As I’ve mentioned, a few months back, I launched a sister company to Cyan Pictures, called Long Tail Releasing. Cyan is a production company – we make movies (and are, in fact, currently shooting our next, around Manhattan and Brooklyn). Long Tail, on the other hand, is a distribution company – trying to change the way smaller, quirkier films are released to global audiences.

Each year, there are over a thousand films that screen at top-tier festivals (like Sundance, Cannes, TriBeCa or Toronto), yet are never more broadly distributed. After the festivals, they simply fall off the face of the earth, never seen again aside from by the directors’ grandmothers. We’re trying to fix that, by releasing a large number of these films (eventually, as many as 150 a year) for very small theatrical runs, for DVD sales and rental, online and off, for digital download, and through a number of other usual and unusual channels.

I’m emailing today because we officially launch Long Tail’s first release, This is Not a Film, a week from today. But we’re hoping to build some early momentum by pre-releasing it, today, to family and friends.

While This is Not a Film is quirky, it’s also quite good. It won three festivals, and scored an ‘A’ from Entertainment Weekly, which quipped: “Actually, this is a film, and a surprisingly good one.”

You can learn more about This is Not a Film, read reviews, watch the trailer, and pick up a discounted copy, at helpmefindmygirlfriend.com.

In short, however, This is Not a Film is a first-person documentary by Michael Conner, who made the movie in an attempt to find and win back his ex-girlfriend Grace McKenna. As Michael puts it, the movie is sort of a ‘modern day message in a bottle’; he’s hoping that someone will see the film, know Grace, and put the two of them back in touch. So the film itself is Michael, with the help of his actress friend Nadia Dajani, recreating scenes from his relationship with Grace, to prove to us that it was a good relationship, that he’s a good guy, and that he’s worthy of our help in his quest. And, along the way, as much as we’re learning about Michael, he’s learning about himself.

So watch the film because it’s smart, quirky and funny. Watch it because you want to help build a new model for getting great festival films to broader audiences. Or watch it because you don’t want me to have to move into a refrigerator box in Central Park.

Whatever the reason, it’s www.helpmefindmygirlfriend.com.

Cyan’s next film, Premium, starts shooting this Sunday right here in NYC. If you’d like to be an extra at some point over the next month or so (and, particularly, if you have a car, and can put it in the movie with you), let me know.

For the past few days, I’ve been trying to draft out an entry on caffeine: on how I cut it out of my life completely in 2000, and on how it’s slowly worked its way back in, to the point where I’m nearing the need for an espresso I.V. drip.

As I haven’t managed to get that post anywhere near coherent, however, I’m using the topic instead as a segue into something else vaguely coffee-related: Cyan + Long Tail is looking for one more intern.

I kid about the coffee part, as we’re searching not for a drink-fetcher or phone-answerer, but rather someone who can actually take on substantive projects, related to Long Tail’s first releases, to two films Cyan is shooting this summer (one of which just launched into pre-production), to building up Long Tail’s marketing and distribution infrastructure, and to shepherding through development the next few films on Cyan’s shooting slate.

Though we’re looking for someone with a burning love of good films, industry experience is less important to us than a history of pushing ahead on any kind of innovative, independent projects. If you or someone you know think you might be a good fit, and would be interested in getting some very hands-on experience in the world of film, track me down.

[The idea for this online intern plea blatantly ripped off from the vastly-wiser-than-I Ole Eichhorn.]

The thing I remember most vividly about the first months of running Cyan is watching movies, an endless stream of them. It was the first time I gave myself permission to do that – to enjoy films as something worthwhile in and of themselves, rather than as occasional and temporary escapes from real work.

I had always loved movies, had always watched as many as I could. But with Cyan just getting underway, I felt I hadn’t seen nearly enough. There were countless classics I’d somehow missed, countless writers, actors and directors whose work I’d yet to see.

So, in the beginning, I watched a film a day. Every day. But, as the work of running Cyan took increasing spans of my waking time, I started to skip days. And then more days. Until, nearly three years later, juggling both Cyan and Long Tail, I realized that in one recent six week stretch I’d watched just three films, all at home on DVD.

So, shamed by that knowledge, I leapt back into movie watching. I returned to the nearby theaters, watching like it’s my job. Because, in fact, it is.

. . .

What I rediscovered, what I’d somehow forgotten, is the thing that made me jump blindly into the film industry in the first place: I’m never happier than when leaving the theater after a good film. Excited, like something big is coming, yet oddly calm. Full to bursting and vaguely hollow, all at once.

I like to watch the people leaving with me, bubbling with excitement or soberly and silently contemplating. Each with one foot removed from the world of their own lives, planted firmly still inside the world of the film instead.

Looking across the crowd, it’s clear that, for ninety minutes, we’ve been transported to somewhere else entirely. And now, slowly returning, full of new things, it will take us a while to come all the way back.

