INTRODUCTION

As the phenomenon of the Hollywood Renaissance was underway in the late 1960s, a very different development had been taking place in the American film industry at approximately the same time. After almost fifty years of self-ownership, almost all major ex-studios were in the process of becoming subsidiaries of conglomerates, ‘diversified companies with major interests in several unrelated fields’ or in the process of becoming conglomerates themselves, through a programme of aggressive diversification. Starting with Paramount, which was bought out in 1966 by Gulf & Western (a company that held interests in such fields as automobile bumpers, sugar, real estate, fertiliser, cigars and zinc), other majors were taken over by similarly diversified conglomerates: United Artists by Transamerica (1967), Warner by Kinney National Service (1969), MGM by Las Vegas hotelier and finance mogul Kirk Kerkorian (1969), while Columbia and Fox adopted the conglomerate model by diversifying further themselves, before being taken over in the 1980s by The Coca-Cola Company and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. respectively.

The repercussions of this development were far-reaching not only for the ex-studios but also for producers and distributors across the independent spectrum. Top-rank independent production, already the majors' preferred method of production since the 1950s, kept its hegemonic position in the conglomerate-run Hollywood cinema, especially as the ‘countercultural’ low-budget films of the New Hollywood that had met with great success in the early 1970s started faltering at the box office.

INTRODUCTION

As the conglomeration of the film industry was in full swing in the late 1970s, the development of new technologies such as cable and pay-cable television, home video and (during the 1980s) satellite television created new lucrative markets for the exploitation of the feature film. Gradually, the theatrical run became only one – though still extremely important – avenue for the commercial exploitation of a film, before it found its way to the other ancillary markets. With the commodity already produced, the only expenses involved would include new marketing campaigns tailor-made to the particular demographics the new exhibition technologies served, and the cost of the transfer to the new format (such as the production of video cassettes). Realising that the ancillary markets could increase the potentially large profits from film production exponentially, the conglomerate owners of the majors moved swiftly to control all those markets.

This move became particularly evident in the early and mid-1980s when the conglomerates started downsizing their interests in other areas, concentrating instead on expanding their holdings in the entertainment and leisure areas. The result of this process was that the conglomerates evolved gradually into fully diversified entertainment corporations. This evolution was characterised by a wave of mergers and takeovers in which the parent companies of the majors acquired or established a large number of entertainment divisions to accompany their film-producing and -distributing subsidiaries.

Throughout the decades of the twentieth century the discourse of American independent cinema has expanded and contracted to include a wide variety of production and distribution practices, a diverse array of aesthetic strategies and an immense range of films: from the top-rank films distributed mainly by United Artists in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s to the Poverty Row quickies; from the high-budget independent films of the hyphenate filmmakers of the 1950s and 1960s to the cheaply produced youth-oriented genre films of the same period; from the New Hollywood films of the 1970s to the exploitation fare of companies like AIP and Crown; from the new political filmmaking of the late 1970s to the mini-majors and major independents of the 1980s to the outburst of low-budget filmmaking in the 1990s and 2000s, which arguably reached its peak with the release of Tarnation (Caouette, 2004), the Sundance sensation of 2004, which allegedly cost just $218 to produce.

Despite the existence of commercial independent filmmaking throughout the history of American cinema, it was only in recent years (the post-1980 period) when this type of cinema was widely perceived as an alternative proposal. This was mainly because from the late 1970s onwards mainstream American cinema started placing particular emphasis on the production and distribution of franchise films with great potential for further reiteration in the ancillary markets and on star-driven genre films that were guaranteed to deliver particular audience demographics.

American independent cinema has always been a notoriously difficult concept to define. This is primarily because the label ‘independent’ has been widely used since the early years of American cinema by filmmakers, film critics, industry practitioners, trade publications, academics and cinema fans, to the extent that any attempt towards a definition is almost certainly destined to raise objections.

For the majority of people with a basic knowledge of American cinema, independent filmmaking consists of low-budget projects made by (mostly) young filmmakers with a strong personal vision away from the influence and pressures of the few major conglomerates that control tightly the American film industry. Far from the clutches of AOL Time Warner, Sony Columbia and Viacom Paramount, which are mainly in the business of producing expensive star vehicles and special-effects-driven films that bring larger profits from DVD sales and merchandising than from theatre admissions, independent filmmakers create films that stand against the crass commercialism of mainstream Hollywood while often pushing the envelope in terms of subject matter and its mode of representation. As film critic Emmanuel Levy put it, ‘ideally, an indie is a fresh, low-budget movie with a gritty style and offbeat subject matter that express the filmmaker's personal vision.’

This ‘ideal’ definition immediately brings to mind films such as Return of the Secaucus Seven (Sayles, 1980), Stranger than Paradise (Jarmusch, 1984), She's Gotta Have It (Spike Lee, 1986), Poison (Haynes, 1991), Straight Out of Brooklyn (Rich, 1992), Clerks (Kevin Smith, 1994), Welcome to the Dollhouse (Solondz, 1996), The Blair Witch Project(Sanchez and Myrick, 1999) and many other films that emerged post-1980 as low-budget ‘alternatives’ to the considerably more polished, expensive and conservative films produced and distributed by the major conglomerates.

