From Filmmaker Magazine:
Responding to recent articles in the New York Times and Salon, filmmaker Kentucker Audley has launched a Change.org petition asking “mediocre” independent filmmakers to stop making films. The articles blame overproduction and too many films achieving theatrical release for the economic and artistic issues facing independent film. For the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis — who herself asked distributors to “stop buying so many films” at Sundance — too many films in theaters produces a noise drowning out the virtues of the fewer good movies that deserve critical and public support. For Beanie Barnes at Salon, overproduction has led to economic models that make independent filmmaking a marginal, third-class business with poor salaries and labor practices.
The question nipping at the heels of both these articles is, of course, how do you restrict production in a free market economy where both filmmakers and investors are independent actors? Audley’s modest proposal calls on filmmakers to engage in a round of self-examination and discover their own artistic mediocrity.