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Indie filmmaking is a difficult term. By definition, an indie film is anything made outside the confines of the Big Five studios: Walt Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, Sony, and Paramount. However, the “indie” label is one which blurs lines between multi-million dollar best picture winners with name actors and industry support, five-figure genre films living on streaming services such as Tubi, and DIY backyard projects bordering on experimental.
Christopher Jason Bell is a filmmaker who straddles the latter two categories— an uncomfortable liminal space where great work often goes buried. His work contains narrative, documentary and archival work (often mixing all of the above). Always focused on the present, and with a leftist bent, Bell has been able to include recognizable names in his work (including David Hayter, Abby Martin, and Frank Mosley), while remaining self-funded. He is also a good pal, who recently helped screen my short film Manifestations at a local venue in New Jersey.
A few days prior to this discussion, he sent me a link to the documentary Official Rejection (2009, dir. Paul Osborne); an overlong fluff piece where various filmmakers complain about their inability to play Sundance before the 2008 crash. Clocking in at nearly 2 hours, the film follows independent filmmakers “debasing” themselves by passing out flyers, mailing DVDs or VHS tapes, and mainly being sore losers about the whole experience. Featuring blink-and-you’ll-miss cameos from Traci Lords and Andy Dick, the most notable talking heads include Kevin Smith, Troy Duffy, and Lloyd Kaufman; however, the majority of the runtime zeroes in on several filmmakers who have continued on without recognition or left the medium behind entirely.
And having grappled with these pitfalls himself— and been vocal about them on X the everything app (colloquially referred to Twitter)— we talked about DIY filmmaking, festival culture and how it has changed in the 20 years since Official Rejection.
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Devin Morgan: So last night I did some preparation. I watched the documentary Official Rejection.
Christopher Jason Bell: What'd you think of it?
DM: I thought the filmmakers were very entitled; Very much “I made a movie, so you must put it in Sundance. I didn’t get in, so instead I’ll just make a documentary about me not getting into Sundance”.
CJB: Yeah. And a few of the dudes are so sleazy too.
DM: Like the guy with the perfect white teeth and the earpiece [John Daniel Gavin].
CJB: Weird movie. I saw it back in the day, and I went, “all right this is a bad movie but there's some resonance here”— I guess I still felt that way— but it's also now such a crazy time capsule and— I'm assuming you don't even know what Withoutabox is right? I remember feeling it was such a huge commercial for Withoutabox because I kind of think there were ads for it on the website. But this time around, they barely mention it. But, Withoutabox was just the precursor to FilmFreeway, which immediately folded, I want to say a year or two after FilmFreeway debuted. I don't know why, but um, yeah.
DM: How do you feel about FilmFreeway?
CBJ: To me, FilmFreeway is kind of beside the point. It's a nice little hub we have to engage with film festivals we feel obligated to engage with.
DM: I mean, it's fine. There's not a lot of discernment going on with FilmFreeway. But there’s a lot of bloat fests, where it's on you to figure out what is and isn't a scam.
CJB: One thing about FilmFreeway is they finally decided to start hiring writers to do articles. They must have this massive e-mail list, and they started this section where they're doing articles. And it's just basically the same shit you'd expect from IMDB or whatever. Which is just a very unfortunate use of their resources. You would expect some cursory indie film kind of thing, but I don't even think they do that. It's not even “A24 is indie” content. That's a big critique. And I would put that with a lot of what Letterboxd does as well. They could really serve actual indie film, and I don't think they do. Which I think FilmFreeway is more guilty of, for sure. But I have issues with Letterboxd as well.
DM: How do you feel about Letterboxd, both as an entity and a community? Has it had an impact on people watching your stuff, or is that more of a result of Twitter?
CJB: Letterboxd is cool. I mean, people write stuff about the films and, when I'm feeling okay enough, I'll check them. And I think that does help people watch them. So Letterboxd is really helpful in that respect. I just wish the Video Store was more open to stuff that haven’t just played at South by Southwest. If you play at SXSW, you already have such a leg up. But filmmakers like you or I could really benefit from that. There's way more of us that need help, which is such a shame.
DM: It's not much better than Vimeo On Demand, though that suffers from just way too much out there. And not being curated at all [compared to their Staff Picks].
CJB: That’s the only kind of thing you have when you're a filmmaker and you're super indie. You don't have a lot of resources. You don't have representation. There's so many different levels of being on the bottom. You do need some sort of institutional approval and support, some curation, and that'll get people to pay attention to you. The system does kind of necessitate them and you do kind of want them. It can't just be a VOD where you put it up and hope for the best. But there's no submission process to Letterboxd Video Store, or if there is, it's super opaque or you got to go through a middleman.
DM: I am curious what their process is for picking these things. Do they have people in-house or do they just go through trusted channels?
