We are happy to announce that 366 Weird Movies has gone into the video distribution business!
Our first venture is the surrealistic satire of the Bush presidency, W the Movie (review), by this site’s own Alfred Eaker. We hope to acquire the rights to distribute more weird, underground titles in the future.
One important function we think our distribution efforts can serve in the future is to offer compilations of shorts by up-and-coming directors whose work might be too strange and experimental to merit a mainstream release.
The reason we’re informing you, the casual reader, of this development is not to beg you to buy our titles to support independent filmmakers (although if you want to do so anyway, you can buy W here).
Believe it or not, our priorities are completely backwards. We believe in the integrity of the List more than in making a fast buck off of you.
The reason we’re devoting space to this announcement is to assure you that no movie will be getting special critical treatment simply because we distribute it, or because we hope to acquire its rights. Every title that comes across our desks will be impartially reviewed first, before any distribution contract is contemplated. Determining the suitability of a movie to make it onto the List of the 366 best movies of all time will always be made before we have any financial stake in the film. If there is a potential conflict of interest—i.e., we receive a movie for review from someone we have a pre-existing business relationship with—we’ll outsource the initial review to an independent third party.
We hope that by doing our small part to promote the weird by distributing the occasional film, we can strike a small blow against the pallid realism and pervasive normalcy of calculated Hollywood product. We’ll grow as large as we can to combat the monster. Viva la weird!
huzzah! huzzah!