Not Hollywood: Independent Film at the Twilight of the American Dream
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Not Hollywood: Independent Film at the Twilight of the American Dream
352eBook
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822399681 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 02/27/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Sherry B. Ortner is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. She is the author of numerous books including New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of ’58 and Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject, both published by Duke University Press.
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Not Hollywood
Independent Film at the Twilight of the American DreamBy Sherry B. Ortner
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2013 Duke University PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-5426-0
Chapter One
Making Independence
I will argue throughout this book that the independent film movement that emerged in the late 1980s represented a critical cultural movement, an attempt to critique the dominant culture (represented by "Hollywood") through their films. Cultural critique (Marcus and Fischer 1986, Fischer 1995) in the films takes several forms. Some films, mostly but not entirely to be found among documentaries, are explicitly critical of the existing cultural and political order. These films are very important, in my view, and probably constitute my favorite genre of independent films. But they are in the minority among independent films, as well as the least favorite with most audiences. They will be discussed in chapter 8. More often, independent films perform cultural critique by way of embracing a kind of harsh realism, by making films that display the dark realities in contemporary life, and that make demands on the viewer to viscerally experience and come to grips with those realities.
Most independent filmmakers would not see themselves as engaged in "cultural critique," at least not in those specific terms. But they do have very strong ideas about the importance of "independence," which is to say, independence from Hollywood and all that it stands for. I will approach this central issue through an examination of the discourse, the self-representations, circulating within the world of independent filmmaking. The notion of discourse has had a long and complex life in the field of linguistics, and also plays a distinctive role in the philosophy of Michel Foucault (see especially Foucault 1986). But I use it here in the non-technical sense of the vocabulary of terms, tropes, and styles distinctive to a particular social universe, in this case, the universe of independent filmmaking and all its associated institutions and support structures.
The discourse of independent filmmaking is always a reactive discourse, always set strongly against certain stereotypic notions of "Hollywood." Producer Larry Drubner called Hollywood blockbusters "disgusting" (interview, March 23, 2007), and said, "I don't love the industry, I hate it." Independent filmmaker Ramin Bahrani (e.g., Man Push Cart, Chop Shop) said that Hollywood movies "just don't make any sense. They create massive confusion" (in Scott 2009: 43). Producer Ted Hope, one of the pioneers of the indie movement, talked about his early move toward independent film production: "[I was 19, 20, but] was already [thinking], what is this junk that Hollywood is producing? ... It was all supposed to be hip and cool, and I was just, this is such saccharine crap, and I remember just being angry at what was supposed to be groundbreaking and wasn't" (interview, March 15, 2006). Not all indie film people are literally angry about "Hollywood," but all by definition are in some sense against what "Hollywood" is and stands for; that is the basis of the decision to work independently and to go against the grain of the standard Hollywood movie.
But this negative stance toward Hollywood is set at two relatively distinct levels. The first level might be called the level of cultures and practices: independent filmmaking sees itself as different from, and better than, Hollywood in its ethos and practices of making films, specifically in terms of the commercial intention of "the studios" and the relatively noncommercial intention of independent filmmaking. The critique of Hollywood, and of commercialism in general, constitutes independent filmmaking as a form of cultural critique at the most general level, even before one looks at specific films.
The other level concerns the nature of the films themselves in the two worlds. Here there is a critique of the stereotypic Hollywood movie as not only informed primarily by the commercial intent but also by a relatively unquestioning relationship to the dominant culture. Here then we can find in the discourse of independent filmmaking a more articulated set of ideas about critical filmmaking: making films that challenge the dominant culture, making films that challenge the audience, making, in the words of independent producer Christine Vachon, "films that matter" (Vachon and Edelstein 1998: cover).
Before getting to that discussion, I need to say a few words about the interpretation of discourse in the context of this book. I will not be doing what is called "discourse analysis" in linguistic anthropology, a method that entails a close examination of conversational texts, exploring the ways in which conversational styles and gambits enact and co-construct various kinds of intentions, positions, and social outcomes. Instead, I will be doing something we might call cultural ethnography through discourse, listening to the ways in which people spontaneously seem to say or write the same things in many different contexts. For example, many people in the independent film world will say things like "I hate Hollywood," or "Hollywood is crap," or "You have to stay out of the studios or they will destroy your film." After the fourth or fifth repetition of these sorts of statements by different people in different contexts, it seems reasonable to conclude that there is something like a relatively established discourse of contempt for Hollywood prevalent in the indie world.
But—and this is very important—this does not mean that everyone who says something like this has the same intention or relationship to the discourse. For some people it expresses a genuine and deep-seated personal feeling. For others it's a kind of posturing: to say something like this is to declare one's status as an auteur, an artist of great individuality. For yet others (and we will see examples), they might say something like this today and sign up for a studio contract tomorrow.