CJB: Yeah, I think they have a person there, but there's no submission, and they're very much in control of what gets in front of them, and something like Castration Movie [2024, dir. Louise Weard] is very, very, very indie, but it's also very, very successful in the world. So they're going to hear about that. But then on the other hand… Pete Ohs has a movie with Charlie XCX [Erupjca, 2025. Currently in limited theatrical release]. His other movie played at South by Southwest [The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick, 2025. Currently available for rent on Letterboxd Video Store]. So there's a bunch of other ends. You're not surprised to hear that these things are on Letterboxd, but Castration Movie is still a cool win because that is not really a mainstream film. It's very lo-fi and you don't expect to see that get a ton of support.
DM: How are you feeling about the distribution for your film Failed State (2023)?
CJB: It keeps me on Twitter, which is probably not a good thing. But a lot of people who see it have very, very, very kind things to say about it. And that is me saying, “hey, if anybody wants to see this, let me know and I'll send you a link”. And that opens up a connection where I know who's watching it and they feel connected to me. And then we can share and talk about what Failed State is about, which is living under this certain economic system, a certain type of working class; it's all of these things. How do you relate to it? And it opens up a dialogue about film and filmmaking, which can be at this point, a pretty lonely experience. That's really nice. And I'm really, really grateful that when you can connect with people through the algorithm, you have these nice conversations.
We had a theatrical run, which not a lot of people get. And that was really great. And I'm thankful for it. But it just would have been cool if one of the New York festivals watched it and liked it and played it, and that would have been meaningful to everybody who'd worked on it. But it would have been great for Dale [the lead actor of Failed State]. And I would have loved to say, “look Dale, we're playing Rooftop Film Festival" or whatever. That’s been painful.
But that's what bums me out when I read critical [reviews, interviews and press releases] – and it bums me out for everybody because there's me and you and our peers out there making stuff, like our mutual friend Skinner Myers [director of The Sleeping Negro and Before You Fade Away Into Nothing]. And people love talking about indie film, but they don't watch them. And that really bums me out. But institutional support would have helped everything.
DM: Having been on both sides though, as a submitter and a juror, what's the experience from the other side?
CJB: I was on the screening committee for the Hamptons [International] Film Festival a long time ago. I played Slamdance and they asked me, but I was already on MeansTV and I was programming for a Brooklyn screening. So I was on screening committees for that and watching stuff. And one of my things is that, you can gripe about film festivals, but the thing is, they're getting so many entries, and you end up having to watch 10 movies a day or something. And that is just not a good way to watch movies.
You are given guidelines. For Hamptons, they asked “is this an alumni of our labs?”, “Has someone played the festival or taken part in the production or screenwriting labs?” or “Is there a celebrity in it?” They get priority. And that is unfair. But it's also no duh, and that is something that you need to take into consideration, before you pay and before you throw money out the window. But it's still a game that I feel obligated to play.
But what is your duty as a film festival? Because you can't program everything. So you probably saw more than 15 great movies. And you do have criteria. So what plays on in your head? What's going to market well? And how many films do we have that are just a harder sell? And how nervous are you to program something that is experimental slow cinema? All of these things come into your head and you have to figure that out and do you want to take a gamble on a harder film? Are you going to take the one that's easier?
I always said [Andrei] Tarkovsky is great and Wayne's World [1991, dir. Penelope Spheeris] is great. But a festival would take a D-level Wayne's World but would not take a B-level Tarkovsky. Because of the structures that are in place, they feel they need to adhere in order to sell tickets. But if you are a film festival, you do have a built-in audience of people coming and attending, and audiences can be adventurous.
DM: To step away from film festival slander, I watched Incorrectional last night. You made the film 11 years ago at this point?
CJB: That's when it premiered. I want to say I started shooting in 2013 or 2014. I think it premiered in 2017, but I started shooting in 2014, I want to say.
DM: So the film begins as a narrative before shifting into a documentary, which I feel is consistent throughout your work at different levels and variations. Which echoes in Failed State, we see Dale doing what I presume is his actual job, as a carrier. And I just wanna know, how has your process changed over the past 10 years?
CJB: It's really difficult and it's only gotten more frustrating because as the years have gone on, you're seeing a lot more of this hybrid fiction-nonfiction filmmaking. I mean, Nathan Fielder's huge. But it hasn't really trickled down to me in any way I can kind of see. It was always very difficult, but I wanted that break into documentary to be really shocking. I wanted to find a new way to do a blowout argument – I keep wanting to say break up, but it's between a father and son. I wanted that to be devastating. And the audience not really being able to see it trickle in and then it finally breaks. I wanted it to be a surprise.
