At IndieWire’s annual “Screen Talk” live podcast at the American Pavilion in Cannes, Neon CEO Tom Quinn returned to share his Oscar whisperer secrets after his victory lap on “Anora,” which won the Palme d’Or last year followed by five Oscars including Best Picture, Director, Actress, Editing, and Original Screenplay. Quinn is the talk of Cannes because, as anticipated, the movie he acquired at last year’s festival, Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” starring Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve, is the frontrunner for the Palme.
While Quinn talked about the four films he brought to the festival (listen below), after our podcast, he acquired three Competition titles: Jafar Panahi’s family drama “It Was Just an Accident,” Brazil’s popular entry “The Secret Agent,” from Kleber Mendonça Filho, and Oliver Laxe’s tragic French-Spanish production “Sirât,” which polarized many Cannes watchers. Even if these four Neon titles don’t win Cannes prizes — several will, we guarantee it — they should wind up submitted for the Best International Feature Oscar.
Quinn is at the top of his game and has the confidence to make bold moves and the experience to know how to make the most of them. And he calls it like he sees it. There’s no corporate overlord telling him to watch his mouth. (Hear his no-holds-barred interview below or via your preferred podcast platform.)
And check the podcast for Ryan Lattanzio and Anne Thompson’s candid assessment of the Cannes selection mid-festival: top of class is Spike Lee’s Oscar-worthy Akira Kurosawa update “Highest 2 Lowest” (A24/Apple TV+), which should have been in Competition. We were less wowed by Ari Aster’s neo-Western “Eddington” (A24), which is carried by the exemplary Joaquin Phoenix but wastes Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone. Same goes for Wes Anderson’s B-tier “The Phoenician Scheme” (Focus), carried by Benicio del Toro and Mia Threapleton (scion of Kate Winslet) while underutilizing its sprawling ensemble. Then, there’s the grief-addiction drama “Alpha” (Neon), Julia Ducournau’s less-than-stellar follow-up to Palme d’Or winner and French Oscar submission “Titane,” which inspired Anne and Ryan to debate the plot without coming to any clear conclusions. Not good.
Anne was over the moon about “Nouvelle Vague,” Richard Linklater’s breezy black-and-white love letter to Paris in 1959; he recreates the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” with a cast of unknowns who look like the critics and filmmakers who were there at the time. Ryan calls it “shallow enjoyment” and compares it to Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” “It’s good as a New Wave hangout movie where you see people like Bresson and Rivette and Rohmer and all these people you know running around Paris. I did like Zoey Deutch. She nails Jean Seberg’s terrible French accent,” he said.
We also disagree on Kristen Stewart’s debut feature and sales title “The Chronology of Water” (Un Certain Regard), which eschews a standard three-act narrative for five free-flowing chapters. Anne thinks British actress Imogen Poots anchors the audacious film, while Ryan dismisses it as “navel-gazing at female misery.” We agree it could use some time in the editing room, but Stewart told me she wasn’t going back.
On a more positive note, we both admired body-horror flick “The Plague” (Un Certain Regard), an assured debut from Charlie Pollinger that is for sale. A24 is developing a movie with him, “The Masque of the Red Death,” with Sydney Sweeney. Ryan admired Lynne Ramsay’s “Die My Love” more than Anne, who does predict an Oscar nomination for Jennifer Lawrence’s slow descent into madness. MUBI won a bidding war and paid $23 million. Will they make their money back with the combined star power of Lawrence and Robert Pattinson? MUBI did a great job with “The Substance,” and they obviously think they can work with this cast and this subject to create some interest from audiences. But will it play? We doubt this film is as entertaining as “The Substance.”
Anne and Ryan both love rising actor Harris Dickinson’s directing debut “Urchin,” which breaks out [eventual Un Certain Regard Best Actor winner] Frank Dillane as an unhoused Londoner who can’t ditch his addictions. Ryan compared it to Mike Leigh’s “Naked.” Hopefully, the movie will land a buyer who will make the most of it.
When Tom Quinn took the stage, he explained how “Anora” scored “the largest theatrical bump post- Oscar win since ‘Oppenheimer,’” he said. “The significant bump was on home entertainment, which it had been on since Christmas, and that was seismic. The end result of that is probably somewhere around 125-to-150% of our original expectation, which is great. But coming up with our plans, post-winning the Palme d’Or, we intentionally built a large, wide release film. While we platformed it, we knew that we would move into a wide release, that we’d try to reach an audience that wasn’t paying attention to the review-driven specialized independent sector, and possibly this would be the first Sean Baker film that they’d ever seen. But all in all, we kept to our guns.”
