Down and Dirty Pictures: Robert Redford, Miramas and the Improbable Rise of Independent Film [Hardcover]

Peter Biskind has in recent times become one of my favorite writers on the movies, alongside Roger Ebert, Peter Travers, and David Ansen. His latest, Down and Dirty Pictures, is good but it has a couple of things working against it from the outset. First, it will always be in the shadow of Easy Riders Raging Bulls, Biskind's seminal book on 70's Hollywood which was an excellent work from start to finish. Second, because most of what Biskind chronicles is fairly recent memory, it seems a bit like overload. Diehard film fans will simply be rehashing old news (for them), whereas the stories in Easy Riders were far enough in the past to be almost new again.

The book clearly has elements that are anti-Miramax and, to a lesser extent, anti-Sundance but it shouldn't change your opinion if you are, say, a big Robert Redford fan. That isn't to say that Redford and the Weinsteins don't deserve some criticism, but the intelligent reader should be able to read between the lines and understand that Biskind's perspective is not the last word on the subject. The movies are the thing, after all, and both Sundance and Miramax have produced great ones. What bothers me most is Biskind's grudging praise and all-too-easy condemnations. A few years ago he wrote a negative piece on Sundance for Premiere Magazine - now it seems he's trying to nail the coffin.

I enjoyed this book a lot and I do recommend it, although it is a bit dense and can take some time to get through.

Peter Biskind's last book, "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls," was a tremendously fun read; "Down and Dirty Pictures" is a sequel of sorts. Whereas "Easy Riders" traced the rise and fall of 1970s film auteurs (Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman), "Down and Dirty" examines the next wave of potentially great filmmakers - the independents of the 1990s. After a fallow period in films during the 1980s where bloated epics ruled the Oscars and vapid blockbusters predominated, the indies of the 1990s were welcome relief, and the story is quite interesting.

Biskind commences his story in 1989 with "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" winning awards at Sundance and Cannes film festivals. Although a few indie movies scored some success earlier in the 1980s, "Sex, Lies" marked a turning point whereby general audiences started to take these films more seriously. Of perhaps greater interest, Biskind argues that these indie directors are the direct descendants of the 1970s auteurs in that they also wrote and directed their films from their own personal vision, albeit on a more modest scale. His thesis is seemingly valid and helps place the rise of indie film into historical context. The book traces the ups and downs of a number of these directors, including Steven Soderbergh ("Sex, Lies"), Todd Haynes ("Safe"), Todd Solondz ("Happiness"), and of course wunderkind Quentin Tarantino. Their accounts are quirky and often compelling.

However, the book focuses primarily on two figures - Mirimax and Sundance. Harvey and Bob Weinstein are the ostensible stars here - as they found Mirimax pictures, develop the career of Steven Soderbergh, and then make Tarantino the poster boy for indie film. Stories abound throughout the book about their egomaniacal and allegedly assaultive behavior - from editing movies without the consent of directors (earning Harvey the nickname "Harvey Scissorhands") to intimidating distributors. These segments are often entertaining in a voyeuristic manner, but the repetitiveness wears down the reader; reading a fraction of these episodes conveys adequately the message that the Weinsteins are bullies. The second star of the book is Robert Redford and his Sundance Institute. Redford is depicted as a distant despot - demanding full control of Sundance and its filmmaking processes but leaving for long periods of time to tinker endlessly on his own films. Again, the segments about Redford become somewhat repetitive and pointless.

All trends eventually end, and Biskind argues that the magnificent rise and fall of indie films can be attributed largely to Mirimax and Sundance. In particular, Biskind points the finger at attempts by Mirimax to become a major studio, which left little room at the table for indie films. Overall, Biskind makes some credible arguments, and his writing is always engaging. Unfortunately, the Weinsteins and Redford become caricatures and the stories become a bit tiresome. Film buffs will undoubtedly enjoy "Down & Dirty"; however, it could have used some editing - perhaps the Weinsteins could employee their infamous services here?

This book was written by Peter Biskind who was the executive editor of Premiere Magazine and is also the author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. It is a very readable history of the independent film business from its beginnings as sub-titled foreign movies in art houses to the development of American films made outside of the studio system. Central to this story is the rise of Miramax and the Sundance Institute, Festival and Channel. Sundance was formed to help new talent develop their projects and give advice on script development, shooting and editing problems. Miramax began as a marketing company.

