The State Of Independence '69-'99 - filmmaking, filmmakers, actors, actresses

Interview, Oct, 1999 by Elizabeth Weitzman

Presenting an opinionated list of thirty remarkable American movie talents who defined - and sometimes redefined - independent film in the last thirty years

If independent cinema is about stretching boundaries, this list most definitely takes inspiration from its subjects. As names were debated, it quickly became apparent that we couldn't have Dennis Hopper without Peter Fonda, while on another day, Roger Corman, Robert Redford, or producer John Pierson might nave made the cut. And there are a few innovators - like Kevin Smith, Gus Van Sant, and Ed Sanchez and Dan Myrick - who deserve their place below but can be found in other capacities in this issue instead.

When John Cassavetes unveiled his early experiments, the world was appalled; today, everyone wants to claim discovery of the next indie darling - at least a few of whom will no doubt make our list in 2029.

STAN BRAKHAGE Now perhaps the leading champion of the American avant-garde, Brakhage has spent the last several decades experimenting with the language of film. In hundreds of works, including the heroic cinematic poem Dog Star Man, he's explored the limits of every artistic medium: His deeply lyrical works find their inspiration across the boundaries of musical composition, painterly expressionism, and mythic memory.

STEVE BUSCEMI A short-wired court jester with Tex Avery eyes, Buscemi burst into public consciousness via 1986's Parting Glances; by the mid '90s, he was so ubiquitous his very presence had become something of a cliche. And so, despite his dead-on portrayal of a harried, pretentious director in Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion, he stepped behind the camera. How wonderful that his own debut, the tenderly provincial Trees Lounge, turned out to be a perfectly composed and thoughtful addition to independent film.

JOHN CASSAVETES AND GENA ROWLANDS The enormously influential conduit between avant-garde and independent cinema, Cassavetes despaired of the fantasies he saw depicted in modern movies, and so determined to capture, in his words, "the way people really are." An actor himself, he drew raw, improvisatory performances from a stock cast led throughout his career by Rowlands, his wife. In films like Faces and A Woman Under the Influence, they conceived small humanist dramas on such an intense, personal level that the lingering effects remain universal.

JOEL AND ETHAN COEN Sometimes accused of being too chilly and remote in their technical and historical film-school obsessions (the wintry Fargo being their deadpan response), the genre-fixated Coens do share a serious preoccupation with movies of the past. But every time they start down well-trodden paths (from film noir to screwball comedy), they veer wildly off into uncharted territory. And every time, we follow, because there's a very good chance that America's most acutely farcical commentators will once again lead us into wondrous new terrain.

JULIE DASH Plenty of contemporary directors assert, as Dash has, that they make the films they've always wanted to see. But very few have to beat their own path as she did. Her Daughters of the Dust, an intricate ode to African-American memory that rejects Western film formulas for African inspiration, took over a decade to finance. Why?. Perhaps because not a single black woman director had achieved a commercial theatrical release in this country before Dash's film opened to overwhelming critical, scholarly, and audience praise just seven years ago.

ABEL FERRARA The demon bard of hard-core urban reality, Ferrara nevertheless stands apart from the oversubscribed school of in-your-face filmmaking. Every shock seems to have existed long before his camera arrived, less a planned moment than a coarse testament to his obsessional grasp of New York. His other great devotion is to his actors (above all, Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant), upon whom he showers fealty unseen since the days of Cassavetes - resulting in performances so candid we often have to look away.

ALISON FOLLAND There's nothing remotely glamorous about adolescence, but you certainly wouldn't know it from the industry's current young screen queens. Teenagers search for their identity by worshipping others, so it's difficult to probe ugly truths if you're the one they adore. But with committed, almost unbearably honest performances in films like To Die For and All Over Me, twenty-one-year-old Folland has contributed the rarest of gifts: portraits of girls not as they want to be, but as they are.

PETER FONDA AND DENNIS HOPPER Thirty years ago, they represented the kids of their explosive era in Easy Rider, the raucous rock 'n' roll bedrock of independent film. Now they're all grown-up, but still the delegates of a generation: In recent years, Hopper has rebelled manfully against the compromises of maturity, choosing daring work with David Lynch and verbal fisticuffs with Rip Torn, while Fonda denotes graceful acceptance of the inevitable, portraying the wisdom of middle age as a gentle beekeeper in Ulee's Gold.