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INDIE-SENT PROPOSAL What a difference a year makes. At last year's Sundance festival, Trimark's acquisition team was hitting screenings with checkbooks open. Except for the rare high-toned release (Chinese Box), the indie company, known for low-down video franchises (Leprechaun) and crude comedies (Meet Wally Sparks), had a reputation for being, as one studio chief puts it, ''bottom feeders.'' But by last January, Trimark was enjoying its first theatrical home run: Eve's Bayou, which cost around $4 million to produce, would go on to make close to $15 million.
The success of that African-American drama convinced Marc Levin, director of Sundance Grand Jury prizewinner Slam, that Trimark was the right home for his gritty prison picture (for which the company paid $2.5 million), and it gave hope to writer-director Dan Rosen that his Scream-style entry Dead Man's Curve would receive the theatrical release he says the company promised. The studio, which also picked up Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss at Sundance, seemed suddenly savvy.
But one month after the festival, Trimark reported fiscal second-quarter 1997 losses of $4.2 million; then Slam grossed just $982,000; then a string of Trimark's top executives bailed; and it was decided that Dead Man's Curve (since retitled The Curve) would go straight to video. That Trimark announced a 1998 fiscal first-quarter profit of $713,000 ($240,000 of which was a tax refund) is of no comfort to the filmmakers who feel they got lost in the tumult. ''I know Trimark thinks they tried,'' says Levin, ''but did they know how?''
The way the company handled Rosen's film raises the same question: Trimark was the only distributor willing to spend $400,000 on The Curve, a $1 million black comedy that seemed commercial -- especially after costar Keri Russell was cast as TV's Felicity. According to Rosen, Trimark had guaranteed The Curve a New York/L.A. release. But, after bad test runs in Spokane, Wash., and Baton Rouge, La., last fall, the studio decided against it. (It may not have helped that Paramount's similar Dead Man on Campus grossed a tepid $15 million, which, according to studio execs, would barely cover marketing costs of a teen-aimed film.) One indie exec who followed the deal wasn't surprised. ''I asked why they were picking the film up,'' he says, ''and they said that it would do well on video and TV, and that although they had made a release deal, they might not [proceed].'' Dennis O'Connor, a senior VP at Trimark, says, ''If there were any way we thought we could make a profit [theatrically], we would be releasing it.''
Recently, Trimark announced that it would scale down and refocus on art-house fare like Another Day in Paradise, the just-released druggie drama. In fact, the studio's only financial misstep last year may have been Slam. ''Acquiring The Curve wasn't a mistake,'' says chairman Mark Amin. ''We bought it inexpensively enough that we'll make money.''
Small consolation for Rosen. ''The irony is that the money from [The Curve's] cable and video deals will keep Trimark going,'' he says. ''A lot of people saw this coming. I didn't.''
