Scanner Darkly Producer Puts Latest Movie on BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on June 11, 2009While the MPAA sees BitTorrent as enemy number one, many filmmakers dream of getting their work into the top 100 download list on The Pirate Bay. Filmmaker Tommy Pallotta is one of them. His previous film was already immensely popular on BitTorrent, and he hopes to repeat this success with his latest work.
Tommy Pallotta is an American film director and producer from Texas, currently living in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Being this far away from his home country is one of the reasons why he became a BitTorrent enthusiast, no further explanation needed for most TorrentFreak readers.
In film circles, Pallotta is known for his outstanding animation work that defines most of his work thus far. His last film, A Scanner Darkly starred Keanu Reeves and was a smash hit on BitTorrent. With more than a million downloads, the movie earned a place in our list of Top 10 most downloaded movies four weeks in a row.
Pallotta’s latest work is something totally different though. It’s a follow up documentary to film legend Martin Scorsese’s cult-classic American Boy that was shot more than thirty years ago. In American Boy Scorsese documented the life of his friend Steven Prince, who was also the inspiration for one of the best known scene’s in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. With American Prince Pallotta continues the saga.
Since Scorsese’s original documentary is a rarity nowadays, Pallotta had to ‘pirate’ much of his material on BitTorrent sites and YouTube. In return, Pallotta is giving the film away for free on BitTorrent. This of course caught our attention and we decided to catch up with the director to lear a little more about his motivation to embrace BitTorrent.
Film director and producer Tommy Pallotta
TF: First off, A Scanner Darkly – which you produced – became quite successful on BitTorrent and was downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people. Were you aware of that at the time? What do you think of people who use BitTorrent to download the film?
Tommy: Really, A Scanner Darkly was successful on BitTorrent? GREAT! I wish it was more so, I have to admit, I get jealous when I look at the top 100 downloads on the trackers and I don’t see my movies. In fact, part of the reason I am releasing American Prince on BitTorrent is for the hope that it breaks the top 100. I live in Amsterdam now, so the only way I can keep up with some of my favorite shows, events, and films is to download. I think it is great, especially for filmmakers of niche movies. My movies tend to get limited releases and are more of the cult film status, so the initial release is often overlooked or simply the movie is unavailable in many areas. For me as a filmmaker it is most important that the work I make get seen. I feel for many people and places, downloading is the only way they will get to see my movies. Waking Life is a movie that I produced that is a pretty interesting example of that. It seems more popular today that when it came out in 2001. I think BitTorrent and steaming sites like YouTube are completely responsible for that phenomena. Since I use BitTorrent, I wanted to give back to the community, that was part of the motivation is releasing American Prince via BitTorrent.
TF: The MPAA has often argued that the movie industry loses billions of dollars through piracy. Others think that it has close to no impact. What’s your position in the ongoing ‘piracy debate’?
Tommy: Well, everyone has a different opinion. It is pretty simple to me: The exact same thing that happened to the music industry will happen to the film industry. I suspect the film industry knows that and is trying to hold off the inevitable as long as they can. My guess is that they will try to make as much money as long as they can until they have to change or someone comes in and organizes and unifies the industry in the way Apple did for music. But even that is tricky because obviously Apple benefited more than the music industry. So they should be looking at alternative revenue streams, I find it hard to believe that many DVDs will be sold a few years from now. I would rather embrace new technologies and distribution methods, I feel this gives me greater and more immediate access to an audience.
TF: For American Prince you’ve used material from BitTorrent and YouTube, which is great. Did you license all these clips, or are they pirated copies?
Tommy: Yes we used material from BitTorrent and YouTube for American Prince and no, we did not license them. I did receive the Master copy of American Boy from Steven Prince himself, but we found a copy via BitTorrent that was better than that copy, so we used that! Plus, there is some confusion as to who actually owns the rights to American Boy. Part of the motivation of this film was to get a proper release for Scorsese’s American Boy. I felt this film would help uncover who has the rights and hopefully get it in front of a larger audience.
TF: Why did you decide to release American Prince for free on BitTorrent and what do you expect from it?
