Culture, Economics and Sustenance – Conversation with Tony Abulu

by Sola Osofisan

S.O.: The retailer now, the rate at which they will be getting the movies from FAN, it will be worthwhile?

T.A.: It will be worthwhile for you to be getting it from FAN because, first of all, you don’t have to worry about copyright infringement FAN has all the rights to produce those films. And the filmmakers who are back in Nigeria have already struck a deal with FAN on how much royalty per tape. And it’s going to be an open, fair situation. We’re not going to tell any Nigerian filmmaker we’re not going to take his film. What we’re going to say is this: you’re going to get the opportunity for people… There’s going to be (something) like a brochure that comes out every month and in that brochure, the top Nigerian films are going to be listed in it. I was reading on your website (naijarules.com), somebody was saying how come all the Nigerian films don’t ever have any synopsis. That’s a very valid point. It’s only in Nigerian films that you cannot see synopsis.

S.O.: And you don’t know the year it was released.

T.A.: You don’t know who is in it. You have to guess by looking at the photographs. All that is no more. We’re going to do a thorough job. We have people that will be working on things. There’s going to be a ratings system and synopsis, whereby, the store that is going to order – we call it distribution outlet – that are going to order those tapes, they can see those reviews and they’re going to decide for themselves and say you know what, we want to order (there’s a minimum of fifty tapes), so we want to order ten of Back To Africa, five of Sango, three of bla bla bla, on and on. All the way to a thousand tapes. And we have them categorized. There’s a Bronze level which is like 50 to a 100 tapes. There’s a Silver level which is like 101 to about 245 tapes. On and on until you get to the level of Double Platinum 750 to a 1000 tapes. And each of those levels have different rates. The Bronze level is $5 a tape. The Double Platinum level is like $3.50 a tape. You see what I’m saying? So there’s an incentive for you to want to order more tapes.

So what we’re doing is we’re not fighting with the outlets, all those distribution outlets. What we’re doing is we’re giving them a chance to become members of FAN. So, they’re getting a package. Maybe by next week I’ll mail you that package. You will see the structure, why we have to do this. Because our film industry in Nigeria, which is about the only industry that has been able to sustain itself without government support, which is the only industry that the rest of the world are willing to even listen to at all, if we’re not careful we’re going to kill that industry by just letting it run anyhow.

S.O.: What kind of arrangement do you have for online agencies that rent out movies?

T.A.: What we’re saying is this. We may not have all rights to the Nigerian films. What we want to do is this. We’re hoping that we do. We will go to Nigeria and say to all the producers (I know quite a few of them. Bethels knows quite a few of them. I think Bethels has rights to about 40 films. Rabiu has rights to about 40 films himself and Rabiu paid $2000 to buy the North American distribution rights. That’s what he has been doing. Now, Bethels, he goes back and forth. He says to them, I’ll pay you X amount of dollars and he has talked to quite a few of the producers there and they say, well, we’re not losing anything by working with you. You take our tapes. You can mass-produce it. We trust you. When you make the sale, pay us our royalties. So that’s what those two guys have been doing. But now these are the founding members of FAN. Everything now is under one roof.

The question you ask… The online services we’re going to send everybody a package. There’s a fee to join the package o. There’s a fee of a $150. Like I told you, it’s going to cost us half a million Dollars to run this thing. Once they have paid their $150 –

S.O.: To join FAN?

T.A.: To join FAN. Now FAN is not a retail outlet. We don’t sell single tapes at all. We only sell to distributors. What we’re trying to do is when you become a member of FAN, you get all the services that I’ve mentioned. You get the brochure, you get the online service to be able to order tapes, the ability to ship the first grade quality tapes, and these tapes – the way you’re going to know the difference in fact is that there’s a logo that we have designed that’s going to be on every single FAN tape. It looks like a fan. And it’s green-white-green. You have FAN on it.

We feel that we’re going to sooner or later – because we’re ready to litigate anybody that is selling fake tape. We have attorneys that are already hired, serious American attorneys. By the way, we’re dropping an ad in all the Nigerian papers. We call it a beware ad. Beware of Nigerian film pirates. And in that ad, we’re explaining to them that they can become legitimate members of FAN, so when the now become members of FAN, they have access to all those tapes. They can order any amount of tapes they want. Any amount of titles. The minute they order any tapes, it’s going to go straight into the computer. The minute that order is made, the Nigerian guy who is in Nigeria can go on his computer and access it in two seconds. Right there and then, the Nigerian will say they just ordered ten tapes of my movie, they just ordered a thousand tapes of my movie, so he can easily calculate, based on the royalty rate that has been agreed upon, that X amount of Dollars is coming to me. Within a week max, with electronic transfer from UBA, he would have gone and collected his money.

These things, as you know, you live in the States, you know it costs money. One of the things that the Washington Post said in the article, which was a little sad, is that all these films that are being sold…the Nigerian (filmmakers), they hate it to death, but they don’t have the type of funding that’s going to be required to litigate some of these cases. That’s where we come in.

S.O.: How are jackets going to be handled?

T.A.: These things are already being done here. Like I said, Rabiu has the right to some of the Nigerian films and the Ghanaian films. The name of the company is Ghana Nigerian Videos. He’s very well known because he used to sell his Nigerian films for $2 because he bought the rights. The reason why he was doing that, he was saying that the Senegalese and the Malian film distributors sell tapes for $2. And there’s no way he can undercut those guys after paying for the North American distribution rights in Nigeria. He was compelled to want to sell lower than them and eventually begin to raise the prices on the tapes. What he has been doing is this: when he buys the right to a Nigerian film, he does two things. One, when they send him the master tape, he checks it to see whether there’s any foreign music that is in the film. You know Nigerians, they’re talking about rights, and meanwhile, they’re using other people’s music without paying for rights.

