Being Indie. From United Artists (1919) to Indie-wood (2005) John Schott. Title

Transcription

1 Being Indie From United Artists (1919) to Indie-wood (2005) Title

2 The Studio System [ends late 50s] Production-line process (Fordism) Organized to insure all power resides with the studio Primacy of the producer Star System: Contract System Writer and director: cogs in the wheel

3 Independent Hollywood United Artists, 1919: A studio/distributor to bypass The Studios Established by Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith to distribute their independent productions By the 30 s, distributed Sam Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Hal Roach and others

4 Sam Goldwin: Independent Producer Left out in 1923 when Metro-Goldwyn & Mayer merged; formed his own indie production company Knack for putting teams together Sam Goldwyn Presents high quality family films during the 30 s and 40 s Wuthering Heights, Little Foxes, Best Years of our Lives, A Star is Born, Nothing Sacred, Spellbound, Rebecca

5 Orson Welles: Director As Author Lured to Hollywood, basically complete artistic control within bounds of thirfty budget on Citizen Kane, 40 s Looses artistic control after Kane s poor boxoffice Objective: Name Above the Title (Magnificent Ambersons, Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil) Frank Capra: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It s A Wonderful Life

6 1950 s: Decline of the Studios Courts break up vertical monopoly of Studios Television Courts strip studios of their theater chains Film attendance at high in 46 (100m) to low in 55 (45m) Jimmy Stewart got 50% share in Universal s Winchester 73 Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas create their own film companies From studios who owned stars to stars who owned pictures

7 Rise of Indie Producers in the 50 s Production fell from 500 a year in mid- 30 s to 250 in 55. By 66 30% by indies, 50% were runaway (foreign) productions. Four of the most brilliant films produced by indies (all released by United Artists): Kiss Me Deadly: Robert Alrich 55 Night Of The Hunter: Charles Laughton, 55 Sweet Smell Of Success: Alexander Mackendrick 57 Paths Of Glory: Stanley Kurbrick 57 Academy awards between 54 and 62: 9 years, 7 of which were for indie productions

8 Auteur Era Auteur Theory originates in France, spreads to England and US Seeks to establish cinema as an art rather than pop entertainment Film is an art insofar as we can identify directorial intention Directorial identity separate from a film s overt content Film criticism: articulating and promoting auteurs Film viewership: following favorite directors Star and genre cinema for average viewer; director s cinema for the new ciné-liteati.

9 Late- 60 s Cultural Revolution Hippy counter-culture, racial equality, Vietnam: social revolution ushers out 50 s conservatism Changing audiences: older audiences head to TV, younger to the movies. Studios don t get it; but indies do. Stanley Kurbrick and Arthur Penn able to control the financing of their own films and achieve creative autonomy American Internationl Pictures: Roger Corman gives Coppola and Lucas, Bogdnovich their start Black cinema emerges: Sweet Sweetback s Baadasssss Song Underground Cinema and the avant-garde & university film programs Cassavetes the pathbreaker: Faces

10 Cassavetes on Faces Despite all my hysteria and the bitterness of all my mixed emotions at that time, writing Faces was a simple task. Setting it down on paper required only my attention and my recollections of people who had troubled my life. The result was a 215-page attack on contemporary middle-class America, an expression of horror at our society in general, focusing on a married couple.

11 The New Hollywood of the 70 s 67: Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate 68: Wild Bunch, Midnight Cowboy 69: Easy Rider 69: Medium Cool 70: M*A*S*H, Five Easy Pieces 71: The Last Picture Show, Carnal Knowledge First Wave: Bogdanovich, Coppola, Beatty, Kubrick, Hopper, Nichols, Allen, Benton, Penn, Cassavetes, Pakula, Mazursky, Rafelson, Ashby, Altman Second Wave (The Film School Brats): Scorsese, Speilberg, Lucas, Milius, Schrader, DePalma, Malick New generation of indie actors: Nicholson, DeNiro, Hoffman, Pacino, Keitel, Fonda, Dunaway, Keaton

12 Indie 1st Generation Low-budget and no-budget production Jarmusch: Stranger than Paradise, 1984 Lee: She s Gotta Have It, 1986 Soderbergh: sex, lies and videotape, 1989 (Sundance hit; The Year It All Changed )

13 Late- 90 s: Indiewood & the 2nd Generation Indies goes mainstream: Miramax and New Line, moving up, working inside/outside Sundance, the conservative (Slam Dance counter fest) Emerging international independents Dogme from Europe, Wong Kar-wai, Abbas Kiarostami Second Generation Indies Todd Solontz: Happiness Wes Anderson: Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums Spike Jonze: Being John Malkovich Micro-cinema Movement Digital Revolution Online venues Online multimedia

14 Spike Lee Why was She s Gotta Have It such a success in 1986? Nola Darling Jamie Overstreet Greer Childs Mars Blackman

15 Jim Jarmusch Stranger Than Paradise, 1984 [Eva, Willie & Eddie] Down by Law, 1986 Mystery Train, 1989 Night on Earth, 1991 Dead Man, 1995 Year of the Horse, 1997 Ghost Dog, 1999 Ten Minutes Older, 2002

16 In Stranger, the camera s immobility was part of the joke; its inexpressiveness echoed the characters malaise and, better yet, seemed to be making fun of its own inertia. The movie was the happy marriage of teensie-weensie form and teensie-weensie content, and it added up to a major statement of a certain kind of East Village sensibility.

17 Jim Jarmusch Teaching assistant to Nicholas Ray Meets Wim Wenders while working on Lightening Over Water; Wenders gives him a camera and some stock to shoot for a weekend First section released as stand-alone film in 1982 Shown in Germany, where Paul Bartel and German businessman give him the $125k necessary to complete the film Wins Best Film at Cannes; grosses $2.5m National Society of Film Critics: Best Film of the Year Highly influential on whole generation of indies: why?

18 a neo-realistic black comedy in the style of an imaginary East European diector obsessed with Ozu and The Honeymooners. (Jarmusch)

19 Visual Style Unconventionality is visual and structural, not simply narrative Tableau compositions: 67 shot Formalist sensibility Beats open and close each scene, emphasizing milieu No POV shots; minimal camera movement Visual stasis mimics narrative/thematic stasis Locations seem to emerge from photographers like Robert Frank Nuanced micro-timing of actors, blocking, dialogue, cutting Blackouts between scenes

20 Stranger Than Paradise is a road film in which the road leads nowhere, a buddy film in which the buddies for the most part fail to connect with but nevertheless hover around each other, and a realistic nearly documentary film that shows how thin the line is between everyday life and the theater of the ridiculous.

21 Narrative Inversion of the action film Nonprofessional actors with characters like their own Deadpan cool; pokerface narrative; shaggy-dog stories Three Stooges meets Waiting for Godot; Kabuki sitcom; funky minimalism Timing: pauses, rhythm, expectations Fair to say?: If Cassavetes is about character, Jarmusch is about look and milieu. Can themes emerge from miseen-scene?

22 Discussion Stranger Than Paradise as an interrogation of Ronald Reagan s mythic vision of America.