Tommy: Scorsese’s American Boy has been and is still generally unavailable for over 30 years, yet so many filmmakers have been influenced by it. The way we saw it is through multi-generational VHS tapes. Now with BitTorrent, there is a whole new audience and generation ready to be influenced by that film and I hope mine. Steven Prince is a gold mine of future cinema scenes and I hope a whole new generation of filmmakers will understand how he has influenced American Cinema. My biggest expectation is that the most people possible will watch my film! Also, I would really like to encourage people to talk about the film, with each other as well as on the Internet. It would make me happy to see Wikipedia entries and IMDB boards as well as Internet sites. I would love for people to get together and have screenings of it with their friends, or for universities to suggest to their class for the students to watch it. I look at American Prince as the film school I never had, what I always imagined film school to be.
TF: Do you think that the Internet and file-sharing technology will play an important role in shaping the future of film distribution?
Tommy: I absolutely believe how we watch and share movies will shape the future of film distribution. I believe it will have such a profound influence that it will even change how movies are made. I think it is a win-win for the filmmakers and the viewers. Filmmakers will have a more direct reach with audience and viewers have more to choose from. I wanted to release this film in support of file sharing and to prove to myself and others that it can have a profoundly positive effect.
TF: Amen.
Previously: Data Protection Makes Identifying Online Pirates a Nightmare
Next: Free Anonymous BitTorrent Becomes Reality With BitBlinder
73 Responses
Epic WIN :P
Nice
So now those without vested interest in maintaining the illusion that it’s all about the artists, have found use for bit torrent. Looks like another legal use to me. So much for it’s the realm of pirates and terrorists.
I wonder how those ISPs that throttle the bittorrent are going to react to one of their users wanting to download a legal app?
More and more we are seeing musicians and producers embrace bittorrent. Another positive step in the right direction.
One of us! And A Scanner Darkly was excellent.
Nice to see the talent actually “get it” but even if we see more talent actually embrace the technology, they are going to face an uphill battle against the suits who want to control it.
Just a matter of time though, and I applaud Tommy Pallotta for having the globes in his pants to go against “the system”. Good job sir, I will most certainly check out your film.
Cheers!
eZee.se
WIN!!!
a scanner darkly cost 8.2 million dollars to make and took in 7.6 million worldwide.
looks like being a hit on bittorent really pays off!
i really enjoyed Waking Life (he produced)
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Awesome! I really enjoyed “A scanner darkly” and “Waking life” was just excellent.
Now I’m off to try the nearest light switch, just to make sure I’m not actually dreaming. ;]
@8
It doesn’t sound like he’s too bothered by it. ;) For some, money isn’t the objective. Those are the ones with integrity.
watching movies on youtube or some other streaming sites are horrible they are usually cut up in to to many parts and are usually piss poor quality. It is nice however to see more and more people starting to give away free movies and music
A scanner darkly was great…
Read the book first by Phillip K. Dick & was surprised at how well it was transfered to the screen.
Full marks to the guy for releasing through BT
2010 FTW
Just one word “Epic”
I applaud to him for being so open minded and art/culture loving.
He is true artists who makes things for sake of art.
This articles actually brought and idea where we can divide people that create culture on to two kinds. Ones that create media for sake of art. And ones that create for sake of money. And there are some in between. So those who concentrate mainly on art are artists. Those who concentrate on money are entertainers and nor artists. Their works are not about art… They are about selling entertainment.
Art is create to be shared, to be learned from, to show and spread ideas/styles/emotions. And trough those to inspire other people to create something else… That’s how art works.
But in commercial entertainment things work differently… They don’t share and don;t want others to share in any ways be it showing, remaking or using as base…
I hope that more and more creative people will go for art and not entertainment models.
Oh big frakking whoop! A mediocre film available for free downloading at very low speed on a resource hogging, technically flawed and insecure infrastructure. How delightful! I can barely contain myself.
And of course, TF being the special creatures that they are, e.g., having their weekly period every Thursday, have to take a biased approach during the course of their interview.
Well, not to get technical with you sir, but you’ve been there and done that.
And what did it change? A big pile of nothing, nada, zilch.
By now, everybody should know that only desperate producers who can’t find a decent distribution company would give away their film for free on bittorrent.
In other news, you can all go fornicate yourselves up the back door.
How come there’s less seeders for the torrent than comments on here? Do I smell hit’n run? :D
A Scanner Darkly was excellent.
I remember, i saw it just after i saw Cloverfield at the cinema.
