Cocaine Angel, and have been fortunate enough to present all of my subsequent features there: Silver Jew (2007), Septien (2011), Ping Pong Summer (2014), Don’t Leave Home (2018), and Lover, Beloved (2022). George M. Rush Jr. first came to South By in 2007 as the lawyer for Michael Jacobs’ Special Jury Award-winning Audience of One. Somehow, we never actually met until he became the sales rep for Septien in 2011, but that working relationship sparked an immediate friendship that has become a more deeply entwined and ongoing working partnership (he produced both Ping Pong Summer and Don’t Leave Home). This year, Rush will be flying into Austin as a producer of Babak Jalali’s Fremont and associate producer of Gina Gammell and Riley Keough’s War Pony, both of which will screen at the festival.

With decades of experience under his belt as a lawyer, sales rep, and producer, I hopped on a Zoom with George to get his take on the current state of the independent film industry, especially with regard to how the South By Southwest Film Festival has evolved, as well as asking the more pressing question: are film festivals even relevant anymore?

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Michael Tully   Do you think anything has changed in terms of what South By means now versus when you first attended in 2007?

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George Rush Absolutely. It’s changed pretty radically. It’s funny too, because at the time, I didn’t notice the change. It used to be my favorite festival. I love the programming. You know, when Matt [Dentler] was there, and then Janet [Pierson] took over, it just became this cool alternative. Sundance films can feel very much like a kind of cliche of an “institution supported” film. Or films that are more high profile, but there are no surprises. It just felt like South By was embracing truly alternative work. At that time, none of those mumblecore films were really getting embraced by Sundance. And they were at South By. It just felt like there’s this cool scene, and there are these cool filmmakers coalescing around this scene. And I think that went on for a number of years.

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But it’s funny. I’m not sure what year interactive happened, but before that it was just way chill. As a young attorney and sales rep at the time, it was so easy to interact with people, because you’d go into some dumpy bar, like the Thirsty Nickel or something, and there would just be other filmmakers and other industry people—maybe junior, but very accessible. Whereas back then Sundance always felt very exclusive to me. By the end of film, music would start happening. And that was like the zoo, all these musicians coming down. But when interactive happened and overlapped, all of a sudden, all those bars were now packed with, like, tech assholes from the Bay Area. And so for me coming from San Francisco, I was like, “Oh, no, everyone I’m trying to escape came with me!”

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MT  Did your flights from San Fran to Austin become very different when tech took over?

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GR I mean, it all became very different. All of a sudden, I couldn’t get a hotel room. I had to stay in the sticks or crash with people. It was just a different experience. I think it was a coincidence that tech and film overlapped. But it’s still very symbolic to me of: They’re taking over the scene. Like, tech taking over a cool thing and sort of ruining it. I know at the time, I didn’t really think of it that way. I was just like, “Oh, there’s all these Google assholes,” or whatever.

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GR I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I guess what I love about South By is that it’s in a real city. And the audiences are real people. And you get a better gauge of the temperature for something when it’s real people. So many of these festivals like Sundance are rich enclaves and the audience is mostly rich white people—because all the money for these institutions comes from those people. And I’d say a vast majority of audiences at those kinds of festivals are those people. Which can give a distorted experience of what audiences actually want. I feel like most normal people hate and resent the super rich, and they’re making these movies where it kind of feels like someone’s wagging their finger at you. And it’s just hard, because the reality is that the business of film is very bad for independent films. Most of these films lose money, lose everything. And you need to find high net worth people who are willing to take risks. But it’s like, no shit, those people are gonna want to probably back things that aren’t critical of them and their experience.

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MT  Do you think film festival programming has changed?

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GR I think for programmers for film festivals, coming out of COVID, and for a lot of organizations, the self-assessment they had was very overtly hyper-critical. I wouldn’t want to work at a film fest. I wouldn’t want to run a film festival. Because now, let’s say there’s Crip Camp: The Sequel, and you don’t like it. You’re gonna take a lot of heat from people for not championing that, because it is an important cause. I just think the political speech and creative speech in independent film has been mushed together, to the detriment of the audience, which just wants to see a great film. I mean, I love Sundance, but this year, there were two bumpers before every screening. One was about the Institute and how it’s given everyone opportunities. The other was about Indigenous land and the environment. And both are great, inspiring, beautiful. But there was no bumper about cinema!

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MT  Added to that is the reality that almost all film festivals have to fight an ongoing battle between showing high profile films with as many celebrity appearances as possible, and smaller “discoveries.” Do you think there is a helpful connection or crossover in your experience at any fest, but specifically South By, between the flashy spectacles and the little indies?

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GR Yes. For an independent filmmaker, film festivals are an elevated environment in which you are able to present your films to industry people. I always tell filmmakers, you don’t want to make indie film number two. You want to get discovered and start getting paid. In most cases, the filmmakers I work with are either totally broke and sacrificing everything, or they’re completely rich. Festivals are a place where films get discovered by actual audiences.

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GR I just think of films I’ve been involved in that were small, like Barry’s [Jenkins] first film, Medicine For Melancholy, or Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha. Awesome films. I mean, you can tell, these are special filmmakers. Like, they have it. But it’s still a small film. So it can be really challenging. Both of those films premiered at South By, and at those screenings people were, like, shitting the bed about them both. And they both got great deals—Barry with IFC, Trey with A24. And it launched both of their careers. If they’d just sent a screener to those distributors and you didn’t have that environment, I don’t know if you’d have the same experience. Because someone at A24 was like, “I love this film.” But again, he’s a junior guy there, and it’s got to move up the chain. For someone to champion it, his tastes need to be validated by this audience freaking out.

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MT  Are you maybe saying that instead of filmmakers focusing exclusively on the film they are currently presenting, they should be thinking of festivals as a springboard to their next, bigger opportunity?

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GR Well, that’s just it. The film I had at Sundance this year, Fremont…

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MT  And South By!

GR Yeah, and South By! It’s great. But it’s shot in black-and-white in 4:3. And, you know, a good chunk of it’s in Dari. So that’s usually not on the checklist of what distributors are looking for. It’s a singular piece of art. It’s great. We have some opportunities. Are they gonna make our investors rich? I don’t know. But we came out with some opportunities. I think a lot of managers and agents, they know Babak [Jalali], the director. And they’re like, “Whoa, this guy’s pretty talented.”

We have so many friends that came up around the same time as us—the early aughts—who are super successful TV people now, and making a lot of money. They have a career. And to me, it’s because they did these films, and it’s because the festival was there as a platform to elevate this “little gem,” you know. We have friends that have gone from indie films to making a $100 million Marvel movie. And it’s life altering to have those kinds of opportunities.

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