What are the implications of these "Fake indie" movies coming out of Hollywood?

Cafe Society
1

Over the last several years, we’ve seen a rash of “fake Indies” come out of the Hollywood Major Studio system - movies that seem to contrive a sense of being quirky and artsy, rely heavily on irony and deadpan humor, rely on college/indie rock soundtracks, and generally thrive on non-sequiturs and kookiness. I’m referring to recent movies like Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite, I Heart Huckabee’s, Donnie Darko, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sideways, and more recently Elizabethtown and Thumbsucker.

Every last detail of these movies is contrived to intentionally cultivate an “indie” aesthetic; these were the types of movies that Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Mike Leigh, Greg Araki, Todd Solondz, etc. made over the eighties and nineties, albeit with limited budgets and without the backing of major studios. The difference is that these “fake indies” have huge budgets, A-list actors, and major distribution.

There’s always been a place for kookier films in Hollywood, so don’t think that this is entirely unprecedented development, but I think that this current trend (it’s undeniably a trend) kicked off with Wes Anderson’s career. Rushmore was kind of the turning point in the popular cinema landscape, and really seemed to open the floodgates for these types of movies. Wes Anderson’s movies, continuing to grow exponentially bloated in scope and budget, undeniably lead this trend; shit, putting a frowning Bill Murray before the camera in ironic tracksuits has practically become a genre!

What do you think the implications of this are? What’s your reaction?

On one hand, anything that leads to a popular cinema less dependent on Vin Diesel movies has to be a good development. At the same time, it bothers me to see the real indie filmmakers being all but bypassed; Hal Hartley, without whose The Unbelievable Truth and Simple Men we wouldn’t have any of the movies being discussed, is still making cheap movies on digital video that get shoddy distribution deals and only play in arthouses while first time filmmakers like Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine) are getting bazillion dollar budgets and A-list actors. As with many things in the arts, mega-corporations feel that it’s just easier to spend a ton of money and make something “better than the real thing” (glossy “fake indies”) than it is to actually develop and support “the real thing” (veteran indie filmmakers), and that’s always a disturbing and unsettling trend.

What are your thoughts?

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Money. It’s always money. If H’wood can make a movie for $20 million and turn $50 million, they’ll do it.

There’s been quite a few indie films that cost next to nothing to make (comparatively speaking) that made a mint (also, comparatively speaking).

Hollywood wants some of that cash (see the slumping box office for regular-to-big-budget movie for example).

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In that sense, it seems like Hollywood latching onto yet another trend. In time, you’d expect “real” indie movies to do something else entirely as a reaction, and eventually maybe they’ll start making ‘major’ movies like that.

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Oh, I definitely understand why the movies are being made and popularized. I’m asking what the implications of this trend are for art/film/humanity.

5

It’s all to the good.

The better independent filmmakers will continue to flourish, because people will continue to seek them out and watch their films.

The fewer crappy films that go to Sundance and the other festivals and get bid up to multi-million dollar distribution deals, the better.

The more good little films the larger companies make, the better. The fewer bad big films that good indie filmmakers would otherwise be seduced to make, the better. The fewer films made from comic books, old television shows, classic movies, video games, and recent semi-hit movies, the better.

There’s no real downside. More good films will be made. In the long run, we all benefit.

6

Interesting point. People have been expecting the “DV revolution” for quite a while now - where we’ll see a whole underclass of filmmakers come up making super cheap movies on digital video and computer editing systems - but it hasn’t happened yet, in spite of the technology being there. Though last year’s critical fave Tarnation, made for some completely absurd amount of money (literally something like $200) and edited on the movie editor included with Mac OS, may turn out to be the first volley in a new movement.

That’s also the one aesthetic that Hollywood will never cop to - super lo-fi films. They won’t even get down with 16mm movies, much less miniDV.