For the first 5-10 minutes of Cloverfield, i thought – ‘ah, this footage style is really annoying, but i’m sure i’ll get used to it soon’.
I didn’t – and although i loved the storyline to Cloverfield, i did not love the motion sickness.
When i saw A Scanner Darkly, i thought to myself – ‘please please please, don’t be another clover field. Don’t mess around with the footage just to get the best-director award’.
I’m glad to say, A.S.D. was NOTHING like Cloverfield. As soon as i was used to the style the film was portrayed in i was totally engrossed in the plot, with all the twists and turns.
And due to the drug content of the film, it DEFINITELY enhanced the film for me. No doubt about it.
So, in summary, the man’s a legend on screen and off screen.
Any change of releasing an Xvid avi file instead of mov?
One more of Us
One less of Them
Some day they may all come over
“By now, everybody should know that only desperate producers who can’t find a decent distribution company would give away their film for free on bittorrent.”
——————
kind of like that other animator-director who did “SITA SINGS THE BLUES”. she wanted the usual corporate distribution and tried to sell her film through the usual channels, hoping that the buyer would settle the music licensing debts in the process. when that failed she took on a holier-than-thou, web 2.0 persona and released it on bittorrent. that movie cost about 250k to make. how much of her budget has she currently made back? according to her, 37%
lolololololol
I remember getting a copy of Waking Life back in 2003 because it was embraced on a Norwegian Forum. I have seen parts of A.S.D on my Telly (Canal+) but couldn’t watch it all because i was in a hurry at that time.
I will try to download the movies so i can see them all, is it possible to donate straightly to Tommy Pallotta? Anyone?
to those that keep bringing up the $$$ factor, GET BENT!!
to some artists (like myself) money isnt everything……..
i think it’s awesome that this guy sees the positivity and further more sees the negativity. the industries have completely left the future in our hands, and it’s time to step up and show them we’re not gonna stand for their bs any more. this producer proves this point.
“to some artists (like myself) money isnt everything……..”
——————
that’s probably because you’re a teenage amateur “artist” living in your parents basement or college dorm (on your parent’s dime) and the idea of sustainability or longevity is as alien a concept to you as glass is to insects.
money allows professional artists to not have to waste their time and talent on a day job. it allows them to practice more, gain experience, and author a larger body of, higher quality work.
the director of SITA SINGS THE BLUES still has a day job. and guess what? because of money (which you think is so unimportant) she’s STILL trying to recoup her first investment rather than developing a second, or third, or fourth film. you can only lose so much money until you have to start selling instruments and computers and cameras just to eat and keep a roof over your head.
so if all you aspire to be is a weekend artist then bittorrent is great. it definitely holds the potential to quintuple some obscure kid’s or disenfranchised filmmaker’s fan base. but if you aspire to make a living doing what you love?
not so much.
at least not yet, not in this current form.
@ #25 : well said
FUCK Mininova! upload that shit to TPB!
@25
dream crusher….
Funny how they whinge on and on about money while the interviewee doesn’t even mentions it. Sour grapes, mafiaa stooges or failed “entertainers”?
Come on people now… smile on your brother. Everybody get together and try to love one another right now.
Scanner Darkly sucked
cool, if I like the movie maybe I’ll buy a copy.
we are all slaves, some are just thinking too much about money, power and the likes to notice.
there is no choice, just a seemingly endless chain of reactions.
let us rule the world together!
Just finished watching the movie, really enjoyed it and had some good laughs =)
Good work!
I personally know Tommy Pallotta well enough tell you that you guys can try and swing it as “oh its about money” or “oh its because he didnt get a big studio” maybe you should do a little more research before claiming you know it all, some people do have integrity. Here is to you tbot.. PS- I still dont like APPLE!
@25
maybe some of us aren’t CONTENT to live in this world of consumerism and having to pay for basic needs and want to break OUT of that mold by setting an example?
or maybe i’m just weird.
This is obviously a lie. There is not one single film producer out there who does not run their content through the MPAA. There is not one who would ever release their content for free because that’s just stupid. What can anyone possibly gain from free stuff? If no corporate executives are allowed to hold 99% of the world’s wealth, there is VERY clearly a problem with our system.
