Over the past decade the popularity of independent film has been on a constant increase. Many will say that all Hollywood can make at the moment is big budget glitzy crap masqueraded by huge soundtracks, loud sound effects, gratuitous violence and hyperbolic action scenes. Does this new wave of independent film deserve all the success it gets and is it really considered an independent film if it rakes in over $100 million domestic?
With the rising cost of just about everything, the distinctions of independent film have changed drastically; the 2007 release Juno costing an estimated $6.5 million before marketing and promotion was released by Fox Searchlight pictures (which is the only division of Fox that seem to be doing well after their past disastrous year of big budget flops) and made over $200 million worldwide. let’s look at that budget, 6.5 million, that is the combined budget of: Cube, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Mad Max, Swingers, Shallow Grave, Bad Lieutenant, Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Brick, Pi, Clerks, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, Easy Rider, Repo Man, Psycho, and Chasing Amy, With about one and a half million left over. Now obviously if I were to adjust these budgets to present day it would be far more, but I don’t know how to do that and I’m trying to prove a point. Juno is as much a studio film as Crash it had a huge advertising campaign, almost every actor was fully established and known, and it won an undeserving academy award (I dare you to try and say the writing was better than Ratatouille) yet it bears the distinction as “independent.” Let’s not also forget this year’s best picture winner Slumdog Millionaire, which a lot of people view as an independent film because of its setting, unknown cast, and subject matter. What a lot of people don’t know is that the film cost about $15 million dollars to make, and most of it was filmed in India! Had it been filmed in America it would have been twice if not three times as much?
So how do we classify a film as independent? Personally I think if the film cost more than about $5 million dollars it should not receive the title, and I say that knowing the budget of The Wrestler, even this 5 million seems slightly to steep but every things getting more expensive these days so it will do. I would also say a limited release is an essential quality, if the film grosses more than $100 million you can’t really call it independent as it’s pretty much been cradled by the studio to a wide release with a big push. As far as casting it’s a touchy subject, on the one hand I feel that the cast should be relatively unknown or just not big names, but then you have films like The Wrestler which has 2 big names and was made by one of the best directors working today. So in this case I would say the cast can be popular or unknown because independent film is a great release for actors after working on a huge multimillion dollar project sanctioned by a huge studio.
I’m using Juno as a big example for my problem with some of the independent film of today because it’s late and I couldn’t think of another really overrated film. When I think of Juno as a film it falls into this category of films with meaningless stories and tepid subject matter, there was nothing at stake in Juno no reason for me to want to know the outcome of her life or situation and there was no difference from any other expensive studio film. Independent films power is that they do not rely on pleasing an audience they don’t care about test screening or happy endings and they takes chances that aren’t “marketable” or “audience friendly.” I’ll make a very clear comparison: Would you rather watch Ellen Page’s plight on giving away her unborn child to a new family in Juno or see Emilio Estevez get entangled in a huge bizarre situation featuring punks, criminals, aliens, and government scientists in Repo Man. Some of the best independent films, which I also consider some of the best films ever made, share a quality of being unique visions of the filmmaker, going against the mainstream norms of the studio system. For instance, Rian Johnson’s 2005 debut Brick cost a remarkable $450,000 to make and is one of the best films made in the last few years. had he tried to get more funding from a studio he would’ve had to make drastic changes and probably wouldn’t have gotten any money because the idea of a high school noir sounds gimmicky like Bugsy Mallone.*
In closing the power of independent film is to show us things against the norm, otherwise no one really cares if it’s an independent film or not you may as well just fill the thing with crappy slow motion effects and throw tom cruise in it. This rant was to try and give some acknowledgement to the true great independent films. A new feature on Filmlead will be looking at some of the best independent films made and why they are so excellent.
*this was my initial thought before watching the film and not knowing the shear awesomeness it possessed.
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