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I don’t know what your stance is, but it sounds like you’re “hating on” a bunch of generally good movies from solid filmmakers for no real purpose. Let me run down a few of the movies you mentioned:

Garden State - a true indie film, written, directed by, and starring the same guy, who just happens to be an actor on a popular sitcom (Zach Braff from Scrubs). The guy did it himself, and put together a stellar soundtrack himself – because he had a good story and a love of music.

I Heart Huckabee’s - the latest film from a director that has made several “bigger” movies, including a Ben Stiller comedy and a war movie starring George Clooney, Mark Walhberg, and Ice Cube. I don’t consider Russell an “indie” filmmaker so much as a filmmaker who tried to do something quirkier than usual. Hardly part of a movement of any kind.

Elizabethtown - from a writer/director who has been making romantic comedies and bigger movies at least since the late '80s: Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky. Again, Crowe had a story to tell, but I’d hardly accuse him of jumping on any kind of Hollywood bandwagon.

Eternal Sunshine - check IMDB some time, and you’ll see it was hardly Michel Gondry’s first movie. That distinction belongs to the little-seen Human Nature, but he really made a name for himself directing music videos. And he’s hardly the first director to start there: everyone from David Fincher (Fight Club) to Hype Williams (Belly) to Francis Lawrence (Constantine) gets their feet wet with music videos these days. And Eternal Sunshine owes as much (or more) to writer Charlie Kaufman, who made a name for himself writing Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. All three are good, all three are weird and quirky and not typical Hollywood fare, but I wouldn’t call them “indie” films either, due to their budgets and A-list casts.

Rushmore - say what you will about Wes Anderson, but his first movie was Bottle Rocket, which WAS a real “indie” film and earned him an MTV Movie Award for best new filmmaker. That put him on the map, and he made Rushmore once he had a name and a following.

Next thing I know, you’ll be saying that Kill Bill was a psuedo-indie movie from first-time director Quentin Tarantino, or that Peter Jackson never paid his dues before making Lord of the Rings. Not everything has to be part of a “scene” or a movement or a conspiracy.

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A couple of the movies you mention are, in fact, true “indie” movies that were simply picked up for distribution, after the fact, by big studios.

Anyway, the trend started with sex, lies, & videotape, LONG before Rushmore.

The success of quirky “indies” has simply shown the big distributors (there’s really no such thing as a studio anymore) that it’s possible for quirky movies to turn a profit. But the big blockbusters are still, well, the big blockbusters. The “indies” the distributors pick up are nothing more than market diversification, if you ask me.

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If there’s a “trend,” it’s just that larger studios, production companies and distributors are becoming less stolid and conservative. This is a good thing.

Honestly, I don’t see any of the films that you’ve given as examples of “fake indie” films as counterfeit in any way. Are you suggesting that imaginative, original films should be relegated to an arthouse ghetto for some obscure ideological reason?

Donnie Darko is a great movie. Yeah, it’s the writer/director’s first feature. Yeah, it has a solid cast. Would it have been better if Richard Kelly was obliged to make it with a bunch of film school contacts and personal friends for cast and crew on an even smaller budget, and with no distribution to speak of?

What about Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman? Would we be better off if only college students knew who they were? Alan Ball and Sam Mendes?

There will always be independent filmmakers. As production technology and means of distribution became more and more accessible, there will be more and more.

What’s changing is that the big dogs are more willing to bring people like this into the fold, and are insisting less that they work to narrow specifications that have proven profitable in the past. We’re getting less “You can’t do that!”

The time has been that bright young independents (like, say, Orson Welles) had to endure years of languishing in the darkness before getting a shot – and even when they turned out to be freaking geniuses, the studios would give them very little leeway when it comes to doing anything that hasn’t absolutely safe.

This is on the way out. The money is starting to have a little more faith in both them and in the movie-going public. This is a good thing.

This goes both ways. Independent films are beginning to more closely resemble big studio productions. The gap is narrowing.

Hooray! This is good for all of us.

