Professional Underdogs

By Rob Kendt

Among the most satisfying variations on the classic underdog narrative-the come-from-behind, against-the-odds Rocky archetype we seem almost hardwired to respond to-is the story of the artist before his time. From the riot that greeted Stravinsky's Rite of Spring to the initial dismissive pans for Bonnie and Clyde, the stories of path-breaking works of art that enraged or confused their initial audiences stir our imagination with a heady cocktail of scandal and conflict, not to mention a soothing twist of superior aesthetic hindsight.

In Hollywood's foreshortened, weekend-to-weekend version of reality, "it was before its time" means a film that tested poorly nevertheless hit a box-office jackpot, garnered raves and/or awards or - at the very least - scored a last-minute surge in DVD sales.

There are a lot of these delicious success stories in Rebels on the Backlot (Harper Collins, 2005, 386 pages, $25.95), journalist Sharon Waxman's portrait of a micro-generation of filmmakers who emerged amid the heavily corporatized, sequel-driven Hollywood machine of the 1990s to make more or less original films - either within the very belly of the studio beast, or in one of the strategic mini-major studio partnerships that formed after Miramax proved there was gold in the indie hills.

In tracing the careers and the films of six of these new self-styled auteurs - Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh and the inevitable Quentin Tarantino - Waxman posits that something profoundly new was afoot in Movieland, that the pre-millennial films of these and other like-minded artists presaged our darker post-9/11 world, and that many among Hollywood's Old Guard strenuously resisted this neo-New Wave.

We read of Anderson's brittle stubbornness about the epic length of his films Boogie Nights and Magnolia; of Russell's infamous fights with George Clooney and other union pros on the set of Three Kings; of Fincher's arduous, uncompromising journey in making the nihilistic Fight Club amid a climate of outright hostility toward his film at Fox. Waxman is admirably evenhanded in depicting these blow-ups and back-stabbings, but her bias is clear: These "rebels" stood for personal filmmaking, for an "independent" attitude (if not financial status), against the philistine bean counters and jealous competitors.

What emerges in her extensively researched, many-stranded narrative is that in the behind-the-scenes dramas that led to the decade's breakthrough films, the art of the deal was at least as important as the art of the cinema. Soderbergh's drug tale Traffic was almost scuttled when Harrison Ford signed on, then backed off; Being John Malkovich only saw the light of day because corporate turnovers at PolyGram Filmed Entertainment left no one minding the store. And the story behind Fight Club - the book's darkest thread, since this ultra-violent slugfest not only enraged a post-Columbine public but, even worse, failed to make its money back - is a high-stakes tussle worthy of Jacobean drama.

While there's a certain logic to Waxman's choices, since this sextet of filmmakers semi-coalesced into a sort of mutual admiration society, there are noticeable lacunae in her survey of '90s independents-turned-major. Maybe she didn't find slacker heroes like Kevin Smith or Richard Linklater as inspiring. And she mentions Sofia Coppola and Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don't Cry) mainly in terms of their exclusion from this self-styled boy's club.

If we had any lingering illusions that the independent film was the bastion of art for art's sake, Chris Gore's The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide (Lone Eagle, 2004, 477 pages, $21.95), now in its third edition, quickly dispels this notion. In one of the book's nuts-and-bolts Q&As, Sundance Film Festival director Geoff Gilmore compares the newest crop of indie filmmakers to "the '90s professional athlete - very interested in what's in it for them, in making money... They care desperately about making a film that can get them into the industry so they can recoup some of [their] investment."

Gore, the savvy editor of Film Threat magazine, may be troubled by this trend, but he also admits that he finds the topsy-turvy film festival world "exciting as hell." His book is a practical guide, not a diatribe, though in a series of how-to tips he hammers the point that "paper is cheaper than film" - in other words, make sure your script is the best it can be before you roll a frame - and that no festival-deadline rush is worth making a less-than-stellar film.