View image Raping Dakota and Feeling Minnesota: Despite all the publicity, "Hounddog" ain't nothin' but a dog, say critics. It's not dangerous, after all.
"As its poster and advertising remind us, "Quinceañera" won both the jury and audience prizes at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, and those honors are strangely indicative of its dramatic and stylistic limitations. If there was ever a movie that seemed precision-tailored for a Park City reception, this is it -- the quintessential example of the festival's favored brand of hand-crafted, slice-of-life, youth-oriented filmmaking that expresses affection for a nicely captured American subculture. In other words, it's a Sundance specialty, right from the box.
"This is a shopping-list movie: A double coming-of-age story spiced with local color; a bittersweet portrait of a Los Angeles neighborhood in transition; a warm and soapy celebration of a Mexican-American community. "Quinceañera" is also a thoroughly predictable melodrama that's both kitchen-sink and 'After-School Special.'"
-- from my review of "Quinceañera" last summer
One of the debilitating side effects of the pop-culture "mainstreaming" (if I may use an ugly marketing term) of the Sundance Film Festival brand over the last 20 years or so has been the over-glorification of what I call resumé movies. These are films, cobbled together from familiar elements designed to appeal not only to a Sundance jury (or audience), but with an eye toward getting the filmmakers some "Hollywood" money for their next picture. And that, in itself, is fine. Nothing wrong with trying to climb the ladder of success. But I don't particularly want to watch somebody's resumé on a movie screen, particularly when it's sold to me as a "personal story" (or a "subversive thriller") and plays like pure Hollywood formula schlock.
John Sayles admits that "Return of the Secaucus 7" was just such a resumé picture. After years of writing horror and exploitation scripts for Roger Corman ("Piranha," "The Lady in Red," "Alligator"), he wanted to start directing his own, more personal stuff. The reason there's a basketball game in the movie was simply to show that he knew how to handle an action sequence. But Sayles was expanding his craft and moving from formulaic commercial genre filmmaking toward more personal projects, not the other way around.
Remember "Project Greenlight," the HBO (then Bravo) series, produced with good intentions by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, with the Weinstein Miramax? The deal was that they would choose an unproduced first-time script and give a novice director a chance to make the movie, which Miramax would finance and distribute. By the third (and final) season, they joined forces with Wes Craven and were making a horror exploitation film for Miramax's Dimension division.
"Making cynically made low-budget horror films for the purpose of making a small profit is not the reasons that I got into 'Project Greenlight,'" Damon said angrily early in that final season. It's not that people can't make great, personal, visionary horror movies (see the best work of David Cronenberg, and Wes Craven himself) -- but neither Damon, Affleck or Craven thought the script the studio wanted was very good to begin with. (Affleck's memorable line: "It's one of those things where you read it and think, 'Is this interesting and creative and unusual or is this just dog shit?'")
In the end, none of the "Project Greenlight" movies made much of an impression, artistically or commercially. (Remember "Stolen Summer"? "The Battle of Shaker Heights"? "Feast"?)
But Sundance still hasn't learned the lessons of "Project Greenlight." As David Bordwell sees it, the festival is overrun with what he calls "Indie Guignol" -- which are just generic resumé movies designed to use shock value to take advantage of the Sundance publicity:
In an article originally called “Sundance Movies Are Bad for You!” but now more tamely titled “The Trouble with Sundance,” Richard Corliss complains that indie movies have become so predictable that they form a genre in themselves. They focus on relationships, especially those of a dysfunctional family or a fumbling love affair, and treat their principals with a dutiful mix of pathos and humor. Where, he asks, are the more imaginative narrative and stylistic maneuvers fostered by the Coen brothers, Jarmusch, Tarantino, and the like?Bordwell suggests that the models for these films were indie successes like Steven Soderbergh's "sex, lies and videotape" and David Lynch's "Blue Velvet," and that "for a couple of decades the indie scene has taken on ever more provocative themes and subjects, from 'Suture' and 'Boxing Helena' through 'Happiness' and 'Boogie Nights' to 'Hard Candy' and 'Little Children.'" Of course, some of these movies are better (and truer) than others (and you must read his entire piece). But then Bordwell moves in for the kill:That’s only half the story. True, indie films are often pallid comedies and melodramas. But just as often, and sometimes at the same time, they’re desperately sensationalistic. In these the formal conservativism to which Corliss objects is wedded to hot-button content. We call a bland Indie film quirky, but there are others we call dark. They’re Indie Guignol.