Money is everything. Anyone who says otherwise is a n00b. If you don’t slave away for money, if you don’t put out your heart’s best and then sell it and lie, extort, scam and manipulate every single penny possible out of the world’s public, then you are a complete loser and will be shunned. Go spend your life being an unloved idiot because you dare for a second to not follow what we tell you to do. (We, of course, being my employers and sponsors, such as the RIAA, MPAA and BSA.)
This is why copyright is so absolutely necessary and amazing! It protects my rights to charge you for my product even if you never intended to buy it. Privacy? Personal freedom? What are you living in, the 1700s? Get a job, you pathetic, sniveling little wannabe pirates.
Also, vote Republican!
Also, whoever has been using my username to post comments here: GTFO! Stop using my username to claim credit for what is not yours- much like you copyright-thieving little n33bs do.
If I recall, Scanner Darkly only had a limited release. There was only 1 theater in my area that had it, the ritzy Muvico place that was so overpriced I thought I would be charged to stand in line.
But I did see SD in theaters, I simply opted out of all concessions.
This of course caught our attention and we decided to catch up with the director to __lear__ a little more about his motivation to embrace BitTorrent.
Call me when it’s available on TPB. I don’t do Mininova.
downloading now, seems interesting enough to use some of my limited [pathetic] ozzie bandwidth on. Always nice to see people releasing their art for free.
It won’t break top 100 but it has my downoad :)
man this def brings a smile ta my face hearing how awesome it is how ppl out there r seeing how bittorrent is the best man made thing, keep up the good work =]
Simply amazing! I hope others embrace as well!
cool story bro :)
Oh sh….nigga talkin sense.
Nice, Did what I could to help him out, added it to our featured list sharing it with our 50,000 members :)at 1337x
Hi All,
I am Tommy Pallotta the guy who made the movie. Thanks for your all of your comments. I will try to check in and answer any direct questions you may have. It seems I need to clarify what my intentions were. I could not sell the movie if I wanted to. I used unlicensed material via BitTorrent so I simple do not have the rights. Because I think filesharing is so great, I wanted to make something to give back to the community to encourage its use and to encourage others to make things specifically for it. I will not release all of my movies this way, but this seemed like the right one and a fun way to participate in something that I find important. Hope that helps. I will try to answer all questions for the next week.
Best
/tp
Netherlands is a filesharing pioneer. Downloading of copyrighted music and movies for personal use is legal over there. Nice to see how a free climate sparks creativity and powers culture!
the Cinema killed theatre and the music industry killed orchestras and now its music and film industries time to go the same way as theatre and orchestras, the era of little plastic disks and tapes is over and the internet is the new era, the people of the world have spoken if the the music and Movie industries wants to continue making money they will have to start answering the peoples demands, we live in an ever developing world if you don’t want to get left behind you would do best to follow popular demand. and the demand is.. i hate having to change discs or some other shit while listening to music or watching Movies or full season DVD-boxes of some tv show! thats why computers are better you just pop a play list and then you just sit your ass down.
I hadn’t even heard of a scanner darkly. Waking Life was awesome so I will definately be watching!
Cheers!!
SO WHERE IS THAT POSTER SAYING ITS AL THEFT?
Had to bit it on this one eh…..
Must be as he says that NONE of your stuff makes it too top 100?
Tells ya that poster is mpaa OR an has been wannabe artist that should really go find other work.
Just downloaded it…took like 20 minutes max…crazy speed.
ya without the mpaa dosing the servers and users it usually is quit fast technology
@neostyles your da mpaa noob howdy….funny that movie was also released BY the MPAA even with a rating by them
OMG how that happen your imperious glorious leader of a NITWIT.
The fact is they are experimenting MORE now as the fact is THEY know its only matter of time before them old farts die off and lose control.
Neostyle, nostyle whatever you want to be known as… now it makes sense of course.. you will be pouting and angry for the next four years and 4 after that,… but dont mix politics and art, some people are just creative enough to make money while giving back to the community.. and the others are just different versions of you. cheer up and say thank you when someone gives you something or you’ll be sitting in the corner in time out.
Watched Scanner Darkly because of this article.. holy crap did that movie rock.. time to watch the rest..
Nice to see producers giving back. I’ll download this for sure. Help push that top 100 (only real list is top 100 or sort by seed).
The people’s voices have been carried by professionals within our communities. All of a sudden when the doctors and lawyers are using bit torrent, and the world hasn’t exploded, we all realize we’ve been had over pety things like profit (for a VERY VERY few) while losing fair use user viewing rights to protect their copywrong agenda.