In several conversations over the last week, friends and business associates have remarked that I must be awfully glad to see I Love Your Work finally hitting theaters.

And, certainly, I am. Sure because of all the work that went into making it, or because of how much easier Cyan’s life will be once we have a release under our belt.

But, mainly, because I’ll no longer look like an idiot when I quote lines from the film.

By way of disclaimer, I should point out that I’m not normally a movie quoter. I don’t walk around saying “here’s looking at you, kid,” or “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse,” or even (perhaps my favorite movie line of all time, from Royal Tenebaums) “I guess we’ll have to be secretly in love with each other and leave it at that.”

My brain is overflowing with dialogue lines – the occupational hazard of watching movies all day long. But I don’t let them out, because, frankly, everybody hates people who do that.

But with I Love Your Work, because I’ve read the script beginning to end more times than I can count, because I saw it brought to life on set and sliced and diced in the editing room, because I’ve watched the finished film endlessly through, the dialogue is so deeply entrenched in my subconscious that I can’t help myself. I say something, thinking it’s normal conversation, and then realize I’ve unwittingly recited verbatim a line from the film.

Which, of course, invariably leads to odd blank stares, considering that nobody I’m reciting to has actually seen the movie itself.

And, the thing is, whatever flaws the movie has (and it certainly has plenty), the writing is great. It’s natural enough that several extended stretches of the dialogue have played out in my own life, even if I’m the only one who knows that’s how it’s all supposed to go.

It makes me giddy when that happens, and I inevitably start to point as much out, which, if you think the blank stares you get off of a single quoted line of an unreleased movie are bad, hoo boy.

So, yes, I’m thrilled to see I Love Your Work hitting theaters and coming out on DVD. And I hope you all go out and watch it. A little bit because I’m (literally) banking on its fiscal success. But more because I’ll be glad if, when I say something in real life that unintentionally imitates filmic art, you’ll all understand what the hell I’m talking about.

After what’s seemed like years (though is actually not particularly long in the world of film distribution), I Love Your Work is finally going to be released later this spring. More details as they emerge.

Though I don’t watch much TV, what little I do consists mainly of Law & Order and The Daily Show. So I was particularly bummed to have missed Christina Ricci last night plugging I Love Your Work to John Stewart.

Fortunately, as no fewer than twenty of my friends and internet acquaintances did see the show, and emailed in to say as much, I managed to wrangle up a download via BitTorrent, and got to watch Ms. Ricci proclaim, several times, that the film is ‘really, really good.’

We think ILYW should finally be in theaters later this spring, but, given the overall mess the process has been so far, we honestly have pretty much no idea anymore. Join us in keeping our fingers collectively crossed.

Ed. Note: Due to insanity at work over the last few days, I’m committing the faux pas of all faux pas: cross-posting between my own two blogs. This appears also on Cyan’s site, but as it’s a plea for outside opinion, including opinion outside the film industry, I thought I’d re-post it here.

About two years back, I coined Newman’s First Law of Filmblogging, which got written about a bit on a number of film-centric blogs. The law, essentially, states that a filmmaker or production company’s ability to blog at a given point is inversely proportional to how interesting things are at that point. In other words, when progress is cranking ahead, there’s almost never time to actually sit down and write about it.

That’s been the case recently, with several Cyan and Long Tail projects all surging ahead at once. I’m blogging briefly, however, to ask for your help with one of them:

The DVD of LT’s first film, This is Not a Film, is nearly ready to head off to the duplicator; before it does, however, I’d really love some outside opinion on the box design and the trailer. In short, I want to know whether you’d be likely to rent, buy, or head out to the theater to watch the film based on either of them. So, if you’d be willing to volunteer criticism, shoot me an email and I’ll send both your way. The first ten to pitch in will score a free copy of the finalized DVD.

In a letter to his wife, a Civil War soldier described war as 90 percent boredom and 10 percent sheer terror.

Making movies seems to follow that same mix; a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’, interspersed with brief stretches of ulcer-inducing frenetic action.

I’m starting to realize, though, that I greatly prefer the sheer terror part. So, really, if starting a distribution company while juggling a slew of films at different stages all at once pushes the sheer terror part to, say, 40 percent, though I should probably consequently be spending my days lying curled in the fetal position in the corner, sobbing softly from the stress of it all, instead, perversely enough, I’m thrilled.

Spent most of the afternoon today listening on and playing audio tech to Michael Nickles and Nadia Dajani, the director and one of the leads, respectively, of Long Tail’s first release, This is Not a Film, as they recorded a commentary track for the film. Which, while time consuming, was also a great warmup for the less fun work I’ll be doing through the rest of the evening: harassing our cadre of potential investors about Cyan’s next production.

And while I normally dread having to, yet again, pass around the hat, hearing Michael and Nadia talk about the ins and outs of their guerilla filmmaking reminded me that making movies, actually getting down and dirty with on-set production, is enough fun to make it almost worth that painful hat pass.