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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

posted by Muire Dougherty at 10:32 PM
Category: Dregublog | Permalink

I committed myself to learn the craft of filmmaking so that I could create an escape from a drab and mundane existence. The power of creating motion picture images was intoxicating to a novice filmmaker. If given the chance, could I ever make something as transporting as The Wizard of Oz or La Dolce Vita? Would attending an elite film school make this possible?

Be forewarned: attending an expensive university film program may teach you how films are made, but they will not help you become an independent filmmaker. There are reasons why it is called the film "business." Heed my tale.

I attended the New York University graduate film school. Learning from the same instructors who taught Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee seemed like a dream come true. I would learn motion picture production skills by which I could earn a living. And the greatest hope of all would be that, like Jarmusch and Lee before me, I would have the opportunity to become an "independent filmmaker."

At NYU, we learned of the rigid hierarchy that Hollywood dictates to American filmmaking, and how it was crucial to honor and respect it. It soon became clear that filmmaking was the dominion of the wealthy, steeped in nepotism, and that the school was, in actuality, a male-dominated Hollywood prep school.

Still, this went against the messages we were hearing about the burgeoning profession of "independent filmmaker." Look at Susan Seidelman! Look at Tom DiCillo! These people were making the films they wanted to make on their own terms, and no movie studio could tell them that quirky characters and black and white images were a no-go. Why, Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi on just $5,000 that he charged on his credit card. And it's the hit of the year, and heavy-hitting producers are lining up to work on his next picture!

Those of us who were not making slick, predictable film "products" with the assumption of working for a studio were advised to write a screenplay and shop it around to production companies. You had to work hard and pay your dues, but if you were willing to do so, you could be rewarded by having your film independently produced, your vision as an artist left relatively intact.

I was willing to work hard. I shopped my screenplays around for years, slogging away at the drudgery of freelance motion picture productions in order to earn a living. Working fourteen hours a day on MTV reality shows and A&E intro sequences would all be in the past once I hit my stride as an independent filmmaker. But somehow my screenplays weren't attractive to the production companies. They were too "arty," too "literary." American audiences don't understand subtlety, I was told. Try writing a chick flick.

Why weren't any of my colleagues becoming successful filmmakers by making their own feature films, and "creating a buzz" that would allow them to continue to do so? After ten years, I realized that no one I knew from NYU had become an independent filmmaker. Nor had any of the people I knew from the other major league graduate film schools. Most had given up and started new careers, and the only ones who had hung on were being financed to retain this extravagant dream by affluent and indulgent parents. The luckier Hollywood scions had administrative jobs at studios. What had happened to the El Mariachis of the world?

The answer is that independent filmmaking does not exist. El Mariachi was not made for $5,000. Neither was Tarnation, a 2003 film supposedly put together on the filmmaker's home computer. These films may have been shot for nominal amounts, but the filmmaking process doesn't end there. Films must be edited, a long-term and time-consuming process. Once that occurs, if a production company shows interest in the film, they must put it through innumerable stages of better edits, credit sequences, prints, marketing, and the like, to prepare it for the possibility of commercial distribution. Without distribution, the film will never be seen. Who controls virtually all film distribution in this country? Large Hollywood monopolies consisting of movie studios, cable television giants, and multiplex theatres. These monopolies depend upon polished and formulaic film products that will make them as much money as possible. Remakes are popular, as they are known entities that have already earned large profits in previous iterations. Films holding new ideas and styles outside of familiar genres are not going to be distributed, because their profit margins are unascertained.

Why perpetuate the myth that independent filmmaking exists? Because exclusive institutions such as NYU, staffed and attended by Hollywood progeny, need breeding grounds where the misinformation that filmmaking is a democratic pursuit is maintained. And more importantly, because Hollywood is an industry that relies on myth making and mystique, and on the collective fantasy that anyone can do anything in America. Hollywood executives love the delusion that they will be the ones to discover the next, hugely profitable talent. That almost all of this talent has no possibility of reaching them is of negligible concern to the myth itself.

I have since learned that all the big names in "independent filmmaking," including some of the aforementioned, have rejected the notion as well. They have either been absorbed by the Hollywood system, or burned by it to the point that they work only on its periphery. Some operate in other countries, or, if they have been commercially successful at some point, by financing their own production houses. They do not believe in the existence of the independent filmmaker, and neither should we.

Because the commercial formula that we see in every Hollywood film was cemented early on, the artistic and experimental possibilities of the medium were eschewed to the netherworld, where they remain. Motion picture is too expensive a medium to play around with, and due to this country's distribution system, we will never see the few experiments.

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