The central conceit of Indie Guignol is that to be creative in cinema you have to be dangerous. James Mottram’s book "The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood" is an informative overview of Indiewood, but too often it equates being a “maverick” and having a “vision” with an adolescent naughtiness.David said he'd liked to have waited for theHe approvingly reports Fincher’s reaction to the ending of "Se7en." “While it reinforced the notion that justice will prevail, Fincher takes a private goulish pleasure in imagining Mills being ‘carted off to be gang-raped by prison inmates.’” Mottram notes, perhaps unnecessarily, that Fincher has a “sour vision of humanity” (155). Likewise, Sharon Waxman’s "Rebels on the Backlot" celebrates the fact that her “rebel auteurs” made movies that “combined their brutality with humor” (xi), as if violence and comedy didn’t ricochet off one another in virtually every student horror film ever made.
P.S. Expect "Hounddog" -- formerly known as the "Dakota Fanning Rape Movie" -- to go the way of "Stolen Summer" and "The Spitfire Grill." Although the movie got plenty of publicity, including (staged?) protests in Park City before its January 22 screening, once people actually saw the movie they realized it was all about nothing. There is no explicit "rape scene" or "graphic nudity." Even Rupert Murdoch's New York Post dismissed in the most damning terms: "This is a fairly generic, pretentiously artsy coming-of-age movie..." Sounds like the same old Sundance cliché masquerading as the more recent one. As of this writing "Hounddog" has not been picked up for distribution.
It's funny to hear that from Richard Corliss. I think the first time I ever noticed a film reviewer's name was after seeing "Natural Born Killers" (the epitome of showy and pointlessly gross) and then reading Corliss's review. I recall thinking, "Did we see the same movie?" So dug up his review just now:
One wouldn't want this to be the only future; then we really would go nuts. But most films today are afraid to try anything new. That's exactly what Stone does. He's like Mickey or Mallory careering to hell or heaven. And the viewer is like the bit-part cook in the opening diner scene. A bullet whirls toward him, stops for a split second as the victim's eyes widen in fear, then BOOM! Natural Born Killers is an explosive device for the sleepy movie audience, a wake-up call in the form of a frag bomb.
Maybe he's grown up since then.
Very interesting post about Sundance and the state of independant film. This reminds me of what happened with alternative music as it became more popular. At first the term was to be taken litterally, meaning music that is different form the current norm. Unfortunately alternative was soon marketed as a genre unto itself complete with its own set of clichés. The idea of the music actually proposing something original was lost.
Gradually as the term independant film is used more and more as if it were a sub-genre, the truly independant minded filmakers will be lost in the shuffle. For their sake, someone needs to put some careful thought into how Sundance is programmed and whos purpose it is serving.
I've thought this about Indie films for the past decade. I even feel that way about "Little Miss Sunshine" to a certain extent; quirky characters each with a singular problem that must be overcome or faced. It falls right in to that world of, not bad, but not as brilliant as everyone said it would be. Even in this weeks Entertainment Weekly Oscar Special they talk about the one thing everyone was looking for was this years "Sunshine". How hind sighted is that? Maybe we'll see a shift away from the dark side of Sundance for awhile with this one -- honestly I don't care. I just want to watch good movies. I don't care where they come from, cause there's always going to be a list of bad movies, regardless of whether they come from Hollywood or the Indie world.
As much as anything, the Bordwell piece (and Jim's related comments) helps to explain why for many film viewers the American 'indies' have become something to be potentially mistrusted rather than actively sought out, as was more often the case in, say, the late 1980s or early 1990s. I also like the list of 'uncool' filmmakers, from many traditions and periods, that Bordwell includes near the end of his piece.
It doesn't bother me so much that indie filmmaking has become conventional. It seems like a fairly inevitable and healthy process, even when it comes to Indie Guignol. The question for me is not whether a film manages to actually avoid or subvert genre expectations, but whether or not a film manages to use the conventions of its genre to say something worthwhile, or to at least engage me emotionally.
I am a pretty rabid fan of old horror and exploitation films, so I watch lots of films that are "shocking" (rather than actually being shocking), and I must say, when I watch a film that goes through the motions of being subversive, whether or not the film actually manages to pull that feat off doesn't necessarily dictate whether or not the film is a success.
