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Three years ago, Sunset Filmes entered the fiercely competitive world of buying for the Brazilian TV and video markets. Today, the company is ranked number five of 40. Only four buyers are larger and more powerful than Sunset and, if agent/broker Alex Chionetti has his way, Sunset won't stay number five for long. The 30ish Chionetti (Argentina born of Italian descent) exhales as he sits in a Loew's banquet hall chair he's just pulled from a stack near a freight elevator. One thing is certain at the AFM: unless you're at a restaurant, bar, by the pool or in a suite negotiating a deal, you are not sitting down. Chionetti, a veteran of many a market, knows this and has his priorities. First, find a hotel storage area, then pull a chair off a stack, then sit and talk about the market.
Chionetti is a sales agent with a handful of clients for whom he licenses the TV, video and theatrical rights to exhibit feature films. He buys for Mexico and all of Latin America, but for this AFM, he's working exclusively for his client Sunset Filmes of Brazil, who since MIFED have also started buying for Brazil's theatrical market. The company has a good relationship with the Hawaii theater chain in Brazil, as well as with 20th Century Fox. Chionetti's mission this market was to buy as much quality theatrical product as he could find. His challenge was overcoming the gauntlet comprised of long-standing distributor relationships with the number one through four buyers in Brazil, and their relationships with Brazil's biggest theatrical exhibitors. The problem is that the top four Brazilian companies all have pre-existing output arrangements with distributors carrying the best product at the market.
While Chionetti thinks the quality of the product at this year's AFM is no different from years past, he does think pre-market previews are getting worse for the buyer. Chionetti explains that "the sellers make the buyers wait until the last moment to see the key art and the film trailers. [Film producers] were so busy trying to negotiate negative pick-ups with bigger distributors, not worrying about pre-sales, that the buyers suffer." Chionetti misses the days when key art and trailers were available before the markets and completed films could be easily screened during the market. Now, "it's impossible to see all the films you want to see and often you've never seen a good trailer or the key art before the screening, so you take your chances that you'll hate the movie. If you had the art or trailer before the screening, you could at least weed out some films." Chionetti smiles, tilts his head down and looks up from under his eyebrows, "Of course, the sellers don't want buyers saying 'no' on the basis of art and trailers. It's all part of the game, and these days sellers don't get aggressive until about two weeks before a market, so buyers don't really know the condition or quality of the project until the market."
Buying for Brazil is very competitive. With the four top companies locked into their relationships, the remainder are forced to buy more and more product at the pre-sale stage. That means that you don't have finished films, trailers or dailies to watch at the AFM. Instead, you've got one-sheets and lots and lots of talk. Talking goes on for 16 hours a day for 8 days of the AFM. Chionetti says it's exhausting and frustrating because you don't want to keep buying films before they're complete. So much can go wrong or change between the time you make the pre-sale commitment and the time the film is delivered that it can seem like it's not worth the effort. "It's not the point to say that the buyers get their money back (or don't have to pay in the first place) if the delivery elements aren't met. The point is you had to talk and talk and talk and talk just to get a good deal, and then a year or so later, you don't get the film that you talked and talked and talked about. It's not about not having to spend the money on the film, it's about the spent money and time chasing down a deal or a film that just never happened," says Chionetti. Buyers want to see some part of a movie before making a dollar commitment. Even when you have tremendous casting, what makes it onto the celluloid is a different story. Chionetti offers House of the Spirits as an excellent example of a cast to die for that should have been put out of the audience's misery. However, with a great cast and no film to show, buyers were forced to pre-buy, and buy they did. Almost all territories were sold before the film was released. The sellers got lucky.
After sitting for only a few minutes, Chionetti seems rested and his animation increases. He's starting to get more passionate as he describes what he perceives as a common link between sellers: disregard for a buyer's individual taste. He loves to pursue only the best products at the markets, even though he knows they frequently go to higher bidders. Nonetheless, he keeps on making his bids, trying to convince the sellers that Sunset Filmes services its exhibitors and the films better than any of the other, bigger companies.
Chionetti knows he has his work cut out for him. He offered above asking price on a film nominated for a handful of Oscars this year, but the seller wouldn't let him take the film buy itself, demanding instead that Chionetti buy it and three other films that might not have sold well otherwise. Chionetti talked and talked and talked but couldn't get the seller to budge, later finding out that the seller eventually did let the nominee go for the asking price without being packaged with other products. Those tactics really get Chionetti riled up, but he knows that getting hot isn't going to get him the films he wants. So, he keeps on working those relationships, talking 16 hours a day, dreaming about watching trailers and films instead of imagining what the one-sheets would look like if they were brought to life. He puts the hotel chairs back where he found them, bids a courteous farewell and saunters off toward the milieu of the AFM. Just another diligent buyer doing what it takes to get good movies into the hands of the theater owners who rely upon him.