When I did Back To Africa, all the music in the film, Fela’s music, I was in Fela’s house like a week before he died. I went to negotiate the right to Fela’s song. I told Fela, Fela didn’t come out. I’ve known Fela for a long time. He was sending a secretary from his bedroom to me. That’s how I knew that –

S.O.: He wasn’t himself.

T.A.: He was sending one dark-skinned girl. I was sitting in the living room with some of my people. Fela said I should just please try to pay something so that some of the people there can get something. I said I would go and think about it. By the time I came back, because I didn’t know how much to tell Fela there that I was going to pay, by the time I was going to go back, Fela had died. So I went to see Femi. I went back to Nigeria s second time and I went to see Femi and Femi said how much did my father tell you to pay? I said your father didn’t tell us to pay any amount, that he said we would negotiate. So he said how much am I going to pay? I said well, I would pay 20,000 Naira, and I used “Lady”. And Femi said it was fine. I told my guy to take care of it and I came back to the US.

What Rabiu does is he plays the tape. If he just sees any foreign music, he returns the master tape to Nigeria and he tells them to remove it and put on authentic music that you have rights for. Which is what they do. And then when he gets that… One of the ways you know fake Nigerian tapes in the US is that the covers are always plastic. Guess what? Rabiu also gets photographs from the filmmakers and he designs a brand new jacket – cardboard like the American films. When he does that – beautiful covers, very well done – he shrink-wraps it. All this he does in-house. Which is one of the reasons I invited him as one of the founding members of FAN. Because he already has that facility.

S.O.: So you’re going to explore using his facilities?

T.A.: Exactly. That’s what we’re using for now. He has his dubbing system and he has his staff.

S.O.: So you’re going to be making your jackets here?

T.A.: We’re going to be making all our jackets here.

S.O.: Do you have a warehouse or something?

T.A.: Yes. We just procured a place that we’re going to be using in Washington. Caroline Okolo is going to be operating out of Washington, DC. She’s going to be the person that will be running the basic operations of the company.

S.O.: Yes, I was going to ask how you plan to coordinate things, with your director of operations in Washington and you guys in New York.

T.A.: The main office will be in New York. We’re trying to see if we can get an office in the Nigerian building now. But the warehouse itself, because of the expensive New York spaces, Ms Okolo is running the warehouse out of Washington, DC. Anywhere in the US, we will ship orders to those outlets.

All these things are not easy as you know. You live in the US. There’s a lot of work. And that’s why I’m full time. That’s why Caroline is full time. We don’t do any other job. My company, I just put it on the side because we believe – personally, I believe two things. When I look at Nigerian films, my film that I was going to do after Back To Africa was American Dream. I have signed on Ossie Davis, Rubi Dee, John Amos, top American actors. It was going to cost me $700,000. As a matter of fact, they’re all still waiting for me to do that film today. I tried to raise money. I got some of my friends in Nigeria that I knew had money, some flew from Nigeria to come and meet me, all the promises all fell to nothing. When I look at Nigerian films, I feel that there are few filmmakers in Nigeria that you can take their film and show to a foreigner, let me just put it that way. Some of the films are very nice. They’re very funny and all that, but some of them degrade our personality, which is why the president said please try to make films that are going to edify your culture and your country.

S.O.: Well, some of them don’t fully comprehend the power they have.

T.A.: They don’t know the role of film. And if you notice when you watch Back To Africa, I did it just like a docu-drama. The first half of the film I just did like they’re just going on a site seeing (tour) just to show them what Nigerians like because they don’t have a clue. Nigerians will start a film, won ma koko show gutter to ti doti (they will focus first on the dirty drains).

S.O.: Sometimes it’s relevant to the story.

T.A.: Of course it is, but you have to strike a balance. Why do you think Hollywood in those days when they want to make a movie, they go to Acapulco, they go to some beautiful places? All their lead actors look handsome beautiful, because it was the most important PR tactic for the US. We all wanted to come to the US, we all wanted to come to Soul Train. When they asked Hakeem Olajuwon about 15years ago why he came to the US: Soul Train. We all got here to fin out all the Soul Train dancers, few of them finished third grade.

S.O.: So far, Nigerian movies coming into the US, because they have been informally imported, they have slipped under the government radar. The way it’s going now and you make it legal, everything is going to change. It’s already being noticed now by the government because all of these publicity in the papers. They’re already seeing this. These things have to pass through a rating system. How are you guys handling this?

T.A.: It’s one of the things that we’re doing. We’re forming an advisory board of Nigerians and some Americans. People like Ossie Davis, John Amos… We want people who have been in the film community, all the people that run all the film festivals, even the one that Tunde Kelani is coming. They’re like my pals here. I’ve known them for years. They are going to be members of the advisory board. We’re going to have a situation where some of them will screen some of the films.

S.O.: Tony, what do you see as the future of Nigerian movies in the United States?

T.A.: I think that if we’re able to do this FAN thing well, I think by the grace of God, the sky is the limit. I think once Nigerian filmmakers are beginning to get some funds repatriated to them, that are due them based on royalties, it will improve the quality of their films by the fact that they will have more budget to make better films. And by so doing, it will keep them from rushing to do ten movies a year, and before you know what’s happening, the stories are going to get deeper, the quality of the films will get deeper, and the Nigerian audience will become more educated. Ultimately, it is not just the film. It is not an issue of film. It is a question of culture and how it translates to economics and the sustenance of our people as a whole. Film is just a conduit to it.

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1 comment

Anonymous July 8, 2005 - 11:09 pm

Good interview.

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