Case in point: Gaspar Noe's "Irreversable," an Indie Guignol if there ever was one. The film is basically a classic "rape and revenge" movie, a la "Deathwish" or "I Spit on Your Grave," but told through an unconventional, "Indie," structure, ya know, like "Pulp Fiction," or "Momento." Of course, the indie structure pretends like it subverts the pleasures of violence that the rape and revenge movie presents us with. . . but it doesn't really. It's as visciously awful and scary as any movie I've seen. If you want horror, Noe give your horror. Anybody who likes "I Spit on Your Grave" will like "Irreversable" even more; it's a much better film in every department, and its even uglier and more cruel. Folks that think there is something valuable about the ugly and cruel will lap it up. Even his trick of making the audience sadly watch the happy protagonists in their lives before the violence in the film (which we see on screen after we have seen said violence), doesn't really make the film that trangressive. Exploitations movies often make the point that violence is wrong and that revenge makes morality muddy. That's why they are called exploitation movies-because they are cynical.
I think the reason "Irreversable" is good is simply that it repeats these cliches effectively. After seeing it, we think about it in a way that we don't think about other rape and revenge movies. We can't not, the film is just too overwhelming, and even though the structural tricks fail to say anything really new, they do make the film a much more moral and much less pornographic experience than it would have been otherwise. (Check out Roger Ebert's rather perfect review for a better description of what I mean. . .)
Of course, Noe's pride in the perversity of his movie (word is, he was happy when people walked out of screenings), kind of undermines the point I'm trying to make. But just because he seems to regard the critical community the way a juvinille delinquent might doesn't mean his movie stinks.
By the way, both "Houndog" and "An American Crime" have been getting attention from the horror fan community, which pretty much confirms the theory that these kinds of films have managed to become pretty predictable. Horror fans LIKE cliches (a lot), just so long as they are presented thoughfully, and if they've caught on to Indie Guignol, you can bet it's a pretty well defined kind of filmmaking.
My question however whether these films, however genric they might be, are any good. The interview I read with the director of "Houndog" made it seem as though she wasn't really trying to be shocking (good for her. . . I'm not sure she could be if she wanted to), and it sounded like she had intersting ideas she was getting at in her artsy little white trash exploitation pic. I use that label not in a deragatory way, but in a descriptive way. There is no reason I see that an artsy little white trash exploitation pic can't be a good movie. After all, "Night or the Living Dead" was really an artsy little monster movie. I kinda liked it.
Of course, I don't really know if she managed to use the Indie Guignol formula as a way to translate her neat ideas to the screen, but I wouldn't discredit the movie just because it's not "actually" subversive. If we shouln't praise movies just for being "subversive" neither should we condemn them for being conventional. . . that's hardly the only way to evaluate movies. Even somebody who really is a maverick like David Lynch uses conventions and cliches. These folks just manage to make these conventions and cliches their own, and by doing so they usually manage to invent new ones.
Of course a film that is an Indie Guignol movie is conventional, but does that mean it can't also be any good?
Chris,
I don't think his review of "Killers" lumps it into the genre of indie films he's talking about. The violence in "Killers" actually served some kind of purpose, both thematically and atmospherically. In these indie films, they serve little to no purpose except to shock! And then they use those randomly shocking scenes to somehow show character or story development. They are filmmakers who see the violence in "Killers" think it's cool and powerful, don't understand why, but copy anyway, so it's just shocking!!! ooooooh!
NEEERRRRRDDDSSSS!
Just joking. A lot of thought provoking comments. In fact, I take the "just joking" back. We are all nerds, and I'm thankful to read what you have to say!
It's fascinating to trace the evolution of the indie-flick. It's not just the movies, but the industry itself. I can recall when there was what, only one, or maybe two boutique studios affiliated with the big-guys? Now it seems that even the boutique studios have boutique studios.
As with pop-music however, a new, fresher sub-genre will emerge as everyone grows tired of these formulaic films. It's a pendulum people. Alls we can do is keep on rocking and rolling (apologies to Dirk Diggler).
Jamie, Jazzy, et al.:
Manohla Dargis has a piece on Sundance that puts it quite succinctly, I think: "Once upon a time, its writer and director, Craig Brewer, who also brought us “Hustle & Flow,” would have been churning out grindhouse quickies for Roger Corman. At Sundance, however, Mr. Brewer is a conquering hero, an auteur."
That's what I think David Bordwell was pointing out, too. It's not that violent or taboo-baiting films can't be good or great (look at some of the stuff Joe Dante made for Corman!) -- it's that, for many indie/Sundance filmmakers, it's just a fad, a trend, a pose. I agree, it'll pass. But in the meantime we should see it for what it is: a commercial trend, not unlike the slasher movies of the late '70s and '80s (with people trying to cash in on the success of "Halloween," the most lucrative indie ever made at the time, while now they're jumping on the "Saw" gravy train). But "Prom Night" and "Terror Train" weren't showcased at major American film festivals.
