Indeed it does, and in more ways than one, says independent filmmaker Ted Balaker. In an exclusive interview, the producer and director of such films as Little Pink House (about the Kelo eminent-domain case) and Can We Take a Joke talks about the chilling impact that viewpoint discipline in such venues has on filmmakers.

It doesn’t take long, Ted tells me, for producers and investors to get the message that these major-festival organizers are turning into groupthink gatekeepers. That has significant ramifications for access to distribution deals for indies, who rely on festivals to connect them to such deals. Not only does that mean that films that may be heterodox to the current political entertainment-industry consensus won’t get seen, but increasingly that they won’t get made in the first place.

Ted discusses this in his new Substack, Shiny Herd:

More than one person objected to “Jihad Rehab,” but it took only a small group to start the snowballing of outrage that eventually destroyed the film, Smaker’s finances (she says the episode left her nearly broke), and Tabitha Jackson’s job. Sources tell Variety that, although it’s not part of the official reason, her departure from Sundance is indeed related to her handling of “Jihad Rehab” (which has been renamed “The Unredacted”).

You can bet other festival heads, programmers, sales agents, and gatekeepers will take note of Jackson’s exit as well as the film community’s paranoid response to movies that festivals would have embraced just a short time ago.

They will likely make decisions that err even more on the side of caution. Why provoke Twitter? Why risk angering the wrong people? Why risk losing my job?

Their decisions will likely result in fewer cancel culture eruptions because they will filter out problematic content long before it reaches audiences.

The current mood might filter out Can We Take a Joke, and possibly even Little Pink House for its opposition to central planning and defense of private property.

As I remark in our interview, this cuts against the philosophy of indie filmmaking entirely (transcript edited for clarity):

Ed: How do you get financing for films that have heterodox points of view? … What kind of impact is this having on funding for independent films that tell heterodox points of view? I mean, you’ve made them so you’ve got some experience.

Ted: Yeah, I know It’s a great point, Ed, and it’s one that’s often overlooked. Again, a lot of these issues are very, very important, but they’re easy to overlook, especially in the what I consider to be the rather annoying framing of cancel culture These days we tend to overlook how pernicious it is and a lot of the really bad stuff is happening. Underneath the water level, so to speak. So it really is kind of the rest we’re talking about literally, not literally the tip of the iceberg, but to the point about independent film financing. …

Ted: I was very keen on trying to raise money to make a Covid documentary that would have a heterodox point, point of view. But I realized early on that the larger film world would make it very, very difficult, such that if we raise the money, I couldn’t go to our investors and say we have a good chance of, of reaching mainstream America. Because it just didn’t seem like that. I was reading The Trades and there was every once in a while a new Covid documentary was in development and it was kind of like Of course, they’re not all the same, but they kind of again tend to, in general, reinforce the same monoculture lines.

And that was very, very frustrating for me, because nobody will ever, you know, except your listeners and us and a few other people will, will never know about that, that documentary, that might have been, and It could have been on Netflix, you know. And those other ones, if they’re good, they should certainly be made as well, but it shouldn’t be just those.

Ed: This is actually kind of antithetical anyway to the entire idea of independent film, right? I mean independent film, at least in its beginning and really as it matured, the whole point of that was to tell heterodox stories — to tell stories that the studios weren’t telling or that the mainstream media weren’t telling. And in the early days that expressed itself in ways that, you know, are fairly mainstream now. …

And now, from what you’re describing, it sounds to me like this is just an auxiliary of the same stories that mainstream media is tellin, already. It’s stultifying, if you will. I mean, there’s no purpose there other than to just reinforce the dominant narrative, I think that’s a betrayal of what independent film is supposed to be.

Ted: Oh, you’re absolutely right, and I certainly agree. It’s very troubling. Especially, you know, this is my livelihood. I frustrates me on a daily basis and my wife and I are always trying to find ways to kind of thread the needle to, to work around what this is. And that’s part of the reason I started Shiny Herd. …

There’s a great chill that’s going through the film industry and it reverberates through the whole culture. It’s the same chill that we feel in Academia and corporate America, in journalism. And you’re exactly right that the independent film world has betrayed its purpose, much like how Academia has betrayed its purpose to the point, and I mention this in my article.

There is much on all these points in my podcast, so be sure to watch or listen, download, and pass around to friends. We need to be aware of all the different ways in which the public square is getting squeezed by the intolerant gatekeepers currently in control, especially in some unlikely places.

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!