But now I'm nervous that [festival] curators are not going to know what's going on. Or they're not going to watch enough to get to that part, or they're going to think it's a mistake or all of these things. So I think “I should at least tell the curators what's going on.” And I added a note into the Vimeo link saying part of the pitch, but are they reading that? So then I sent a cover letter. And I don't know if they're reading that. And you get a lot of people saying you should submit to documentary film festivals. But I don't know if they're gonna think this is a documentary, or if they're going to accept this as a documentary. And I don't know if these fests have a hybrid category. So I was emailing people and they're saying you should definitely submit. But you want me to pay money, you know? So it's a weird thing because it's an experimental film and it's difficult and it's not for everybody. But I was really excited to do it. And I thought that it was, I was taking influence from films that I thought were really exciting, like the Iranian film The Mirror [1997, dir. Jafar Panahi] and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One [1968, dir. William Greaves]. And there were sort of other films playing at the same time. It was really frustrating. And I remember someone I knew was programming at a film festival, but the other programmer was offended that it turned into a documentary, and said those words: “offended”. I didn't know what to do.
Years later— when I first cast Dale in a short film called The Finger [2020]— and that didn't play that many places. But then I cast him again in Trammel [also 2020], which played Slamdance and was doing pretty well. People saw that and they got it for the most part. But at that time, the film festival ecosystem was kind of starting to break down and people were leaving. So any program or contacts I had where I felt we could have a dialogue were gone because nobody I knew was programming anymore. And I wasn't really able to get in touch with the same people. And then you're starting from a blank slate again. And then I'm submitting Failed State and there's no dialogue happening.
DM: I'm going to assume that most of our readers have very little understanding of the process of what it takes to get an indie film at this level off the ground. Or even what it takes to get it seen. Yesterday, I was talking to my dad about how we're screening Chongqing Pink [2026, dir. Chris Freedman, Z.H. Gill, and Devin Morgan] in Los Angeles this month. And I had to set up the screening for that. I had to send all the emails. There's nobody else on my side helping me do that at this level. I have to do all the marketing for it myself to sell tickets. And he said, “now you just got to get Brad Pitt or somebody to come see the movie.”
CJB: It's just that easy! My uncle asked, “Chris, you ever try getting your stuff on Netflix?” I think that's the extent that people know. They're coming from a nice place. It's funny too, because there's tears where you sent all these emails, you've probably sent emails to people who have more power than you, just asking, “Hey, can you help me?” Or you've thought of it. I've done the same. And very rarely does it work. It's very hard to cold e-mail somebody and get that kind of connection going, and it only really gets you so far. You need a lot of things to happen in order for anything meaningful to change.
DM: You were saying earlier about people reaching out and asking, how can I play this in my city? I've had people reach out to me and say, “if you want to play the movie in Chicago or New York, I can contact some people.” And I send the movie, and I don't really hear back at all. Also with the current length of Chongqing Pink, it's difficult to program at a cinema, and I don't think we could get enough people out in North Carolina to pay $5-10 to see the movie.
CJB: Yeah, a lot of the onus is on you, and I appreciate that people are willing to help. And I also appreciate that they have other things going on in their lives that are not me or you. But you know, you can only really get so far with doing everything yourself.
And then you hear about success stories, and they're very hard to replicate. And you're talking about, oh, YouTubers are now being signed to make films, horror films, for companies and they come in with their fan base, and that it's very hard to build. But most people can't do that. And most people don't want to do that.
DM: It gets really frustrating seeing the grifter types on Twitter just saying, “you just need to go out and do it. You get some people and the magic will happen.” And I've been getting a lot of Instagram reels where these filmmakers made a film for $150,000 (which is 5000 times more expensive than any film I've ever made). And then they self-distributed the movie. I don't know who these people are. It's a movie I've never heard of, but they made half a million dollars screening in cities across America.
CJB: We can't verify if that's true, right? I don't know how much money they made. I could spend some time seeing if they've played a bunch of places, but I can't really see how many tickets they've sold. I can't figure out how much money they made. And if it is true, I don't know how they got it. And I know there's a certain amount of lying that goes into box office reporting.
So what if these reels are just a lie to get you to check out the production company or to check out the movie? It's a new kind of advertisement. And what if this is just them saying, “I need to make content, so I'm gonna make content about how our film was successful.” You can easily fake reviews too. More of us should be doing it. We should lie more.
DM: I think this is slowly gonna turn into a how-to for how to properly grift for film marketing.
CJB: It's just being clever. It's part of making art. And this [conversation] is a lot more fun for you and I, versus sending another e-mail that won't get read. I guess in my later years, the prankster element in my blood is coming back. If we're gonna DIY and even do publicity and stuff for our films, then there has to be some love there. And maybe someone saying, “we went on tour and we did this and we made half a million dollars” is just the boring version of that.