Don’t worry, there will always be independent films that feel like independent films, like Four Dead Batteries, and there will always be big commercial studio product that feels like big commercial studio product, like The Legend of Zorro.

If Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay turn around next year and make a movie about a middle-aged guy with OCD and a cute punk chick who drive across America in an old Ford to throw his box of old 45s off the Golden Gate bridge, well, that’s okay too.

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Studio films have a place in the movie business. They make entertaining albeit predictable movies that the majority of movie audience wants to see.

Independant films also have a place in the movie business. Sometimes they are entertaining, sometimes they are not (and let’s admit it - a lot of indie movies are godawful) but they often explore new directions in moviemaking. The good talent and good ideas from these indies then cross over into the studio system and the result is that all movies eventually become better in the process.

But studios are now making pseudo-independant films. These movies often have a look that’s similar to a true independant but rarely have any new ideas. And the danger is that these pseudo-indies may drive the real indies out of the market. (Face facts - movies cannot be made without some kind of support, even if it’s just screen time and potential audience members and this support is a finite resource.) If that happens the studios may lose a major source of new inspiration and become too static.

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I like it, I like it! So the bridge explodes, right?

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I think the only implications are that studios will gradually produce better movies. Just don’t expect a revolution. It really reminds me of the “craft beer” movement of the 90s. All the big breweries started little “independent” breweries to cash in on the market. Where are they now? I can’t think of a single one still making beer. But the big boys did add some new product to their offerings. Same thing will happen here.

13

The OP is a rather mystifying complaint. If the big studios make a good movie with “indy” sensibilities (whatever the hell that means), so what? Is it a bad thing they they’re making good movies? In what way?

Will they put indy films out of business? Of course not. People outside the system will also want to try their luck at making films.

Are indy films better than your average Hollywood product? Not in the slightest. Many indy films are just plain terrible; it’s just that you never hear about those.

Moviegoers don’t give a rat’s ass as to who produces a film. They only want to go see a good film. If your favorite indy film was exactly the same, other than the name of the film company, how would that have made the slightest difference? (And why should it?)

Also, it’s not exactly anything new. Hollywood since the 50s has been producing “small” films outside the mainstream. Sometimes these even become big hits. The fact that the small films today are something like indy films (again, a term that’s so nebulous as to be undefinable) is meaningless.

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Jerry’s people will call your people and set up a meeting, OK?

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And the strip club scene…before or after they hit Detroit?

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I’m generally an indie fan, but I don’t watch indie movies because they are indie. I watch them because they are good. If Holywood produces a good movie, I’ll watch that, too. So if Hollywood is copying indie movies and happens to make good movies, then good for them. Who cares if it wasn’t produced independently? it’s the end result I care about, not the way the movie was made.

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With the way studios work nowdays, it’s hard to draw the line as to what is an independent production. There is no longer a stable of stars and directors with essentially life-long contracts. Instead, you have producers looking out for good stories and talent and funding them- some from deeper pockets than others but still all the same general idea.

Anyway, it’s hardly a new phenomenon. The much-beloved Harold and Maude was the same thing and people cried the exact same death knells for indepedent cinema. And “foreign movies for American audiences” is a timeworn genre.

As for true “three guys and a video camera” indy productions, they will always struggle until there is a reasonable form of independent distribution. Right now the problem isn’t the movies, it’s the movie theaters. Now, I forsee a future of small theaters with digital projectors showing indy movies for five bucks- people won’t spend ten on something they know nearly nothing about. Word of mouth and Netflix rentals may sustain great indie moves from then on. But that future is a ways off and is going to have to be a nationwide movement of daring souls willing to take a risk. Until then indy films are going to be relegated to the same old festivals that few are going to attend because so much of it is so bad.

We must not forget that most indy movies are unwatchable. Just like a huge percentage of Hollywood movies.

Anyway, in short, it’s hopeless to hope that Hollywood is going to change. If Independent cinema wants to become more viable, it needs a distribution system outside of Hollywood.