January 30, 2004

I avoided looking at Peter Biskind’s "Down & Dirty Pictures: Sundance, Miramax and The Rise of Independent Film" because I still have a place on my “that was interesting, but what a piece of crap” list for his first big book, "Easy Rider, Raging Bulls." Biskind is a leading proponent of the most devastating sickness in entertainment journalism today: he decides on his premise, then builds around that, without regard to where his reporting takes him. He then mixes details, the ideas of his subjects and his personal thoughts and pretends that the resulting not-smoothie is representative of journalistic truth.

There are so many factual errors in Biskind’s book that one hardly knows where to begin. Mostly, they are the kind of errors of detail that one would make while arguing over a burger and beers after a movie. Where someone lives, where people were when a story took place, what movie was in production while another movie was being released or in pre-production, etc., etc., etc. The truth is, I’m not really sure whether I am worried about the failure to copy edit dumb misstatements like Copland being the first pairing of DeNiro and Keitel since Mean Streets, when Mr. 70s Expert probably saw Taxi Driver. It is embarrassing to be talking about the failure of Bagger Vance in the past tense with Ben Affleck a year before the movie started production. But these kinds of inexcusably ignorant misses really just serve to make one question the truth of those things that are not as easily researched and debunked.

Don Murphy, who is considered a bit of a wild card himself, wrote an open letter to Biskind on his website. He makes some factual points and managed to lay out a few of the thoughts I have had before I got a chance to write this column. But I will go down those roads anyway.

For me, Biskind hangs himself from the very first words of the introduction to the book. Edward Norton, born in 1969, offers perspective on the film industry of the late 60s and early 70s from his pulpit of self-aggrandizing ignorance.

“In the late 60s and early 70s, the studios didn’t know how to market films for the youth culture, and they turned to new young filmmakers to figure it out for them. The exact same thing happened across the 90s, and when this generation came of age, it put out very original, distinctive, mature work. They revitalized American films after a decade of it being pretty fuckin’ flat. It was the first real American New Wave since the late 60s.”

Wow. Those guys, among which Norton clearly includes himself, are cool. Zemeckis, Scott (Ridley and/or Tony), Burton, Levinson, Cameron Crowe, Demme, Noyce, McTiernan, Neil Jordan, Lyne, Eastwood, Weir and others should probably hide their faces in shame for being part of such a weak class. And I guess that the growth of the teen sell in the 80s was an illusion, because what “the youth culture” really wanted was Fight Club (nope), gay-themed film (nope), and intimate dramas (sorry).

And how exactly does one define the revitalization of American film? Seems to me that The Godfather films and the Frankenheimer films and the Friedkins, etc. actually made real money for the studios that funded them. Scorsese and Woody Allen never did, but they were prestige relationships. Fifteen years after the launch of the “American New Wave,” of Miramax and Sundance, where is the money? Bryan Singer is doing X-Men movies. Van Sant returned to truly independent work after being one of only three members of the “90s Indie New Wave” to make a movie that grossed as much as $100 million domestic. The other two members of that elite frat are Quentin Tarantino, who has made two films since Pulp Fiction, and Myrick & Sanchez, who have not cashed checks since The Blair Witch Project.

Does it seem crass to mention the $100 million mark in the conversation of independent film? Well, if it does, you really don’t get “the rise of independent film” at all. And I would suggest that this is true of Biskind, as represented by his work, whether by happenstance or intentional self-delusion. The stories are there, but the framework is not held dear by dear Mr. Biskind. He brings the attitude of a cineaste, who wants to gab about the “good old days” unwilling to look at why things are really valued.

Biskind wants to frame the “rise of independent film” through Sundance, Weinstein and Tarantino. But he is writing with an insularity that is deeper than even the majority of industry types. Does Harvey Weinstein’s temper have a lot to do with the growth of independent films? Has Robert Redford’s life as an absentee father had any tangible effect on the history of independent film? Has Tarantino actually moved the history of independent film forward by making two films of no influence in the decade since Pulp Fiction?

The ultimate irony of the book is that Biskind is doing exactly what the studios do and what independent film is supposed to be above… he is obsessing on “movie stars” whose names and stories might sell books and trading those tales for any real depth. Why have the majors gotten into this business? Biskind does hit that answer, but only in a passing paragraph in the section about Disney buying Miramax. Why hasn’t Sony Classics followed in the footsteps after their Pulp Fiction, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? How did Artisan crash and burn in just four years since Blair Witch?

Peter Biskind is much more concerned about who is yelling. Good gossip. Bad history.

More on the book in a morning update, right here…