DM: This reminds me of one of the talking heads in the documentary: the co-founder of Slamdance…
CBJ: Dan Murvish!
DM: He'll often do faux publicity for his movies. I saw his movie 18 ½ (2021) at my alma mater's screening series. And he brought these pro-Reagan banners. And I guess it's more interesting than “we made $650,000 off of our micro-budget movie”. I don't follow Hundreds of Beavers (2022, dir. Mike Cheslik) enough to see if that was something that they were doing but they made $1.5 million in box office.
CJB: I would believe that. That's a really silly comedy and they're super engaged and people can tell that it's a labor of love, but that's another one on Letterboxd Video Store that feels like a legit DIY thing. But that's also not really a model, because you and I are not making silly comedies.
I think you could still maybe come up with a clever thing to do for your film. A friend of mine has a distribution wing and they're talking about doing smell-o-vision. But that's another thing where I'm not boxed into thinking that's the only thing you can do.
DM: I’m reminded of the man with the whitened teeth and earpiece [in Official Rejection] saying, “I sent a blank DVD to festivals!”
CJB: I looked him up. I was wondering if he went on to do anything else and he did not. And I definitely did that by accident. I didn't send a blank DVD, but I forgot to export audio and I made a ton of DVDs and I left them in Village Voice newspaper containers. So I left a stack of DVDs and didn't watch them 'cause I was just making a ton and already checked some. But I forgot to export the audio, so it was completely silent and I'm pretty sure I submitted a few of those DVDs to festivals.
I don't really think that's a good idea to pay the submission fee and say they're gonna know it's a mistake and they're gonna contact me, and if they don't, that's how I know they're scams, but you already paid 50 bucks. I don't know. Funny guy.
DM: I just don't think it's a viable option. Even if you do prove that it is a scam and they're not watching it, there’s no recourse. You just sent in a bunk application, and you're not really putting your best foot forward. In their heads, it probably shows that you don't really care enough. It's a two-way street.
CJB: You don't know where the other person is coming from. They’re sitting down, they got to watch [hundreds of] these, and then they put in a blank DVD. Do you blame them for thinking, “I just don't have to watch this one.” It's work, they don't have time to care. It strikes me as strange that that would be your gamble with money. You're already gambling submitting to a festival.
DM: I'm trying to think if there's any gimmick that’s worth it.
CJB: That's an interesting thing too: thinking about how entitled filmmakers can be. You can see why, because it's a labor of love. You want them to be into your movie and you think it should do well. But a lot of people get very cocky about it, where if your film got rejected, it's probably not good. And that might be true, but that's assuming that every film that gets programmed is good. But bad movies play all the time. And let's not pretend that they don't.
DM: Even if it's a good enough movie that should get played, there's still the curatorial sense of “is this what they are looking for?” Which you can't know. And these programs often aim for some sort of through-line. And oftentimes, they're figuring it out as they're watching these submissions.
And you originally pitched this documentary as being about filmmakers who make Tarantino rip-offs. Which even in 2006 [when the filmmakers were submitting their film Ten ‘Till Noon] was out-of-date. But now those types of films don’t even play any fests and go straight to VOD. How have you seen fests change in that time?
CJB: I'm 40 now, so I've been doing this thing for 20 years. And making connections at film festivals was difficult, because it got to a point where fests were entirely volunteer run, or just didn't pay well, so they went and did other things. So then you lose all of your contacts. And we can't build anything in the same way. There's no connection to anybody who sees any of my films. They have no idea if I've made something beforehand. I remember Swanberg said people thought Drinking Buddies (2013) was his first movie. But he had made a dozen before that. But that was on Netflix and looked different and had a recognizable cast.
But on a smaller scale, working for 20 years and thinking “Are they looking at the other films to see where you're coming from and that kind of thing?” And the answer is no. But then you have to sit back and realize there's 10,000 submissions. And we just keep throwing our money out the window. So you really got to just have fun making the movie because it's such a weird uphill battle that you kind of can't step away from.
DM: How has Means.TV treated you?
CJB: Means.TV is good. We're trying to build something different over there. More people have seen my first feature on Means.TV than had seen it before at festivals and its prior distribution. I'm on the board, and we're trying to prove that a worker-owned streaming co-op could be successful. And we're doing well. We're six years young.
Means.TV is going to put out Failed State. And then they're going to put out three of my short films that are on Vimeo sometime this summer. Sign up with the code: CHRISBELL, all caps, and then you'll get a little discount on that monthly fee. 10%, I think. When are you running this? Did your first one run yet?
DM: No, the [Bruiser] interview with Josh Heaps runs this Thursday, and this is going up a couple days before that.
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Devin Morgan (@fedafter12am) is the self-proclaimed resident film critic of Michigan City. His upcoming condensed feature Chongqing Pink is currently awaiting responses from festivals.