‘Fuck the audience!’
Independent filmmakers aren’t about pleasing mainstream
audiences with compromises and formulas. Guerrilla moviedom means
vision, dedication and passion. The announcement of this year’s
nominations for independent film awards reflects that this spirit
is alive and well.
By Michael Horowitz
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
It’s a wide open Oscar race, but it’s also less exciting than
years past.
Who can fill the slate of best female performances, who can
guess what the Academy will nominate as the year’s greatest films?
Who really cares without an epic like Schindler’s List?
The action this year is at an independent level.
It’s been a great year for guerrilla filmmaking, especially if
you extend the use of the word guerrilla like the Independent
Features Project West. At the Independent Spirit Award Nominations
on Tuesday, Pulp Fiction star Samuel Jackson hosted an evening of
informal celebration. He and a batch of fellow performers read off
the nominations from a great year of economy filmmaking.
The 10th Annual Independent Spirit Awards will be held on
Saturday, March 25 at a tent on the beach in Santa Monica. IFP West
has succeeded in nurturing an awards show that honors quality over
production values, and with nominations of this quality, this year
will be another success.
Yet the attention remains firmly on the filmmakers. Writers,
performers, directors of the scene "are younger, better, smarter,
tired of being duped, tired of being told they’re stupid," says
Amanda Plummer, Jackson’s co-star in Pulp Fiction, and this year
more than ever they were able to tell their story.
Consider the great writing of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious
Circle, Red Rock West, What Happened Was …, and the
afore-mentioned Pulp Fiction.
The cinematography of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman and Suture.
And the performances that drove Spanking the Monkey, The Last
Seduction, and Bullets Over Broadway.
What do all of these films have in common?
"They’re not afraid to take chances," answers Jackson, "and
that’s what has to happen." These are movies that battled each and
every step of the way. From scraping together funding, groveling
for quality acting, pitching their films at the festivals, and even
fighting the ratings board for an R, these films are works of
extreme dedication. You may not be a personal fan of the movie’s
message, but chances are somebody is. These are films that say
something.
Three interesting facts highlighted the evening’s
nominations.
The first was the Award’s significant shift to include some
studio fare. This common sense consideration stems from the events
of the recent years, where Miramax now belongs to Disney and New
Line belongs to Ted Turner. If these "independent" studios should
benefit from deep pockets why should filmmakers with larger studio
backing be disqualified? The judgment is now dependent on other
subjective factors, such as "economy of means."
Films like Pulp Fiction, with a massive budget of $10 million,
and Darnell Martin’s debut I Like It Like That were among the
borderline films aided by the selection process. A more rigid
ruling still remained in place excluding foreign films from the
bulk of the competition, hurting the British Four Weddings and A
Funeral and the Australian The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of
the Desert.
A highlight of the independent scene was a slate of actresses
selected for best female lead nominations. Linda Fiorentino, with
what some would consider the best female performance of the year in
The Last Seduction, has been shut out of Oscar consideration due to
her movie’s debut on HBO. But she faces stiff competition from
Jennifer Jason Leigh (Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle), Karen
Sillas (What Happened Was …), Lauren Velez (I Like It Like That),
and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman’s Chien-Lien Wu. Certainly a more
intriguing collection of performances than the Academy will have to
choose from.
Plummer feels the independent edge can be attributed to
storywriting fundamentals. "If you’re not going to write a story
it’s hard to fit a woman in it. They’re more complicated," she
jokes. "And if you don’t understand them  ignore ’em!"
Finally, Jackson’s nomination for best male lead seems
deliberately political because of Oscar buzz that he is a
supporting actor hopeful. Is John Travolta’s exclusion a move by
IFP West to focus on Jackson? Are they hoping to sway the Academy
toward a bigger nomination for the fine performer? Jackson, for
one, is not doing much second-guessing. "Everybody’s got a
different perception of what I did," he smiles, "and I’m just happy
they noticed."
It was hard not to notice the independent scene this year, where
compromise fell victim to heroic struggle. Filmmakers made what
they wanted to with what they had.
Try to imagine a film like The Last Seduction existing at a
studio level. Try pitching the storylines of Pulp Fiction to a
Hollywood exec. Movies such as these are magic because they defy
formulas and test screenings.
"What is personal is automatically universal," announces
Plummer. "Fuck the audience!"