All the right people loved Jane’s first feature film.
It challenged powerful interests, and that made it controversial. It won one of the industry’s top awards and attracted lavish praise from outlets like The New York Times, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter. One of the best-known distributors purchased the film, which went on to reach a huge audience.
Then Jane made another movie.
It too challenged powerful interests, but it challenged powerful interests the entertainment industry supports. That made Jane’s new film “problematic.” The same industry that embraced Jane’s last film has thus far shunned her new project. If the shunning continues, there will probably be no fancy awards this time, no gushing media attention, and no lucrative distribution deal.
The Braun Rule strikes again.
I named the Braun Rule after film industry heavyweight Josh Braun, and it paraphrases what the Oscar-winning producer and Obama pal said publicly: The entertainment industry prefers controversial films over problematic ones, even if they’re good.
Jane (not her real name) and other filmmakers who have endured the Braun Rule have begun to reach out to Courtney and me to ask us about our experiment in film distribution. The Coddling of the American Mind is the very first “Substack presents” feature documentary, and our Substack release is an important component of a first-of-its-kind film release, which also includes a global tour.
The entertainment industry’s cowardice and conformity has created an entrepreneurial opportunity for heterodox filmmakers and platforms like Substack that support intellectual diversity and free speech. But dissident filmmakers who continue releasing films the traditional way will have to deal with the Braun Rule.
And that doesn’t mean the industry wants anodyne movies. Being offensive could be a boon to your film. Just make sure to be correctly offensive.
Offend the right groups, and the famed Sundance Film Festival will squeeze your film in at the last minute, even if it isn’t that good. Offend the wrong groups, and you could end up like Jane, with a problematic film no distributor wants to touch.
The irony is that Jane’s film would probably attract more viewers than Justice, the anti-Brett Kavanaugh documentary shoehorned into Sundance. The film helmed by Roadhouse (2024) director Doug Liman struck even sympathetic eyes as underwhelming. Take, for instance, The Hollywood Reporter’s conclusion: “Considering that ‘Justice’ was touted at Sundance as a powerful indictment of a corrupt system, it turns out to be a bit of a nonevent.”
RELATED
Why You’ll Be Watching Fewer Problematic Movies: The Hidden Side of Cancel Culture at Sundance
Filmmaking During the Great Chill: Why We’re Releasing Our Movie on Substack
Attack of the Eight Percenters: Why We’re Releasing Our Movie on Substack
Liberating Filmmakers: Why We’re Releasing Our Movie on Substack
Problematic Does Not Equal “Conservative”
No doubt some will assume “problematic” simply means “conservative.” But that kind of snap judgment misunderstands what it means to make films during The Great Chill, when content that provokes high-profile social media rage battles represents a tiny percentage of what executives scrub from public view.
In Jane’s case, her film’s point of view would have been considered moderate a decade ago. In the case of The Coddling of the American Mind, being problematic means our film challenges university orthodoxy on issues like free speech and microaggression training (it doesn’t seem to matter that the minority groups who administrators profess to support so much seem to agree with our telling).
These days you could be branded problematic because your film depicts a Latina character who befriends a white woman. And the label could strike your film without warning, even if it was progressive enough to get into Sundance and get praised by The Guardian.
So yes, conservative films definitely count as problematic, but so would any movie that reflects a worldview to the right of the always-evolving far-left brand of progressivism affirmed by entertainment industry gatekeepers. I call these gatekeepers “Eight Percenters” because they usually belong to a political tribe known as Progressive Activists. It’s America’s most leftward tribe. It represents only eight percent of the country, but its members enjoy so much cultural influence that they can sink projects 92 percent of us would support.
I hope Jane continues to investigate the Substack alternative, and there is no doubt that a wide swath of Americans would be open to the point of view espoused by her movie. But what’s a filmmaker to do when her audience is more open minded than the gatekeepers who bring movies to viewers? Jane strikes me as a fighter, so I remain hopeful her film will find an audience.
On the other hand, there’s a good chance you will never hear about Jane’s film. The Eight Percenters fawn over the films that reflect their worldview and shun the others. No need for a noisy “cancel culture” battle that riles up social media and cable news—Jane’s film might end up as just another project quietly frozen during The Great Chill.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here.