For the most part I am not interested in this kind of individual variation or the quest for getting behind informants' backs that this would imply. At the level of discourse, informants are always right, that is, regardless of their intentions or their subjective relationship to what they are saying, they nonetheless say what they say, and what they say is, from this perspective, an instance of a particular discourse. I am, on the other hand, interested in contestations over the discourse itself, as when people question the reality of the indie/Hollywood opposition, or when people question the very possibility of independence from "Hollywood" in today's world of media conglomeration. These contestations open questions of the ideological nature of the discourse, and I will explore some of them later in this chapter.
One more point should be made about this approach through language and "texts." John Caldwell has written extensively about "industrial reflexivity" in Hollywood, about the fact that Hollywood is endlessly reflecting on, representing, and celebrating itself (2008). This is done through various media—through award ceremonies, through "making of" documentaries, and most importantly, for my purposes, through films. Films about filmmaking constitute a kind of auto-ethnography of Hollywood—in Clifford Geertz's famous phrase, "a story they tell themselves about themselves" (1973a: 448). The world of independent film is not exempt from this kind of self-representation and self-celebration, though they often do it with more irony than is common in Hollywood. In any event, as part of the work of this and other ethnographic chapters, I examine not only how independent films look at the world (as "cultural critique"), but how independent film people look at themselves.
The Discourse of Independence
Bob Rosen, former Dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, was one of the founding board members of IFP/West (Independent Features Project/West, now Film Independent), in which they tried, in the early years, to hammer out—amidst "prolonged and heated debate"—a definition of what made a film "independent." They came up with four criteria: that the film be "risk-taking in content and style," embody a "personal vision," be funded by "non-Hollywood financing," and embody the "valuation of art over money" (interviews, July 25, 2006 and November 10, 2008). Would-be and practicing independent filmmakers are encouraged/ liberated to make "personal" films, in which they tell the stories they want to tell, in the ways they want to tell them. As Hollywood is famous for controlling directors and the contents of their films, "non-Hollywood financing" is meant to ensure that the filmmaker is truly independent.
The value of independence from Hollywood (and ultimately from the necessity for pleasing an American public that has been programmed with Hollywood values and expectations) is repeated over and over in the public representations of the independent film community. One site in which it is particularly audible is at the annual Independent Spirit Awards, hosted by Film Independent. At the 2007 awards ceremony, a short film was shown at the beginning of the ceremony. As I wrote in my notes:
Film Independent staged a competition for a short film about the idea of "independence." The winning film, called Independence, was really pretty good, starring a homeless guy [standing amid his junk, including a TV with no screen]. He just sort of raps along in a funny way about the upsides and the downsides of independence. On the one hand, nobody can tell you what to do. On the other hand, your TV set doesn't have a screen. It ended with the guy saying, of course, in order to be independent you needs lots of other people. (Field notes, February 24, 2007)
The last point is important. "Independence" does not mean isolation; it means being part of a community of people who share the value of being independent from the mainstream represented by Hollywood.
More generally, the term "independence" must have been repeated a hundred times in the course of the awards event. As I wrote in my field notes while watching,
People went on and on and on about the value and meaning of "independence," and how everyone in this room shares this ultimate value.... The foreign directors seemed especially passionate about it—the Mexican cinematographer [Guillermo Navarro] who took best cinematography for Pan's Labyrinth, and the German director [Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck] who took best foreign film for The Lives of Others. One got the feeling from them that the ultimate horror is to have to bow to the views of others, and the thing about independence is really just following your vision without interference.... The German filmmaker said, the best way to have independence is to lower your budget. He made The Lives of Others, which [went on to win many prizes], for $2 million. He said "people are not in this for the money." (Field notes, February 24, 2007)
Another major site for the public reiteration of the discourse of independence is at the Sundance Film Festival, which I attended in 2007. I have a large-format (11& x 16.5&) brochure about the Sundance Institute that I think was handed to me as part of my packet when I picked up my pass, or perhaps was just lying around among the volumes of free literature at the festival. The front of the brochure has the word "independent" in all caps and very large font. Above the word it says "Free the Artist," and below the word it says "Free the Audience." We open the brochure and see the "Free the Artist" spread, which asks, "What if the question, 'How will your film ... make money?' were never asked? Then only two questions remain: 'Is this the story you want to tell?' and 'What is the best way to tell it?'" (3). The idea of artistic independence is then given an urgent political spin: "What's ultimately at stake—the creative use of freedom in an open society —is far too important to trust to economic or political forces, or to the whims of fashion" (Robert Redford, quoted on 5). As with Film Independent, but less strongly emphasized, there is an invocation of a balance between celebrating the artistic independence of the filmmaker and situating the filmmaker in a collaborative community: "Here, the tenuous coalition between independence and productive collaboration strives to achieve surprising results" (7).
At the same time, there is much greater emphasis on reaching and indeed creating the audience that will appreciate these films. We first read the following: "When independent artists, free from the constraints of the marketplace and political pressures, find their own truth, audiences are freed to experience new truths within themselves. The affect [sic] is intoxicating, addictive, and life-sustaining" (5). The brochure seeks to conjure an audience that is not merely open to the kinds of films these filmmakers will make, but actually thirsting for them: "The Institute continually explores innovative ways to put the voice of freely expressed ideas before audiences that crave originality, diversity, and authenticity" (7). All of this comes together at the film festival, "where independent film meets independent audiences" (11).
