Three Reasons Independent Film Will Survive

A challenge to the year's highest-grossing moviemakers

by Sherman Alexie | Published February 3, 2003

Sherman Alexie

Independent film will survive and thrive because moviemakers can buy good video cameras, quality sound equipment and effective editing systems for $10,000 or $5,000 or $1,000 or $500. Anybody can afford to make a movie. The moviemaking process has finally become egalitarian and populist. Over the course of a few months or years, a poor reservation Indian kid can collect $1,000 worth of discarded aluminum cans from ditches and garbage cans, spend $500 on her equipment and then spend the other $500 to make a movie about the sad beauty of aluminum cans and their relationship to Native American health, economics and politics.

Of course, that Indian kid will only make her movie if somebody convinces her that a successful movie can be made for only $1,000. I could make a movie for $1,000, but who would see it? I wrote and directed a movie called The Business of Fancydancing for approximately $150,000 in cash and credit and very few people have seen it. We played a Manhattan theater, but received horrible reviews and the movie bombed. We played three theaters in greater Los Angeles and received wonderful reviews, but the movie still bombed. What does this mean? I hate to say it, but it means I’m an irrelevant moviemaker. I’ve only proved how easily a small movie can disappear. I can’t convince that Indian kid to see my movie, let alone make her own. So who can make the utterly convincing $1,000 movie?

Well, I’m issuing a challenge to Sam Raimi, David Koepp, George Lucas, Jonathan Hales, M. Night Shyamalan, Chris Columbus, Joel Zwick, Nia Vardalos, Jay Roach, Mike Myers, Michael McCullers, Barry Sonnenfeld, Robert Gordon, Carlos Saldanha, Chris Wedge, Michael J. Wilson, Michael Berg, Peter Ackerman, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philllipa Boyens, Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman.

Who are those folks? They are the writers and directors of the top 10 grossing movies of 2002, and I challenge them all to write and direct $1,000 movies. Who would pay attention to a $1,000 movie made by George Lucas? Half of the world. Who would pay attention to a $1,000 movie made by Mike Myers? The other half of the world. Demographic hyperbole aside, I am simply asking these highly successful moviemakers to commit the populist and egalitarian act of making and distributing $1,000 movies. Of course,

I’m assuming these highly successful moviemakers are populist and egalitarian liberals because they work in Hollywood, which might be the most liberal community in the history of the world. And because these filmmakers have varied, wonderful and commercial talents, I’m also assuming they would make very good and very diverse $1,000 movies. Can you imagine how many Lord of the Rings fans would rush to a $1,000 movie made by Peter Jackson? His first film, Bad Taste, didn’t cost much more than $1,000, so he knows how to make a micro-budget movie. After watching M. Night Shyamalan’s micro-budget thriller, that reservation kid would begin collecting aluminum cans in the theater lobby to finance her movie.

Of course, this is a ridiculous challenge. Millionaire moviemakers have no moral, ethical, artistic or financial imperative to make micro-budget films.
And I can’t judge them for choosing to ignore my challenge, as I’m quite positive all of them will. But I wonder how many of them have ever watched a $1,000 movie? Sam Raimi probably has a video library filled with zombie movies made for $12, and God bless him for it, but will he ever again make a zombie movie on a micro-budget? I can only offer sacred and profane prayers for such a cinematic miracle to happen during my lifetime.

So which moviemakers can and should make the convincing $1,000 movie? Who does have the obligation to make the micro-budget movie and prove that a beautiful and successful micro-budget movie can be made and distributed? Well, countless numbers of micro-budget moviemakers already make countless numbers of really terrible micro-budget movies, so we can only depend on their continued obscurity. After all, a populist and egalitarian society might offer guaranteed opportunity for all, but it doesn’t guarantee all will be talented. However, there are plenty of talented moviemakers who, having already made beautiful and successful independent films, might be convinced to take the $1,000 movie challenge.

L to R: Evan Adams and Gene Tagaban; Swil Kanim and Tagaban in The Business of Fancydancing.

So I challenge Paul Thomas Anderson to make a $1,000 movie about Homer, a 16-year-old glue-sniffer, who wakes up one morning and decides he must get the high score on all 33 Mortal Kombat video game machines in Torrance, California. This movie will be shot in six 30-minute real-time scenes.
I challenge Kimberly Peirce to make a $1,000 movie about Emily Dickinson. The reclusive poet will only be seen in recreated still photographs and only heard in voice-over, telling her life story and reciting her poems. Emily’s true story will interweave with a silent movie about one day in the life of a Chicago Catholic high school cross-country runner also named Emily Dickinson, and her interracial love affair with an African-American science geek named Langston Hughes.

I challenge Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson to make a $1,000 movie about Rosa, an elderly Chicano housekeeper, who unexpectedly visits her son Tomas, a homicide detective, at the Austin police headquarters. She convinces him to escort her into an interrogation room where she confesses to murdering her boss, his wife and their three teenage children. The rest of the movie will be shot only in that interrogation room and will only feature Rosa and Tomas.

