Marina Zenovich's Polanski: Wanted and Desired

Adds HBO documentary president Sheila Nevins, who's a sort of doc godmother and whose division picked up theatrical and video rights to Marina Zenovich's Polanski: Wanted and Desired at the fest: "I always think they have rich parents. I try not to think about it. It's too sad. I don't know anyone who does it for a living. Very few documentarians make a living."

Zenovich herself provides a reality check: "Morgan [Spurlock], he's successful, you know? I still have to do other stuff. I make my living as a documentary filmmaker, but I have — I wouldn't call it a day job — but I've been working for an arts channel doing profiles of artists. So I didn't just work on Polanski. It's very hard to be a documentary filmmaker, but it's very interesting. It didn't used to be interesting, but now it's kind of like an interesting career. It's getting more hip."

Trendy or not, it's not as if the filmmakers can crank them out like widgets. Burstein says it takes roughly three years to produce a doc, though it's still "more immediate" than feature filmmaking. In fact, Peralta, who's directed such docs as Dogtown and Z-Boys and Riding Giants, says one reason he continues to make them despite the low return on time and labor invested is that they're rewarding in other ways. He gets to do exactly what he wants, when he wants, without being a slave to studio script and cast approval. The bottom line, of course, is that these films are cheap to produce.

Made in America

Which doesn't mean they're easy to finance. Although veteran doc filmmakers probably have a leg up on neophytes, even they sometimes have that leg cut out from under them. For example, Peralta says he went to every studio in town looking for money to make Made in America. Despite the fact that studio execs had said, "bring me your next film," they all said no. The studios simply aren't interested in developing documentaries, he says. Eventually Peralta found a couple of investors for the film — Steve Luczo, chairman of the board of Seagate Technology, and Baron Davis, a point guard for the Golden State Warriors. These guys represent the emergence over the past few years of a whole new class of investors, men who've made a pile in technology or some other completely unrelated pursuit and now want to make the world a better place. Documentaries are one way to address, or at least illuminate, society's ills.

"It's like the patronage days of yore," Nevins says. "It's like the Medicis. We have no problem working with the Medicis. And they'll pick up the check."

Of course, this money goes to the films, not to the filmmakers. That's why Sundance is so important to them. It offers not only recognition but a hothouse atmosphere in which to sell their work (this year was especially warm, particularly given how poorly docs did at the box office last year). Such was the case with Burstein, who, unlike years past, arrived at the festival without distribution. So even though she was an old pro at Sundance, she had to endure for the first time the pressures of protracted negotiation. Her film screened on the first Friday of the festival but didn't close until the following Tuesday (it was picked up by Paramount Vantage for more than $1 million).