Concessions

I have no idea if Todd Sklar is a good filmmaker, but he’s quite the
convincing pitchman. The 25-year-old Minneapolis native turned bearded
Missourian turned quasi-homeless, film-hawking vagabond started Range
Life Entertainment in 2008, after growing frustrated with trying to
distribute his first feature film (called Box Elder, it’s about
coming of age, like first films tend to be) through the traditional
model. Basically that meant getting in a 1986 Dodge van with his
friends (“It isn’t like we didn’t have the money to buy a better
van, but we didn’t have the money to buy a better van”), driving around
the country for a few months, convincing people to watch his film, and
then having parties. Using experience as a music promoter, he applied
the model of touring bands to film distribution: “I just figured, how
would I like to find out about this?… We’ll go into a city and
find out what makes that city tick.”

That first tour, to their semi-surprise, achieved “weird, oddball
success,” and, thanks to Sklar’s beardy charm and connections he
made working at Sundance, distribution companies took notice. “The
prevailing distribution model was falling apart, and we were a really
easy thing to point to as an alternative,” he told me. Range Life began
partnering with other independent films as a kind of pro bono
grassroots marketing team, hand-tailoring each screening/party for each
film and each market. For now, they live on the road, no home base.

Sklar wears a hat with a feather in it and says “awesome” a lot.
Everything is awesome. They started the tour, he said, for “the
experience of just doing something awesome” and encouraged the audience
to go out and “do awesome stuff.” At Monday night’s Visioneers afterparty, I told him about a piece-of-shit job I used to have and how
it killed my soul. That, too, was “awesome.” Sklar’s frank, bro-down
enthusiasm is a big part of his appeal: He’s a film-obsessive who cites
Truffaut’s The 400 Blows as a life-changer, but his conversation
drips with practical business savvy. It’s not all about the art.
Range Life is building a network of satellite teams in each city,
aggregating valuable data about its audiences (who goes to which
screening of which film, what brand of beer they order), and
currently fielding, and turning down, buyout offers from big
companies.

“The beauty of being young and dumb and idealistic is that none of
us are really at the point where we’re ready to be exploited,” Sklar
said. “But we’re very cheap labor, and the labor is incredibly
valuable.”

Range Life is an investment. I do not know if—nor do I
completely understand how—Sklar and his bros will revolutionize
indie-film distribution or how you “buy” or “sell” six best friends
working their asses off in a shitty van. But that’s their plan, and
Sklar makes it sound, you know, awesome. “If Rome is burning,”
he said, “what a great time to have a pail of water and a hammer.”