I challenge Rebecca Miller to make a $1,000 movie about a man and woman trapped in their small car in a sudden blizzard. The man and woman are 20 miles from help, have no food or blankets in the car, and will almost certainly die if they stay with the car and will most likely die if they try to walk to safety. No matter if they live or die, their affair will soon become public knowledge. Do they stay in the car or walk? Do they stay together or separate? Do they live or die? I challenge Ms. Miller to shoot this film using only two flashlights for illumination.

Am I serious about these four challenges? Sort of. I believe these moviemakers could write and direct great movies based on my goofy ideas, but I would rather they film their own $1,000 ideas. Hell, I would be ecstatic if Paul Thomas Anderson filmed a $1,000 movie with Adam Sandler. I would be even more ecstatic if Adam Sandler agreed to star in the aluminum can epic written and directed by that Indian kid. I only know that a micro-budget film directed by any of these independent moviemakers would certainly be distributed and play in a few hundred theatres or more. Imagine what would happen if ten independent moviemakers of this calibre released ten $1,000 dollars films in the same year? Would there be an artistic revolution? A micro-budget rebellion? A $1,000 coup de tat?

Of course, a $1,000 movie shot on video will look like crap, no matter who is behind the camera. But I have faith that most moviegoers will eventually accept, understand and enjoy the ragged and unpredictable visuals of videography. Most films, whether studio or independent, are seen on 19-inch televisions. Independent film will survive and thrive because The Blair Witch Project and Lawrence of Arabia look exactly the same on 19-inch televisions. Of course, I’m exaggerating to make a point, but why must a film be visually beautiful at all? Why can’t a film be visually ugly, muddy, unclear, bleary and opaque? Human beings can certainly be morally ugly, muddy, unclear, bleary and opaque, so why shouldn’t cinematography reflect that? Why do so many film critics and filmmakers worship at the altar of beautiful cinematography? Whenever I stop to admire the physical beauty of a person, place or thing, I am as uninteresting as I can possibly be, and am usually romanticizing the place or thing, or objectifying the person. Accordingly, whenever a movie stops to admire the physical beauty of a person, place or thing, it usually romanticizes and objectifies. The dramatic pause to display cinematic beauty can be a form of denial, of deceit and even of immorality.

After all, if one believes in only one standard of beautiful cinematography, then one must accordingly believe in casting actors who fit that one standard of beauty, despite the original meaning of the art. That’s why Michelle Pfeiffer was cast as a working-class schlemiel in the film version of Frankie and Johnny, despite the fact that Kathy Bates originated the role on stage. It’s also why Kevin Spacey, a good-looking and stylish man, played the role of Quoyle in the film version of The Shipping News, despite the novel’s description of Quoyle as a man with “features as bunched as kissed fingertips. Eyes the color of plastic. The monstrous chin, a freakish shelf jutting from the lower face.”

I challenge all moviemakers to adapt Romeo and Juliet and cast two homely actors as the doomed lovers, and only spend $1,000. Imagine an Indian kid who adapts Romeo and Juliet and casts two homely Indians as the doomed lovers who suicide themselves by drinking poison out of aluminum cans.
Moviemakers and movie critics are obsessed with visual beauty because cinema is an art still suffering through its adolescence (I’ll try not to make any analogies between Michael Bay movies and acne). Go take a look at Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” a blisteringly ugly and profound vision of pain and loss, and you’ll see one tangible result of the epic human journey from cave painting to painting canvas. We are 30,000 years old in the presence of Munch’s “The Scream” and 111 years old in the presence of Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven’s Scream.

Independent film will survive and thrive because of cinema’s youth. It will be the independent filmmakers, the unsponsored and unincorporated, the unknown and unappreciated, the wildly immature and impulsive, who will make good movies and then great movies, and then good art and great art.

Aren’t you excited to know there’s been no Shakespeare of the cinema yet? Shakespeare wrote Hamlet over 4,500 years after the first human wrote the first letter of the first alphabet. Since Edison first projected film in 1891, we can expect the cinematic equivalent of Hamlet in the year 6391. Independent film will survive because millions of writers and directors will spend the next four or five thousand years in a collectively vain and glorious and vainglorious quest to make the cinematic equivalent of Hamlet. Of course, there exists the possibility that a man or woman might preempt time, might be born with a spectacular blessing or curse, might just be plain lucky, and make the cinematic Hamlet as soon as tomorrow, or next year, or 23 years from now. Hell, some 12-year old boy might make the greatest movie ever with Legos and Fisher Price Little People. Or maybe a poor Indian girl will make it with aluminum cans and seven stray dogs.

So, my dear moviemakers, obscure and not, if you can imagine the possibility of that Indian girl and her $1,000 masterpiece, then you could certainly imagine the continuing possibilities of independent film.

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