"Independence" is the core value for the world of independent film. But it is very hard, if not impossible, to sustain all four criteria of independence listed by Bob Rosen. In particular, it has been difficult to stay away from Hollywood money if/when it becomes available. More on this below.
The Discourse of Passion
In The Field of Cultural Production, Pierre Bourdieu (1993) provides a theoretically sophisticated exploration and analysis of the world of "art." Opposing both reductive social interpretations (e.g., linking specific kinds of works to specific social groups) and reductive "charismatic" interpretations (vesting the value of the work of art in the creative genius of its creator), Bourdieu develops the concept of the "field of cultural production," a social field in which artists and a large cast of supporting players vie with one another for recognition and prestige, in the course of which specific values—of what counts as "art," and of what constitutes good and bad artists, genres, and works—are constantly created, maintained, and transformed.
At the base of the field of cultural production is the fundamental opposition between art and commerce. The world of art as a whole sets itself off from the wider social and economic world as what Bourdieu calls "an anti-economy" that "is so ordered that those who enter it have an interest in disinterestedness" (1993: 40). More importantly, the art/commerce opposition structures the relationships between different kinds of art within the field of cultural production: "The opposition between the 'commercial' and the 'non-commercial' reappears everywhere. It is the generative principle of most of the judgments which, in the theater, cinema, painting or literature, claim to establish the frontier between what is and what is not art, i.e., in practice, between 'bourgeois' art and 'intellectual' art [or] between 'traditional' and 'avant-garde' art" (Bourdieu 1993: 82).
In certain parts of his discussion, Bourdieu divides the field of cultural production into two subfields, a "field of restricted production" and a "field of large-scale production." The field of large-scale production is the more or less commercially and/or popularly oriented zone of the field of cultural production, producing for large/mass audiences. On the other hand, the field of restricted production at its most extreme is one in which cultural producers produce only for the recognition and approval of other like-minded cultural producers, and not for more widespread recognition (Bourdieu 1993: 53 and passim). The opposition between large-scale and restricted fields obviously maps reasonably well onto the Hollywood/ indie opposition, and I will return to it later. Here I want to explore a particular manifestation of the art/commerce opposition in American independent film, the opposition between money and "passion."
From the point of view of the indie world, independent films are made from passion, from the filmmaker's intense personal commitment ("personal" is another keyword here) to tell a particular story in a particular way. Passion is the opposite of a commercial sensibility; the heat of passion is opposed to the coldness of cash. Passion is also the opposite of a mechanical filmmaking sensibility; a film emerges from the filmmaker's personal vision, as opposed to (in the worst case) the formulas and franchises and mechanically stamped out "cookie cutter" movies of Hollywood. Filmmaker Richard Linklater wrote about going to a commercial casting agency when he was casting Slacker: "The place smells so much like the business side of filmmaking we run in horror. We're now determined more than ever to avoid these industry types who have no passion for cinema. We'll find all of our people elsewhere and do the film a full 100% against the industry way" (Linklater 1992: 4, emphasis added).
Passion talk can be heard everywhere in the film world; "passion projects" are virtually synonymous with independent films. Ursula Jackson, a partner in an independent but studio-oriented production company, had this to say: "A really good friend of mine just won one of the Nichols contests [for a film set in Bosnia], which is the screenplay contest that is run by the Academy. And everything that wins that is so much a passion piece, almost a documentary, the films are so involved in true life and all that" (interview, December 2, 2005).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Not Hollywood by Sherry B. Ortner Copyright © 2013 by Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ixNotes for the Reader xiii
Introduction 1
1. Making Independence 29
2. Dark Indies 59
3. Making the Scene 91
4. Moral Ambiguity 121
5. Making Value 147
6. Film Feminism 173
7. Making Films 199
8. Politics 229
9. Conclusions 259
Filmography 273
Notes 285
References 299
Index 315
What People are Saying About This
"Turning a sharp anthropologist's eye on a surprising subject, Sherry B. Ortner does for American independent film what Clifford Geertz did for Bali. Her outsider perspective allows her to raise and answer questions that most filmmakers, film historians, and audiences don't know exist."
"Not Hollywood does what compelling ethnographies do: it helps us better understand the human complexities of something we simplistically thought we already knew. As a result, the Sundance 'scene' documented here sometimes feels like 'The Emperor’s New Clothes' and, at other times, like truly engaged progressive politics and effective cultural critique. Required reading in film and media studies, but relevant far beyond those fields."
"Once again, Sherry B. Ortner takes us on an exploratory trip to an unexpected place: this time it's the 'media world' of American independent filmmakers. She reveals the cultural and emotional logics of passion, independence, and creativity that drive Gen X cineastes to max out their credit cards and push their friendships to the limit to create their own compelling visions of American life in films that are definitively 'not Hollywood.' Ortner never compromises her theoretical arguments, yet her clear and entertaining writing style makes this highly original book accessible to readers in anthropology, media and film studies, and American studies, as well as the interested public."