Dargis continues:
"Mr. Brewer landed at Sundance two years ago with an independently financed film and left with a studio deal. For many, his good fortune probably seems like the ultimate dream, the perfect ending to the independent fairy tale. It is a dream that has little to do with art and vision and the independent cinema of John Cassavetes or, for that matter, the work of an early Sundance stalwart like Victor Nunez, whose lovely 1993 film “Ruby in Paradise” would probably get lost in the Hollywood shuffle these days. Despite the best-articulated intentions of the festival, exemplified by buttons it passed out emblazoned with the hopeful motto “Focus on Film,” Sundance encourages gold-rush fever. There is no denying that many fine films are still shown here, but all too often they aren’t the ones that keep this festival in the news."
I did not know that about Return of the Secaucus 7!
The reason there's a basketball game in the movie was simply to show that he knew how to handle an action sequence.
Huh...
"But in the meantime we should see it for what it is: a commercial trend, not unlike the slasher movies of the late '70s and '80s (with people trying to cash in on the success of "Halloween," the most lucrative indie ever made at the time, while now they're jumping on the "Saw" gravy train). But "Prom Night" and "Terror Train" weren't showcased at major American film festivals."
Ahhh, but when has there been a culture of filmmaking, or any other kind of commercial art making for that matter, that wasn't beholden to commercial fads and trends? I'll admit that I don't know that much about the history of American film festivals, but I'd be shocked to find a period when they were immune to fads. I'm not trying to be contentious here, but I really do believe that the emergence of Indie "genres" is an inevitable and healthy process. The "real" independent films that got the ball moving have been replaced by new kinds of genre movies, and the commercial viability of of those original "real" indies has led to these newer more genric movies being marketable. . . of course it means that what Sundance is about changes, and while those changes certainly need acknowledgment (and I suppose that's really what this is all about), I'm not sure I'm particularly disturbed.
For me the whole thing is like the mainstream/subculture interraction in pop music. Somewhere there is an innovative local music community. If that "scene" makes the jump into the mainstream and starts a fad, then that "scene" gets swallowed up by party crashers and before long, it's not innovative and hip anymore. Of course, the net result of all this is that mainstream pop music gets new bits of vocabulary it can use, and rock and roll is a little bit richer for it.
I know that's an absurdly sloppy analogy, but I think it works well enough. Things that used to be unconventional have become codified and marketed. That's how things work. Filmakers like John Cassavetes are exceptions, and they will always be exceptions. This seems hopelessly pessimistic, but perhaps "real" independent film was a blip, an anomolous burst of creativity that has been reabsorbed into the mainstream? Even this worst case scenario isn't so bad. The vocabulary of mainstream cinema is a whole lot more interesting for having absorbed the poses of the underground. I know, I know. . . good art doesn't "pose." But if movies aren't style, what are they? Just because something poses, can't it think too?
Bordwell's best comment, unintentionally:
I wonder if he realizes that the same formulation may eventually be applied to the filmmakers whose works he dismisses.
Case in point: Solondz. He's usually lumped in with the Guignol group (Bordwell's use of "vaunted personal vision" carries a bit of sarcasm), but Ebert had a perceptive comment in his review of Storytelling:
So Bordwell's words may come back to bite him, eventually.
I don't necessarily disagree with him that the more mainstream indie world may be cynical, may have sold out, and may be just as shallow as the Hollywood it rejects. But this has happened throughout the history of literature, too, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some of these films doing much better once the 'controversy' dissolves, and others disappearing once they have no controversy to latch on to. Does the mainstream indie world deserves more criticism because it pretends to be above that? Well, possibly.
I think Brad is right on the money. When this fad is over, the merits of these films are going to be a lot easier to discuss. I actually disagreed with Roger Ebert about "Storytelling." As much as I love Tod Solondez's other films, that one was a bit of a dissapointment for me. But Ebert's experience with the film really does describe the way that we ought to approach these movies. Get past the shock value and the faddishness, and THEN try to figure out whether they are any good. Critizing the hype surrounding some of these movies seems like an appropriate response to that hype. . . hell, that hype is a lot what gets in the way of our being able to evaluate them for what they are, and it might really damage the reception that some of them will get. There seems to be a "Houndog" backlash brewing before anybody much has seem the film.
Let's not forget that hype is par for the course in the movie biz. "Schindler's List" got a lot of inappropriate hype, and it's certainly worth a look see. It's not the filmmakers fault that they work in a commercial medium, and I think we should give these guys the benefit of the doubt until we have had a chance not only to see there work, but to get a little distance from the silliness that surrounds it sometimes.
