From its origins in 1990 as a small New York production company created as a haven for struggling filmmakers, The Shooting Gallery has gone on to produce internationally acclaimed indie films that generate high box office. It’s also gone on to grow the company into a conglomerate of ancillary production and post outfits serving the minors and majors alike. It has also expanded into foreign distribution of its own catalogue.

This one-stop shopping approach to filmmaking has turned partners Larry Meistrich and Bob Gosse into something of a legend on the American indie scene, as has tsg’s ability to straddle the lines between innovative, grass-roots independent production and the commercial setting of big-budget movie making.

tsg’s first feature was Nick Gomez’s Laws of Gravity which has earned over us$4 million, received international critical acclaim and resulted in a deal with Universal that led to Gomez’s following success New Jersey Drive.

The release of Peter Cohn’s Drunks and the sale of Billy Bob Thornton’s academy award-winning Sling Blade to Miramax (initiating a three-picture deal with the studio locking in tsg as producer of Thornton’s films) has established the company as a major player in the American industry.

With its latest project, Hal Hartley’s Henry Fool, launched in the special presentation programme at the festival, tsg continues to prove that indie filmmaking can garner wide audiences, generate profits and still maintain its indie edge for creative, fresh voices.

tsg president Larry Meistrich has already sold the film into Japan, Australia, Italy, South Africa, Israel and Scandinavia. He says five distributors are vying for u.s. rights and a deal will soon be announced.

At the Cannes Film Festival, tsg announced a foreign sales division, helmed by president Steven Bickel, formerly head of Samuel Goldwyn International.

Based in l.a., TSG International directly sells its own product to foreign territories and has effected output deals and long-term associations with Pony of Japan, Malofilm in Canada and Australia’s rep, among others. It has signed a two-year first-look deal with New Line Cinema for higher-budgeted features and a three-picture soundtrack distribution agreement with Island Records.

Although the company has received numerous requests to distribute properties outside of its own titles, Bickel says at this point in time the company is focusing on its own slate of pictures. However, he says within a year the company will likely be moving into acquisitions of product for domestic and foreign sale.

Distribution outlets for independent films are sorely lacking on the American scene, says Meistrich.’In the u.s. there are a lot more films being made but not as many distributors as there used to be,’ he explains. ‘It’s really hard to sell a film if you are not established. There’s a lot of money out there to make films but not a lot to buy them and I don’t think people realize this.’

The company’s in-house financing division produces roughly five to eight features per year with budgets under $8 million.

The company’s upcoming lineup includes Thornton’s as yet unannounced next feature, and new projects from Gomez, and Michael Almereyda (Nadja). tsg is looking for a director to attach to a project called The Second Greatest Story Ever Told. Nancy Savoca’s The 24 Hour Woman is in pre-pro and tsg is working with Irish director Martin Duffy (The Boy From Mercury) on The Bumblebee Flies Away, starring Elijah Wood.

‘We are very much director-driven,’ says Meistrich and adds tsg works with emerging and established North American as well as foreign directors in genres of films across the board. The array of projects on tsg’s 97 production schedule stand as evidence: Gosse’s Niagara, Niagara, one of three American films accepted into the main competition of the ’97 Venice Film Festival; Amos Poe’s farce Frogs For Snakes, about a young woman forced to fulfill one final collection for her mob-connected ex-husband; John Pieplow’s Helltown, written by and starring Dee Snider from rock band Twisted Sister, Elijah Wood’s The Bumblebee Flies Away, a drama about a young experimental hospital patient; and Rob Morrow’s feature directorial debut Time on Fire.

Meistrich, in Toronto for a few days during tiff, says he is always scouting for new talent and will also take a look at scripts that land at his doorstep without directors attached. Although the company will at times provide finishing funds, it then takes a role in the creative.

‘We are not passive investors,’ says Meistrich, and although tsg generally stays away from coproductions, preferring to fully finance all its projects, they do sometimes bend the rules, as was the case with Henry Fool, a partnership with Hartley’s company True Fiction Pictures.

tsg also operates the subsidiary Gun-For-Hire which offers filmmakers line producing as well as an entire in-house array of production services, ranging from grip, electric and music supervision to office, accounting and legal support.

Meistrich says this in-house shop cuts weeks of time and thousands of dollars from the budgets of indie producers and provides filmmakers with access to equipment that only a company with a huge volume of production has the buying power to bring in, particularly with its numerous exclusive vendor deals.

Productions coming through the door for these services are all above the $1-million mark. Al Pacino enlisted the services for Chinese Coffee and industry heavyweights such as Miramax, Warner Bros., Live Entertainment, nbc and Showtime are clients.

The Shooting Gallery also owns, manages and operates a number of ancillary businesses providing departmental services and rentals to studios and independents alike. Subsidiaries include East Coast Post, Clear Music, Shooting Gallery Studio Resources and Back East Grip & Electric. Each company is a self-sufficient profit centre and any production that hires one company is offered the services of the sister companies at below-market rates.

tsg’s current project at tiff, Henry Fool, was penned by director Hartley, a festival darling since his first feature The Unbelievable Truth in 1989. The film is the tale of a chain-smoking, beer-guzzling, self-styled intellectual ex-con who shows up in a suburban town to write his memoirs and profoundly affects the residents, including a garbage man who he encourages to write a poem. The resulting poem turns into a world success while Henry Fool’s memoirs are dismissed.

The film explores some weighty subjects: the testing of friendship, the responsibilities of influence between mentor and apprentice, and the possibilities of originality in creative work. Principals include Thomas Jay Ryan (Body Count, The Principal), Parker Posey (Drunks, Clockwatchers) and Kevin Corrigan (Goodfellas, Drunks).