They and others helped some filmmakers complete and market a feature length movie. Also at this time other people from film schools developed feature length pictures using their own resources. Usually these pictures were made with the film makers own funds or funds borrowed from their friends or parents

Miramax a distributing company that bought films and released them in the United States began buying these pictures usually at the cost of production with a promise of back end participation if the film made money. Harvey and Bob Weinstein ran the company. Harvey would take a budding auteur's artistic vision and recut it to make it more commercial. This usually was done after first screening it before a preview audience and a sometimes bitter consultation with the artist. The result was that suddenly pictures which had no chance of recovering their production expenses began to turn a profit after Miramax bought the picture and bore the expense of post production, publicity and advertising. Miramax then took on the awards ceremonies spending the money and time to get nominations and awards for their most worthy actors, directors and pictures. This became possible when every Academy member was sent a videotape (later the DVDs we've heard so much about) of the films in contention. This meant that independent pictures that only got a limited play or no play in some cities could be seen and voted on by all the academy members. A second aspect to this was that the press also received a videotape or DVD and they could be lobbied to publicize the independent pictures nominated. Also of course the Golden Globes Awards voted on by the Foreign Press Association became a tracking award for the Academy Awards because of the distribution of tapes and later DVDS. One thing that wasn't clear in the book was how a film gets nominated in the first place. Also hinted at is the fact that many Academy members are older than the typical moviegoer, but the book does not tell us what this means as far it effects the films and talent voted on.

The Sundance Film Festival also became an important showcase for new filmmakers to market their films. Soon the studios took notice that a small film could be a significant profit center and started or bought their own independent film subsidiaries. Sony Classics, Focus Films (Universal), Fox Searchlight, October Films and others all became studio subsidiaries. Of course the biggest fish of the group, Miramax, was bought by Disney and given an acquisitions budget of Eight Hundred Million Dollars !!! This turned the business on its head. In the beginning most independent films were made for less than a million dollars. The indie movement came of age and pictures that would have had only limited release in art houses located in the big cities started to have wider releases into the malls across the country. Acting stars like Gwenth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Billy Bob Thornton were created almost overnight and so were star directors like Quentin Tarrentino and Steven Soderberg. Under the studio system it would have taken these people twenty years, if ever, to reach the status they did in a few years under the independent film system powered by Miramax and to some extent Sundance.

However the system changed when Miramax began to produce films on its own instead of buying the offerings of new talent and marketing them. The expenditures for production were ten or twenty times the cost of a true independent film and acting stars and star directors were needed to guarantee box office return. Miramax boxed itself into the same financial straitjacket the studios are in. It became more and more of a producer than a marketing organization which could take a new filmmakers first film and market it profitably thus giving the nascent filmmaker a chance at a second film and a career. Also established talents were less likely to work for scale as bigger profits were realized. However the possibility of doing more serious work and achieving artistic recognition through the awards has kept established actors and directors interested in doing independent films which have more creative freedom and are thus more likely to generate awards than the studio genre fare.

Briskind's thesis is that the studio subsidiaries production costs and marketing budgets have become so swollen that what was once an industry giving new talent a chance has become a miniature studio system with its own stars and directors. It is no longer concerned with the small budget personal films of first time directors but driven to make commercial films which need greater and greater returns to sustain the overhead. The result; the first time filmmaker is being squeezed off even the art house screens or his or her work is not given long enough runs to gather an audience.

Even Sundance became commercially minded shifting its orientation from helping new talent to sometimes looking for properties to produce. It also became a market place for the commercial interests to scout new talent for their systems.

Briskind makes the point that independent films where once artistic vision was the primary focus have now been so commercialized that money considerations dominate what gets made to the detriment of the artists vision. The studio subsidiaries now scoop up anyone that makes a successful first film but there are no second chances, in terms of financing, for those who show promise but tried and failed. Briskind has documented his thesis with fact after fact and quote after quote. However this book is not just a fact tomb. He has profiled and analyzed many of the players large and small praising and skewering the most dedicated (those that refuse to commercialize their artistic instincts) to the mightiest like Harvey Weinstein and Robert Redford. However all this said, Briskend dosen't say with enought force that the independent film subsidiaries have greater subject matter diversity and creative freedom than the major studios who are constrained by the demands of a mass audience and that things are better now for new talent because of Miramax and Sundance.

This was a fascinating and insightful book on the subject matter, well written and well documented. Any one interested in films should read this book.Edsopinion.com