Moving Pictures

Enlarge

"Ultimately, the goal here is to build a brand around social relevance in media." --Jeff Skoll, photographed outside of Participant Productions

The industry, however, took a while to catch on. "After we had the premiere of Good Night, and Good Luck, one of my favorite films that we've done," says Skoll, "one of the, uh, let's just call him an industry luminary, puts his arm around me,"--he mimes a meaty embrace--" and says, 'Good film, good film, I really liked it...but you know it's not going to be Harry Potter, right?'" Skoll laughs. "We really missed that opportunity, doing the [Edward R.] Murrow bobblehead doll!"

The next headline-grabber will be October's Fast Food Nation, a feature-length adaptation of the best-selling expose by Eric Schlosser. Participant worked closely with British producer Jeremy Thomas to bring the book to the screen, with Skoll serving as executive producer. Of the sprawling social allegory, directed by Richard Linklater and featuring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, Schlosser says, "It's a very tough, uncompromising film. It doesn't sugar the pill." Schlosser's also bullish on Participant. "Every terrible greedy cliche you hear about Hollywood is true. [But Participant is] totally, fundamentally different. I'm not saying that Jeff Skoll is a saint, or he's superhuman, but he started with the right intention and has carried through on it." Fast Food Nation has already drawn coordinated counterattacks from the restaurant industry: Months before the film's release, an "astroturf" (fake grassroots) Web site called "Best Food Nation" appeared to try to counter the PR fallout ("Myth: Fast food offers dead-end jobs. Fact: Actually, fast food offers opportunity and experience"). McDonald's wrote in an internal memo that it was considering dispatching a "truth squad" to "set the record straight."

Participant's idealism may actually be its ace in the hole from a business point of view. Despite challenging content, all its movies so far have been profitable except the dour North Country, which starred Charlize Theron. Syriana, made for $50 million according to tracking service Box Office Mojo, grossed $93 million worldwide. Good Night, and Good Luck, made for just $7 million, grossed $32 million in the United States alone. An Inconvenient Truth did $17 million at the box office in the first eight weeks. Those aren't Harry Potter numbers, either, but outside Hollywood, that's a real business.

How have these anything-but-escapist movies made it? Here's the first secret of pro-social business: When you give outstanding people the chance to work on something they care passionately about, often you get a great result. "A-list talent is attracted to stories that matter," says Ricky Strauss. "There are more opportunities to have people give their all." Plus, the talent comes cheaper: Skoll points out that George Clooney took $1 to write and direct Good Night, and Good Luck. And quality attracts quality. Now that Participant actually has a track record, it's taking in an average of 150 scripts a month, and stars are lining up with pet projects. The coming season, details of which were scarce at press time, will bring at least two documentaries and three new features, including one starring Terrence Howard, coming off his Oscar nomination for Hustle & Flow, as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. When I ask Skoll if the other stars will be as big as the likes of Clooney and Theron, he just points at the ceiling. Bigger.

Here's another not-so-secret Ben and Jerry know well: Customers are attracted to a good product wedded to a sincere, virtuous mission. The social campaigns that generally roll out on the Web site Participate.net with the release of each movie also function as very smart marketing campaigns for the age of the blog. For example, the progressive political organization MoveOn.org promoted a "See the Truth" campaign to its 3 million members; more than 200,000 people pledged online to see An Inconvenient Truth and buy tickets for friends on its opening weekend to help it get picked up by more theaters. Truth was the most profitable film per-screen for a couple of weekends after its opening. Try pulling that trick with Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

Then there's a third key to what Participant is doing. Just as Whole Foods did with organic broccoli, it's expanding and building a brand around an existing niche market. The "prestige picture" or "problem picture" has been a staple from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner to All the President's Men to Schindler's List. These have always been the serious films that the big names earned the right to make, and some of them were even blockbusters. But because they tended to be labors of love, rather than hewing to the formula for Hollywood success, they took longer to incubate. "Richard Attenborough told me that Gandhi took him 20 years to make," Skoll says.