Success, Lies and Videotape

Outlaw Filmmakers Rewrite the Rules During the ‘90s.


"... a man stood up and asked, 'So how do you justify all the violence in this movie?' The director replied, "I don't know about you, but I love violent movies."

This was the scene when Quentin Tarantino's artistically plagiaristic tour de force Reservoir Dogs showed at the conservative Sundance Festival in 1992. The director, a blunt, driven operator, was not the deferential emotion merchant the hand wringing audiences at Robert Redford's showcase of independent films were used to. Here was the brazen new face of the indie universe, and they didn't like it. In fact, Redford himself commented that year that he'd seen some of the violent films in the festival and "I could barely eat for twenty-four hours because they were so loaded with violence."

Yet it wasn't the violence itself that was so shocking about this new frontier of low budget film. In many ways it was that they had been made at all - that was enough of an affront to the complacent, elitist knobs that patronised ‘art house’ cinema during the 1980s. To make a trite comparison, 1980s indie film was flatulent prog rock, and the 1990s zeitgeist was punk rock, come to wash away crimes of interminable boredom with youthful enthusiasm and rampant creativity.

Two recent books offer in-depth exposés of the phenomenon of 1990s independent film, a loose movement that offered a spicy flipside to the white bread contributions coming from Hollywood. Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures and Sharon Waxman's Rebels On The Backlot uncover the filth and the fury, the intrigues and punch-ups, the backstory that made the '90s such a fascinating era in cinema.

Just as Biskind's 1999 tome Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock'n'Roll Generation Saved Hollywood lifted the lid on the excesses of 1970s cinematography, so does Down and Dirty Pictures get beneath the skin of the '90s. It draws a line from Steven Soderbergh's genre defying debut sex, lies, and videotape through to such recent successes as 21 Grams and Cold Mountain.

The intervening years spans several thousand reels of celluloid, covering everything from Richard Linklater's Slacker to Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting, Kevin Smith's Clerks to Larry Clark's Kids, Todd Solondz' Happiness to Tarantino's smash Pulp Fiction. The directors are only one aspect of the story, a hefty chunk dedicated to those with - and without - business acumen who drove the independent industry, and those who unwittingly sabotaged it from within.

The key figures here are Redford, the passive-aggressive Sundance impresario whose dealings were legendarily patronising, and the Weinstein brothers, Bob and Harvey. Miramax's familial junta stomped on many heads in a riot of bullying, manipulative antics. Yet the company’s role in seizing power from the embedded Hollywood studio system was pivotal to the developments of the decade.

Harvey Weinstein was the Miramax heavy on any given day, though that role was interchangeable with his brother. Although he claimed a deep love of film, the reality was quite different. As Biskind's book recounts, Chris Mankiewicz (son of legendary producer Joe) was drafted into the Miramax ranks to sort out the mess the brothers had created. His observation of Harvey was that "Whether he was going to be making films, or donuts, or machine gun parts, it was a product, and there was just a sense of ferocious ambition. He was a guy who wanted to have a career or make a lot of money."

That blind ambition established and shattered many directorial careers, Weinstein often involving himself in the artistic lives of those whose films he financed - earning him the nickname 'Harvey Scissorhands'.


"We don't want to grow up and be another Walt Disney." Bob Weinstein, 1989.

"I'm not looking to make an NC-17 movie anymore...The mantra at Disney is to keep the ratings 'R', and I'm happy to do so. I don't want to cause Disney any problems. Why ruin a perfect relationship?" Harvey Weinstein, mid-1990s

Indeed, Miramax entered into a consortium deal with those masters of filmic dross, Disney, in 1993. This mutually beneficial arrangement allowed Miramax to claw their way out of a financial mire and blitzkrieg the independent film market, though it put the brakes on their more creative urges. This is plainly illustrated in Harvey Weinstein's comment above, emphasising his commitment to the dollar over artistic integrity.

Biskind is adept at digging up anecdotal commentary from those at the centre of this tumultuous galaxy, and pulls no punches in relaying the dirt. His portraits of the key players do them no favours, and just as with Easy Riders, Raging Bulls he's no doubt burnt a great many bridges. You can't write a book like this without losing friends or breaching confidences, or without having an insatiable journalistic curiosity and steel balls.

On all levels Down and Dirty Pictures pushes the buttons. It leaves the reader with the overwhelming impression that the 1990s independent film phenomena had to happen, to revitilise and refresh the rapidly stagnating ditch that Hollywood had become. Sharon Waxman's Rebels On The Backlot covers the same period, but delves deep into six of the key directors responsible for the overhaul.

Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Andersen, David O. Russell and Spike Jones were those six, auteurs that created markedly unusual films that were lapped up by discerning audiences. Waxman asserts early on that Tarantino almost single handedly created a template for succeeding through alternative channels. "(He) very early in the decade broke every rule in moviedom to the roaring acclaim of critics, audiences, and (finally) the Hollywood establishment, then brought his irony-tinged violence and retro-cool ethos into mainstream culture."

This differs from Biskind's ordainment of Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape as the evolutionary flashpoint that sparked a new species. The coverage of Soderbergh's career in Waxman's book focuses on the making of Traffic, a film that allowed the director to traverse the gulf to big budget filmmaking. Traffic was made in a largely improvisational manner, shots being set up quickly. "The whole movie should feel as though we showed up and shot and there was no design. By the end of the film the more real it feels and the less it feels like a Hollywood movie, the more the audience will connect with it."

While Rebels On the Backlot doesn't unearth the same kind of salacious detail that Biskind is so practiced at, it does a creditable job of revealing the tribulations experienced by some of the best filmmakers of this generation. Such as New Line chairman Bob Shaye whining about why Spike Jones' Being John Malkovich couldn't be called Being Tom Cruise.

While you’d think that the outrageous success of Tarantino, Soderbergh, Jones, Linklater, Smith and peers would have erased this kind of thinking, it would be fanciful. But as these two books show, despite the villainous subterfuge that riddles the film industry, there will always be those willing to tirelessly pursue an artistic vision.


Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film
- Peter Biskind (Simon & Schuster)

Rebels On The Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System - Sharon Waxman (HarperCollins)


Gavin Bertram.