Dudes,
The picture from "Hounddog" that Mr. Emerson selected is hilarious. It says it all, the tortured look, the tough but beautiful lighting.
It got me thinking, what is the worst offender? Which movie, moment, prop or actor, best signifies this trend?
You want the answer? I'll give you the answer - Dustin Hoffman's hair in Moonlight Mile.
Hoffman's hair is just natural enough to let us know that he is slumming it for "his craft". Yet his hair is also just styled enough for the Oscar Clips that I'm sure he assumed would follow.
In fact, what I suggest is that you all rent (DON'T BUY) Moonlight Mile and watch it with the sound off. Place your own tortured dialogue over the scenes.
Example - Saradon's big scene [with cigarette of course] "I may not have a daughter anymore but.... sob... I have you Donnie Darko, and you... sob you're my son now!"
It is an amazing improvement.
I feel the core of any daring film-making goes back to the comment Roger Ebert reported from the screening of "The Wild Bunch", when one critic rose and scolded Sam Peckinpah and William Holden with the question, "Why was this movie even made??"
I think the last 20 minutes of "The Wild Bunch" is unparalleled in cinema history, and almost all prolific action/drama writers and directors (Tarantino, Woo, Scorcese) cite this film as a major inspiration. Why was it made? because Peckinpah felt like making it!! in true "indie" fashion he didn't give a damn about the audience or the studio or his next film . . . he had a vision for that film and those characters and by sheer force of will put that story on celluloid.
His vision and technique (especially the quick-cuts) are annoyingly standard today. What many cite as the "MTV GENERATION", whose attention span lasts but a few moments, is really an offshoot of the influence of Peckinpah.
Some films have no purpose other than to put a writer's or director's vision on screen. I'm sure Peckinpah could give a damn if people liked his films. Those that did practically worshipped his originality and genius. Those that didn't condemned the "meaninglessness" of his vision (which had meaning only in the irony of his exploration of nihilism).
But the irony of "independent" film is a question of compromise of the creator. Tarantino stayed true to his vision and succeeded. Many others "sold out", or made "resume" films just to get a really great idea through the studio process the next time around.
When filmmakers stop using Sundance as a stepping-stone to their personal success, I think we will see a return to bold, divisive, thought-provoking indie entertainment. Or they should just get piss-drunk, grab some action icons, drive to Mexico, and blow through a couple thousand squibs.
For me, the worst pseudo-indie genre is the "quirky" prestige foreign film. The most flagrant and offensive being "Life is Beautiful" (of course) but there's plenty of other mediocre, or just plain innappropriate films that get seriously described as "a breath of fresh air," when in fact they are shallow, sentimental, predictable arguments for a cliched idea about the merits of nonconconformism. I'm sure that there are folks in France making really good movies, but the films most likely to get a push in the U.S. are fetishized portrayals of people being zany in front of vineyards. If it weren't for the local color, these films would all basically be "Patch Adams." To make matters weirder, these kinds of movies seem to be mostly pretty mainstream films that get "boutiqued" into some kind of psuedo-indiehood by marketing departments. I'm sure they screen American romantic comedies in France. I doubt they have the whiff of prestige that European romantic comedies get over here.
There seems to be some effort by American filmmakers to appropriate this genre (witness "Chocolate"), but since that last Russell Crow thing flopped to badly, maybe it won't catch on.
And of course, some of these movies are actually good. "Amelie" for example, really did feel pretty different. "Italian for Beginners" was not bad, but it was really a pretty straightforward romantic comedy, only shot on video and subtitled. Trouble is, it can be hard for me to leave my preconceptions at the door when I'm seeing zany behavior with subtitles.
UGH! Add "Life is Beautiful" to my list of over-hailed pieces of trash. I cannot believe I took the time to sit down with my teenage son to watch "Schindler's List" and dissect the nature of morality, and then his stupid school makes them watch "Life is Beautiful" and treats genocide like a frikkin joke.
As I think has been said, the studios and filmmakers quickly attach themselves to recognizable styles of film making hoping to be noticed. How do you get noticed by an industry that does nothing BUT repeat itself. It's the worst kind of trap. It's the same kind of traps genres have been falling into since the beginning of film. I feel the same way about Film Noir. There were some great B-movie noirs made, then some great A-movie noirs made, but once the studio got their hands on them, they churned them out, and made some pretty bad and forgettable ones. Musicals. Imagine how many silent films that copied the likes of Lloyd and Chaplin and Keaton came out that have all but been forgotten, because none are worth remembering. As are dozens of indie films, because they become trapped by film makers who want to be noticed.