Pirates of the world unite is right. On the high seas in days of old pirates were OFTEN used by different empires (go attack our enemy they’d say is fair game).
As for the ONE poster being a hater (prob corporately paid) it’s too bad you try and use emotion instead of facts. Get everyone riled up over a nothing post.
*and the choir jumps up from their seats and PRAAAAAAAISES the bit torrent technology, sent DOOOOOOOWN to us from the heavens to free us from the shackles of ignorance and greed*
“well I heard a message! It was up from above! On this blessed Interweb it flew in like a dove!”
Hallelujah! :P
Did someone say “professional artists”? Too funny.
I will only download the documentary only if you upload it on THE PIRATEBAY. I refuse to use mininova
Man, torrentfreak loves it’s censorship thats forsure
the irony
This movie is very inspirational!
We need to bring back the thinking of “Lets try anything to see if it works!”
If you are interested in being a part of the film making process, this movie is a must!
Thank you Netherlands for your liberal filesharing laws and fostering a new breed of producers!
Mr. Pallotta, i watched your latest piece and thought it was an enjoyable film, and just wanted congratulate the action you took with this movie. As for ASD and Waking life, stylistically at least the movies were awesome!
My last comment would be related to something Oscar Wilde said: ‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at’
i live by this part of his statement and i do believe that only and open system is what can save the movie industry as well as many others.
excuse my english if it’s a bit rough.
oh! one last thing
@25 – All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
i didn’t say that, someone smarter did, and i know that all ppl who want to be real artists understand this :)
and just to be clear, there are ppl in this world that do go under that surface and do pay for it dearly, and that is the only reason why we are not still in the stone age(from some pov). :)
It’s great that distribution is changing, and now not every filmmaker is beholden to a studio or distributor saying ‘yes’ to them to release their movie.
Unfortunately, it’s still challenging for most filmmakers to actually make their money back on a movie (assuming they financed it without the studios) when relying solely on internet distribution. Especially if the budget was more than a few hundred thousand bucks. It can be done, but it’s quite challenging.
Now add in piracy (or free sharing if that sounds better), and the result is a filmmaker makes one movie and they’re done for life. Tens of thousands of filmmakers in the past 15 or so years have made one movie and that’s it. This, IMO, is NOT good for art/culture/filmmaking in the U.S.
“Survival of the fittest”? I don’t think all we want left in this arena is filmmakers who have trust funds to live on and can give everything away for free. We need all walks of life of filmmakers, and we need them to be able to survive financially.
how long is it? 424mb seems a bit small
I read “A Scanner Darkly” 35 years ago, loved the book, and was really happy to hear a movie was being made. I bought the DVD just after it came out. Great work.
Now a request – could you make a movie of “A Maze of Death”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Maze_of_Death
Love that book.
OK, but it would have been good if he’d said *something* about revenue – is he worried about loss of revenue and this film if not why not etc. etc.
Its an important issue – if there is no revenue stream for the movie, how is it going to make money, and therefore how is he going to sustain himself as a filmmaker?
I’d have liked to have heard his views on the matter.
I personally love digital distribution, but currently do not pay for any content (usenet). There’s just no place for people like me at the moment to get the stuff we want, how we want it, but be financially responsible also.
Hi
As far as revenue goes, this is not a sustainable model. I was interested in giving something back to the community that I found interesting. Everyone who worked on the film did it for the pure love of it. As far as hard costs, I put out about $1500, that was low enough that I felt I could absorb the costs and do something more interesting with it. I won’t release every movie like this, but am really glad I released this one like this. I am working other “for hire” jobs to sustain me currently. I like the model of doing some for them and some for us.
/tp
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#59 Why refuse to use Mininova? That’s a weak-ass troll remark without an explanation or a link to one.
Tommy – Wow! Here’s hoping you cut a longer version for a 2-hr art house and/or DVD release. As a “49-up for the auteur set”, this one can’t be beat.
Of course I wanted to see more of Steven at work (electric nailgun – lol!) And for future reference please framelock on something during some of the wilder camera moves… urp.
Excellent piece. More!
AMERICAN_PRINCE.mov
Duration 50:08
Filesize 444,429,773 bytes
Video 640×480 29.97fps avc1
Audio 48KHz stereo mp4a
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