Tom Quinn discussed his celebratory career and the neon wild success of his celebrity career and distribution and production company at the Zurich Film Festival’s annual industry conference, celebrating his achievements not only for his 30 years of experience in the industry, but also for his wife’s instincts of his ability to acquire the entrepreneurship and film craftsman loyalty.
Quinn was recognized at the Zurich Summit for this year’s Game Changer Award, “For Outstanding Merit and Great Contribution in the Film Industry.”
This includes winning the neon five times in a row with “anora”, “Autumn Anatomy”, “Sad Triangle”, “Titan” and “Parasites”.
This year at Cannes, the company starred Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Julia Ducluenau’s “Alpha,” Raul Peck’s “Orwell: 2+2 = 5,” Michael Angelo Covino’s “Splitville,” and Dakota Johnson.
Neon’s recent releases include Osgood Perkins’ horror film The Monkey. It marked the second-largest opening weekend at the box office, following Perkins’ Longlegs, the best gloss indie horror film of the decade and the best indie horror film at the domestic box office of $75 million.
Speaking to Roeg Sutherland, head of CAA Media Finance & International Film Group, Quinn said, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, so it feels like it’s just too fast.
That wealth of experience includes major stints with Samuel Goldwyn films and Magnolia photos of Mark Cuba. He then joined his partner Jason Janego and formed boutique label Radius in 2011 with Harvey Weinstein.
Radius proved his stepping stone “too entrepreneur and start the label from scratch.”
“And the big shift from radius to neon was the belief that I had the courage and know-how to go out on my own. There’s a huge difference there. Being an entrepreneur is not an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is that you have to pay the bills.
“And I give my wife a lot of credibility,” he added, noting that she became the family’s first entrepreneur after opening the Brooklyn store, Stuart & Wright.
“She would make sure the lights were on every weekend. She would do all the purchases, all the creative things. And I know what she would take and what you had to commit to running the business. And stupidly, I thought I could do that.”
Quinn and Janego left Weinstein Company and “we can be 100% believe in it, with the intention of working only on movies that can be sold with straight faces.”
Quinn initially expected to raise the capital he needed in a month or two, but he ended up needing two years.
It was Sutherland that Quinn helped him establish Neon after he found his first investor, Jackie Chan, Hong Kong-based SR media.
“Everyone here should know that if there’s no logs, Neon isn’t here today.”
Janego quickly left the new venture and didn’t want to work in distribution, but the company “provided comfort and some degree of synergy,” with six people, including those who Quinn previously worked in Radius and elsewhere.
“We were like a very functional amoeba. We were really fortunate because we knew who we were.”
“We’ve brought in a lot of filmmakers we’ve worked with over the last 20 years,” says Bong Jun Ho and Laura Poitras.
Neon then won Matt Spicer’s black comedy “Ingrid Goes West” at Sundance. “That really honed our skills as marketers and distributors. And someone got a special notice for the film. That was what Margot Robbie and we did with that film.”
Neon eventually grabbed “I, Tonya” in the lobby.
“All of our equity went into the company. It’s very dangerous. There was no room for error. You only had one shot to get it right. We were competing with Netflix on three times the offer. And then everything changed.”
A key element of a company’s success is the independence of team members.
“We’re not thinking about a group,” Quinn said. “We’re not making up our minds sitting around the committee. I’m not a huge fan of that. I’m a hill where two or three or one person will die if we don’t do this movie.”
“I’ve done it before, and the other team members did it. One of Jason Waldo, vice president of acquisitions and production, brought me the ‘long leg’ and he showed me the clip of the two minutes.
Eventually, Waldo persuaded him, and he continued to get Perkins’ next two photos, “The Monkey” and “Keeper.”
Neon and Perkins have since signed a first look deal, with Neon being set to produce upcoming projects for the filmmakers as well.
Asked about the origins of the company’s name, Quinn said in 1923 he came across the first neon signs in the United States hanging above a Packard Auto Dealer in Hollywood.
“It’s the same year that the Hollywoodland sign was built, so in my opinion, these seemingly different beasts, but the film industry and neon brother twins had a lot in common.”
“And you combine it with a film I absolutely adore and love, whether it’s “Drive,” or “Blade Runner,” or “Psycho.” Neon is always in the background.
While visiting the St. Cecilia Hotel in Austin, Texas, Quinn saw a neon sign on top of the pool and was immediately taken to it, saying “soul” and managed to find the artist who created it.
“He made a neon sign that said ‘neon’. ”
The company used images of the sign in its first film, “Colossal,” when it was screened at Sundance in 2017.