INTRODUCTION

The above statement by the once president and chief executive officer of Poverty Row outfit Monogram Pictures represents an appropriate introduction to a different form of independent filmmaking during the studio years: low-end independent production, which, in Broidy's analogy, is represented by the phrase ‘stale bread’. The analogy seems apt. If one accepts that the films of top-rank independent producers and the studio prestige productions represent American cinema's ‘cake’, and the standard studio film production corresponds to its ‘bread’, then films from studios like Monogram, Republic, Grand National, PRC and a large number of other smaller companies certainly represent American cinema's ‘stale bread’. In other words, they represent film production of a particularly low quality and cheap look that could never be confused with the top-rank product examined in the previous chapter. For instance, according to film historian Wheeler Dixon, the key features of Monogram films were ‘shoddy sets, dim lighting restricted mostly to simple key spots, non existent camerawork and extremely poor sound recording’, elements far removed from prestige-level independent production or studio filmmaking. Even the most successful financially and ‘artistically’ Poverty Row studio in the 1930s and 1940s, Republic Pictures, was widely known by industry practitioners as ‘Repulsive Pictures’.

INTRODUCTION

The second period of the history of American independent cinema commences with the Paramount Decree of 1948, a consent decree the Big Five and Little Three studios signed when the US Supreme Court found them guilty of applying monopolistic practices that restrained trade and eliminated competition. The decision had a seismic impact on the structure of the American film industry as it forced the studios to divest themselves of their theatre chains and therefore lose control of exhibition, one of the three foundations upon which vertical integration depended. Although the studios found alternative ways to retain control of the film industry, the Paramount Decree became instrumental in gradually dismantling the studio system of production which had been at work since the late 1910s. Instead, the new system privileged a format of independent production which had its origins in the top-rank independent production model of the hyphenate filmmakers which had started gaining momentum during the 1940–8 period (see Chapter 1), though with some important differences. It could be argued that the Paramount Decree formalised the industry-wide shift to independent production that began in 1940 and therefore ushered in American cinema’s post-studio era.

INTRODUCTION

While the major studios were trying to cope with the effects of the Paramount Decree, but mostly with the impact of the economic recession, the Poverty Row studios had to deal only with the latter. The US Justice Department had concentrated its efforts strictly on the Big Five and the Little Three, leaving all other companies out of the lawsuit as their position in the industry was marginal and their collusion with the Big Five minimal. The recession, however, hit companies like Allied Artists (former Monogram Pictures), Republic Pictures and other smaller outfits in a more forceful manner than the studios. Not only did the Poverty Row studios not possess adequate resources to cope with dwindling audiences, declining profits and the rise of the big-budget film, they also had to deal with the end of the double bill as a dominant exhibition practice and the closure of hundreds of small, neighbourhood theatres that traditionally were the Poverty Row firms' best customers.

INTRODUCTION

Orion's fall and eventual bankruptcy demonstrated to the other independents that economic survival depended heavily on ‘cooperation’ and ‘symbiosis’ with the conglomerated majors, the only companies with the power to release a product in every possible exhibition outlet and therefore maximise its profitability. Furthermore, the conglomerates also had the financial muscle to absorb any losses at a time of box office dry spells like the one Orion experienced in the late 1980s/early 1990s. The symbiosis between majors and independents has primarily taken two forms. First, it has taken the form of corporate takeovers, whereby independent companies were bought out by the majors but were left to operate as semi-autonomous units (Miramax, New Line and a number of the so-called ‘neo-indies’ such as Morgan Creek, Castle Rock, and so on). Second, it has taken the form of distribution contracts, whereby independent production companies became satellite companies for major distributors (much like Orion with Warner [1978–82]). Whatever the form, commercial independent film production and distribution have become increasingly ‘dependent’ on the entertainment conglomerates, to the extent that the label ‘independent’ has become even more contentious than it was in the previous decades while the discourse on independent cinema has expanded to such an extent that the vast majority of films produced in the US can be considered independent.

INTRODUCTION

If the Paramount Decree and the post-World War II recession ushered American independent cinema towards its second major phase, the factors that led to its further evolution in the late 1960s were once again economic, though changes in American society and culture played also a significant part. The end of the 1960s was one of the most volatile periods in the history of the country, characterised by civil unrest in the streets of major American metropoles like New York and Chicago; assassinations of extremely influential political figures such as Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X; the escalation of the war in Vietnam (and the intensification of the country's commitment to it); the continuation of the cold war with the Soviet Union; and the increased visibility and activism of formerly marginalised social groups in terms of race and sexuality (such as blacks, gays and lesbians) or age (young adults and college students). All these factors contributed to a remarkable change in attitudes and mores in American culture which, reflected in the films of the period, make even the most liberal films of the late 1950s/early 1960s (like the social-problem films by Stanley Kramer) look like fake Hollywood constructions with naive ideological messages.

While the country was amidst social and cultural upheaval, the American film industry had to face its own set of severe problems as well as keep up with the transformations in the American social and cultural fabric. These problems included: the financial over-exposure of the majors (manifested mainly in the production of a large number of expensive family films that increasingly started to falter at the box office, and in the efforts of many majors towards diversification); the continual audience decline, which reached an ultimate low of 15.8 million people a week in early 1971); the decrease in the number of theatres; the entrance of the television networks to the theatrical market which increased competition and contributed to a glut of product; and an extremely outdated (despite substantial revisions) Production Code which the industry was still trying to enforce at a time of sweeping changes in sexual mores.