Boss Yauch

Photo: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

“I don’t know if I’ll always want to make records...I could see doing this [films] for a long time."
—Adam Yauch

Read a new interview with Adam Yauch at NYTimes.com.

Offstage, a Beastie Boy Enters the World of Independent Film
By MELENA RYZIK

Every day the Beastie Boy known as MCA, who spent years rapping about girls and parties and the five boroughs, goes to work in an office. Sure, it’s a cool one: the former headquarters of the Benjamin Moore paint company, it is a loftlike space filled with surfboards, skateboards, flea market paintings and his fellow Beastie Mike D.’s records; the attitude is dot-com casual. In this atmosphere of dudes, MCA has become the Boss.

Of course, it’s been a long time since MCA, born Adam Yauch, was known only as a hip-hop artist. In the 1990s he and his band mates founded an indie record label, Grand Royal, and a related magazine; both eventually folded. Under the name Nathanial Hörnblowér, he has directed many of the Beastie Boys’ music videos and their 2006 concert film, which was shot by fans. This year, under his own name, he released “Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot,” a documentary about high school basketball players.

Now, despite some formidable odds, he is pursuing his cinematic interests with a new division of his company, Oscilloscope, which acquires, produces and distributes independent movies.

Its next release, “Flow,” a documentary about global water problems, opens Friday. Also on the schedule is “Wendy and Lucy,” a Cannes favorite starring Michelle Williams that will screen at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 27 and 28 and is scheduled to open Dec. 10.

As part of Oscilloscope Laboratories, which includes a recording studio and production facilities, Oscilloscope Pictures will operate in a model similar to an independent record label, Mr. Yauch, 44, said over green tea in a de facto conference room at his TriBeCa office.

“What I really liked about indie record labels — the indie record labels that I liked, anyway — is that things were done in-house,” he said. Unlike most independent film distributors, which outsource nonglamorous aspects of moviemaking like poster design, marketing and DVD production, Oscilloscope’s employees — a tour revealed 10 young guys in skate shoes and headphones bent over laptops — will handle everything themselves, including handpicking which theaters their films will end up at.

“It’s much more of a D.I.Y. approach,” Mr. Yauch said, before quickly adding that he hates that acronym. “It just sounds very packaged, like a snappy marketing thing to say.” Still, it fits: the company is self-financed.

“I’m definitely one of those people that enjoys when individuals run businesses,” Mr. Yauch said. “I don’t buy my coffee from Starbucks.” He laughed.

Though Mr. Yauch had been thinking of starting a film company for a while — at least since the late 1990s, when he first attended the Sundance Film Festival as a fan — it was only when he was working on “Gunnin’ ” that the timing seemed to click. Several friends from ThinkFilm, an independent distributor that released the Beastie Boys’ concert movie but that has recently been suffering through financial problems of its own, signed on.

“I have incredible respect for him as an artist,” David Fenkel, who helped start ThinkFilm before moving over to Oscilloscope Pictures early this year, said of Mr. Yauch. “He’s been successful for 25 years in the entertainment industry. When he wanted to start a company with me, you know it would be full-on honesty and creativity and integrity.”

But success can’t be bought with good intentions alone. The company’s arrival comes at a time of upheaval in the independent film world. Major studios, like Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures, are folding or gutting their specialty divisions, and a glut of indie movies — many financed by the recent private equity boom — are crowding theaters, complicating a distribution system that leaves precious few screens for work beyond the big Hollywood players.

Mr. Yauch’s first few cinematic forays show just how challenging the indie film world is. The concert film, “Awesome” (the full fanboyish title is unsuitable for this newspaper), took in slightly more than $160,000 in the United States. And “Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot” has barely eked out $50,000.

“Distribution of films, it’s a lot about quality and a lot about timing and luck,” said Bob Berney, the president of Picturehouse, a soon-to-close division of Time Warner. “He’ll need all three.”

But, Mr. Berney added, the turmoil leaves room for innovation. “Coming up with a new model is probably the way to go,” he said. “The trick will be to keep it very, very small and careful. One or two films that are expensive that don’t work can set him back a long way.”

The independent companies with staying power, like Zeitgeist Films and Kino International, have followed that credo. Start making independent movies that cost upwards of $15 million and trouble is often the result.

Without investors, Mr. Yauch is acutely aware of the need to keep costs down. (He would not disclose the budget for Oscilloscope, except to say that it was similar to what an indie record label would need. Mr. Berney estimated that it was probably less than $5 million.)

“One lesson that I really feel like I learned from the indie music thing, especially with Grand Royal folding, was not to let your overhead get ahead of what you’re actually able to do,” Mr. Yauch said, adding that he did not want the company to depend on hits to stay afloat.

Oscilloscope’s most recent purchase, “Dear Zachary,” is a documentary about a murdered doctor that screened at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Though so far the company’s slate is heavy with nonfiction films, Mr. Yauch said there is no overriding aesthetic. “I like crazy action films, with a lot of sound effects and score, like a Jason Bourne-type film,” he said, “but I also enjoy more esoteric, slower narratives.”

The company’s approach also includes giving filmmakers a smaller advance but a larger portion of the back-end profits, and involving them in the marketing of their work. That hands-on style has a built-in appeal for indie auteurs like Kelly Reichardt, the director of “Wendy and Lucy.”

“It seemed like a lot of ways that they were working was similar to how I’ve been making films,” Ms. Reichardt said. “I know I can get David or Adam on the phone at any time; they’re so accessible and into us being part of it.”

With critical buzz at film festivals, a relatively big name in Ms. Williams and an indie hit under her belt already with her 2006 feature, “Old Joy,” Ms. Reichardt had other suitors for “Wendy and Lucy.” But it was Oscilloscope’s small scale and Mr. Yauch’s reputation that sold her. “From the way Adam has made music over the years, it’s clear that they’ve been able to maintain a lot of control, and that’s really impressive,” she said.

For now the office is more of a draw than the stage for Mr. Yauch. “I don’t know if I’ll ever keep playing music in such a public way,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll always want to make records. Thrusting myself into that world, having the record company kind of like ramming records down people’s throat, that can be a weird experience. When you’re trying to market something on a large scale, sometimes it’s nicer to just do something a little more subtly.”

He sipped his green tea and took in his fake conference room, outfitted with a low-slung sofa and crab-shaped Christmas lights.

“Yeah,” he said, “I could see doing this for a long time.”