Hello readers of Lingo on Docs and The Backlight! We’re bringing you this special co-authored post in the spirit of collaboration that is a hallmark of the Letterboxd4All campaign led by Intrinsic Entertainment Collaborative to buy Letterboxd. We believe our complementary perspectives make a stronger case together about why their bid could be a lifeline for the independent film community.
Full disclosure: We both serve on the advisory board of Intrinsic Entertainment Collaborative. We are not paid, and we have no promise of equity or other compensation if the bid succeeds. The opinions here are our own, and we’re writing because we believe in this effort.
Kathleen & Maida
First up, Kathleen:
In June, I posted that One of Us is Trying to Buy Letterboxd. What did I mean by one of “us”? The company trying to buy Letterboxd, Intrinsic Entertainment Collaborative, is just like us! It cares deeply about the future of independent film, and its mission is to build sustainable business models for independent film.
So here’s an update.
Letterboxd is STILL up for sale, and Intrinsic is still in the race.
Elizabeth Joyce, Intrinsic’s founder, told Semafor’s Media Newsletter on 10/4 that the effort had assembled “significant institutional backing.” Plus, Letterboxd’s founders have input into who buys the majority stake, and according to Semafor they “have sought to preserve the platform’s intimate qualities, which could bolster Letterboxd4All’s community-focused bid.”
Now Intrinsic is inviting the film community to join the effort through Letterboxd4All which is “a community campaign to buy the majority stake using our collaborative ownership model. Filmmakers and fans, together, owning the platform whose value they built.”
Why Does Letterboxd Matter to Us? Here Are 30 Million Reasons
Joyce believes the core problem stymieing indie films now is the cost of marketing and discovery. The old playbook no longer works in an attention economy where audiences are fragmented across infinite platforms. The only reliable way to reach audiences is to buy visibility on social media. But that can be hard to track, and we aren’t always allowed to. YouTube, TikTok, Meta and X initially refused to run paid trailer ads for Alex Gibney’s “Musk,” and Boots Riley’s“I Love Boosters” social media posts were throttled. Joyce warns, “We don’t own the means of marketing, so every time an algorithm changes or an executive team decides a film is politically risky, we’re all scrambling again.”
But Letterboxd is a social platform with 30 million film lovers, and its algorithm is one WE could shape democratically for OUR movies. That means no favoring one studio’s IP and no pay-to-play. Instead, users could choose what they’re shown, using something like the “Choose Your Algorithm” feature Intrinsic is building, which lets users toggle their own preferences.
If we own Letterboxd, we could price marketing by budget: a blockbuster pays full price and a $5,000 indie pays almost nothing.
If we own Letterboxd, we could put more of our films there, building on the success of Video Store.
If we own Letterboxd, we could promote films deemed “controversial.”
If we own Letterboxd, our email addresses would be held by a company trying to grow the audience for films.
If we own Letterboxd, the work we’ve done for the platform (writing reviews, ranking films, making connections) stays in service of Letterboxd’s purpose: “A single place to showcase your life in film.”
Finally, if we own Letterboxd, it means we score a win for the battle to sustain the indie film ecosystem.
No, we couldn’t #StoptheMerger or save Hollywood.
But we CAN save this little piece of the world where people connect because they love movies, and we can grow it in service of both audiences and makers.
And now, Maida:
I’ve shared that in my philanthropic journey I’ve come to see that philanthropy, as currently practiced, replicates economic inequities more than upends/reverses them. Taxpayer subsidized wealth is parked in foundations and donor-advised funds to the tune of $2 trillion, and dribbled out to the social sector at a rate of 5% per year in the case of foundations; donor-advised funds have no mandatory payout rate at all. Meanwhile, the wealth continues to grow, with returns that often outpace the annual grants payout.
The practice of grantmaking maintains a cycle of dependency, with nonprofit organizations serving as pass-throughs that take the grants received, convert them into public programs and, if they’re lucky enough to receive general-operating support, pay their own overhead. It’s unidirectional. Donor → Grantee Org → Public. In this model, the nonprofits and the public they serve accrue none of their own assets and must constantly fundraise to keep the engine running.
While I’m committed to advocate for reforming philanthropic practice – there is a lot of room for improvement even within the system as it exists – this will only take us so far. As impactful as the social sector is to those employed in and served by it, it accounts for only roughly 5% of GDP. Real change, therefore, must create systems and models that more equitably distribute durable asset ownership of assets in the other 95% of our economy.
This is the promise of Letterboxd4All and Intrinsic’s community ownership model.
It converts fans to owners.
…who will decide the fate of the product and the data it holds.
If you’re like me and have spent your career in the nonprofit sector or, heaven forfend, as an artist (!), the buying and selling of companies can feel distant and abstract. I imagine deep-pocketed corporate and private equity players making backroom deals while smoking Cohibas and sipping small batch bourbon. But while we may not always have great insight into how these deals actually go down, we do feel the after effects. Deeply. Mass layoffs, product degradation, and privacy breaches are the all-too-common negative aftermaths felt not by the bigwig dealmakers but by those companies’ customers and employees.
We all know the system isn’t working for too many of us, but we feel powerless to do anything about it.
Letterboxd4All presents an opportunity to forge a different future, democratizing ownership by creating investment pathways for the platform’s community. There’s no cigar-smoking secret dealmaking happening here; in fact, quite the opposite. There is a seat at the table for participation at any level, from $5 to $50 million. And if we get outbid and Letterboxd ends up in another entity’s hands I’ll be disappointed, of course, but the structure we’re building will continue to exist. We can pivot to perhaps build something new; the community will vote to determine the path forward. And anyone wishing to depart the project at any time will get their money back.
It’s collaborative and cooperative.
…activating the power of the many
The only way to pull off an audacious project like this is to be energetically inclusive, collect values-aligned partners, build a coalition, and set egos aside for the greater good. Sure, single-entity players are a more efficient way to get deals done, but we’ve seen where that’s gotten us, right?
A lot of forces out there are actively working to divide us; if they succeed, we’re cooked.
I’m not totally anti-competition. In fact, this is about using cooperation to compete – against formidable parties. I alone have no chance at all to buy a 60% stake in Letterboxd, but I and lots and lots of aligned strangers and friends can.
Since first connecting with Intrinsic Entertainment Collaborative in May, I’ve been so impressed with how they’ve formed relationships with so many new people in such a short amount of time. And how the spirit of cooperation is contagious; once I was engaged I enthusiastically made introductions and worked my network to scoop up as many other happy warriors as possible. And so on…
It’s hope in action.
…and really fun.
I recently read this quote by Vaclav Havel in Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark that really stuck with me:
Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
Letterboxd4All is good, and it stands a chance to succeed. But it is not guaranteed to succeed; we’re trying something completely new here. All that’s going so horribly wrong right now can feel overwhelming and understandably render any decent human powerless. Which is why I’ve been so buoyed by this work for the past six months. It makes me feel better, knowing that there is another way.
Remember what Wayne Gretzky said: “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”