Take Sundance for example–now a huge media event that attracts as many A-list Hollywood stars as struggling first-timers, its harsher critics accuse it of failing to keep faith with its original independent principles (becoming ironically the very thing that had made its patron, Robert Redford, reluctant to get involved with any festival all the way back in the ’80s). It’s a huge, frenetic marketplace now, with major studios, either directly or more often in the sheep’s clothing of their wholly-owned “independent” subsidiaries, vying for the next big thing. Or rather for the next small thing that they can snap up at a relatively low price, Miramax the hell out of and make into a big thing.
Not only does this mean that most of whatever money may eventually be made flows inevitably into the same four or five coffers, it also means, in the flattening, hammered-out, corporate way of things, that the same worn criteria are broadly applied to determine where that hit might lie. This is one of the reasons that the term “Sundance Movie” has taken on such a distinctly pejorative connotation. Without suggesting for a second that there aren’t tremendously exciting films showcased there, the blanket perception is that there’s now a cynical edge to the festival, a formula based on the prior marketable form of a film’s constituent elements, that runs counter to what we’d like to believe are the genuine independent characteristics of auteurism, passion, experimentalism, self-expression. Sundance, its detractors claim, has sold out.
“I’m not a liar. A liar is the second lowest form of human being.” — Graham
Similarly the chinks in Miramax’s crusading armor started to show in the late ’90s, when, despite having been acquired by Disney in 1993, their marketing strategies often still relied on the now-sexy descriptor of “independent” for the films they produced. As media studies author Alisa Perren puts it in her excellent paper on the subject “a term [“independent”] that was introduced by the press during the late ’80s as a descriptive label to explain structural and aesthetic changes afoot in the New Hollywood, morphed in the next decade into a publicity tool for Miramax and its many imitators…by the mid ’90s the label no longer had any definitional value.” She further suggests that the beginning of the end of this phenomenon, at least in terms of press acceptance of the term at face value, was with the attempt by Miramax to market “Shakespeare in Love” as an indie film, which apparently was a bridge too far. This tension contributed to an increasingly fractious relationship with parent Disney, until the Weinsteins left Miramax in 2005 to form mini-major The Weinstein Company and that particular era came to an end. What it left behind was the idea of independent film as a viable, marketable “product”–a financial blessing and an aesthetic curse.
And what of the filmmakers? If Soderbergh’s film set the template for indie film success, then surely Soderbergh himself is some sort of template for the ideal indie filmmaker? Well, you know we’re fans, and the eclectic polyglot approach that Soderbergh took to the majority of his career (never really buying into the Hollywood machine on anything more than a one-for-them-one-for-me basis) does indeed feel like one of relative integrity, with a more prolific catalogue, that contains a higher proportion of seemingly uncompromised personal passion projects, than almost any director we can name. But how ironic is it that, while hardly his fault, all the way back in 1989 his own debut’s success paved the way for the very bifurcation of the industry that would, 25 years later, see him hanging up his hat in disgust with Hollywood? To recap the quandary that he and various other directors have articulated recently: today in Hollywood there’s a perception that are only two viable models that offer the kind of return on investment worth dealing with: the tiny indie made for $5m or less that doesn’t represent a huge risk, or the $150m+ tentpole that offers a staggering potential reward. In between those amounts, which is where the successful indie filmmaker is likely to want to live, the opportunities for financing are dwindling.
“Afraid of getting caught?” — Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo)
Of course, when we’re throwing shade over this issue, we, like Soderbergh, are going to lob the majority of it toward the risk-averse major studios and the big, brainless blockbusters that suck up the lion’s share of the resources. But it’s fascinating to note that all the way back in 1989 Cinecom president Amir Malin said, in contrast to, or rather refinement of, the prevailing fear that the blockbuster success of “Batman” was going to end Hollywood investment in anything but high-concept tentpoles: “Just because someone sees ‘Indiana Jones’ doesn’t mean they won’t see a sophisticated film like ”sex lies and videotape”…the fallout will occur with the standard [read: mid-budget] studio fare that cannot compete with the ‘Raiders,’ the ‘Ghostbusters’ and the ‘Batman’s.” This suggests that the more modest, but unmistakable success of Soderbergh’s own film, the polar opposite of a blockbuster, was a factor in sowing the seeds of the bifurcation of the industry into micro-budget indies, which he had outgrown (though to be fair he did dabble later on with “The Girlfriend Experience” and “Bubble”) or mega tentpoles in which he had little interest.