On Oscar night, Quinn was moved by the overwhelming warmth in the room. “I always liken the Oscars to the high school cafeteria,” said Quinn, “because you’re sitting there with people who may or may not like you, who want to stick you in the back, and so you’re sitting next to Warner Bros. and all the other studios. Sitting in front of us was A24, and they were exceptionally gracious. Sitting behind us was MUBI, and I can’t say that it was the same feeling.”
When Quinn arrives in Cannes, he always has next year in mind. “We came here with two films under our belt [‘Alpha’ and ‘Sentimental Value’], and two other films that are playing here: Raoul Peck’s ‘Orwell: 2+2=5,’ as well as Kyle Marvin and Mike Covino’s ‘Splitsville.’ The only thing that outdid the screening was that party. It’s the greatest party that Cannes has ever witnessed, the amount of dancing that was happening. Mike Covino said, ‘We’re bringing back comedies to the theater, folks.’”
Of course, Quinn was in the hunt for more buys. “There’s always room for more,” he said. “I have a voracious appetite for incredible cinema, and I hate saying no to stuff, but we also want to do right by films… We’ve seen a lot here this year, and it reminds me of years past, where it’s a ton of challenging cinema, and you can fall on either side of what you think of these movies. We’ve had some fierce conversations internally. We don’t always agree, and when we all agree, maybe that’s the movie you don’t buy.”
Neon did get in the bidding for “Die My Love,” even though Quinn didn’t love it. “We certainly fought for it, but at a reasonable level,” he said. As for MUBI’s $23-million winning bid: “That’s a press release, right? That’s not buying movies. And good for them.”
Winning the Palme d’Or this year would be Neon’s sixth in a row. Last year, before “Anora” won, they acquired “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” at the last minute, too. “The truth is, and I know no one believes us,” said Quinn, “we’ve never been that cynical, and while we are extremely competitive, we adore our filmmakers. We’re desperate to work with them. We never get over losing movies. It’s always an open wound. But I’ve never felt any pressure. I came here for 20 years and didn’t win a thing.”
Quinn said, though, that the “year that I thought we might win something,” when he was SVP of Magnolia Pictures, “it fell apart miraculously at the press conference for ‘Melancholia.’ We stayed up all night celebrating. I was, ‘Man, we’re going to go all the way, look at this.’ And then the car just went off and veered off the cliff. [Director Lars von Trier made a comment about Hitler that led to him being exiled from Cannes.] Lars von Trier was quite apologetic about it.”
Quinn values the granddaddy of festivals: “We feel fully ensconced in Cannes. It means a lot to film, it means a lot to us as a company, but I feel no pressure. And the reality is, I feel that there might be more pressure on the selection committee, because four of the last five Palme d’Or winners have been Best Picture nominees, and two of those have won. That’s extraordinary.”
Why has this shift occurred? “It’s operating from a place of confidence and platforming these movies,” he said. “And taking your time and knowing that we can sustain a campaign for a quality film (like the ones that have won the Palme d’Or) over the course of six months, and everybody else is burning hot and bright and quick. That jury represents the Academy. They are an eclectic group of talent: actors, directors from all over the world.”
Quinn added, “And while they are not the entire 9,000-plus body, it’s a great sample size. And so the triangle of the selection committee here in France, the birthplace of cinema, an incredible festival, a selection of all kinds of movies, 20-plus, it’s the best representation of cinema. These wins across the Academy are merit-based. The nominations may not be. I’m not going to call out any single film or any single company who does it very well every single year, but I do think the wins are merit-based, and that Palme d’Or and the other selections, whether it’s director, screenplay, actor, actress, we’ve enjoyed the benefit.”
Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” played late in the festival, like “Anora.” “Well, someone said to me that most of the Palme d’Or winners of late have premiered in the second week,” said Quinn. “So I’m excited to go to its premiere on Wednesday.” (We recorded on Tuesday).
The rest is history. We will find out at the awards on Saturday.
Listen to IndieWire’s “Screen Talk” live podcast in the audio below.
