demagogue on 26/4/2006 at 17:44

---

There was a great article in the NYTimes on the Randy Quaid lawsuit that summed up the threat the indie movie industry is under to start conforming to Hollywood standards (or disease) ... of which lack of original IP is a later symptom. Anyway, to break it down (including a few other supporting facts not from the article)... The state of indie filming:

(1) ... is being democratized with the digital revolution. Film used to be expensive, but now anyone can pick up a digital or secondhand camera and do editing on a computer ... and you can have on-the-cheap movies made by anyone off the street and not immediately discount them (cf. Blair Witch)

(2) ... is being mainstreamed. A few megahits really opened up the field, starting with Terantino, Res. Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and then later with Blair Witch, now Brokeback Mt.

So ironically, the originality of some indies has helped paved the way for them being mainstreamed. This means there's more investor interest, more capital for making them, etc., which leads to:

(3) ... is being supported by big studios, foundations, etc.. The phenomenon of megahit indies is interesting in that it gets original ideas to a mass public. But the threat is now they are under market pressure, because the idea is too tempting for investors to pass: a movies under 1/2 to a few million that can still have a payoff in the $100 millions.

This is where the Randy Quaid lawsuit comes in. Brokeback Mt was made by an Indie Studio (Alberta Studio) which is a subsidiary of Universal, a major studio. The idea is, big stars agree to accept the bare minimum (union) salary because they are interested in the artistic side, not the commercial side, and there is a practice to cap the funding of indies to ease off market pressures, like it's in a bubble to promote artistic freedom.

But in Brokeback's case, Universal spent a lot of money on publicizing/ distributing it just like a mainstream movie, and sure enough it was a megahit ... so Quaid feels like he was misled into understanding that the movie would be *treated* like an indie feature and not a mainstream Hollywood movie when he accepted an inordinately low salary, and he has a point. If investors want indies to be treated like Hollywood movies because they want the big payoff, actors will want (and may have a right to demand) million dollar salaries to match ... and then market pressures weasle their way in just like Hollywood. That's what the Randy Quaid lawsuit means in the long term. It may be a vicious circle that's hard to get out of ... but there really should be a way to shield the indie industry from this threat, so most people in the indie industry are (ironically) on Universal's side, although the law isn't on their side. I hope they find a solution, though.

Aerothorn on 26/4/2006 at 23:47

---

Some good ides, but yeah, stuff like Pride and Prejudice aren't remakes - they're re-adaptations; that is to say, they don't necessarilly rely on the earlier film to make themselves - they can just go to the original source material and start from there - so it's just being made many times, but not being REMADE.

As noted above, King Kong is a good example - made (AFAIK) for the screen, then remade in 1976, then a sequel to the remake in 1986, then a new remake in 2005.

demagogue on 27/4/2006 at 00:20

---

I was suggesting that the problem may be more general than that, that the Randy Quaid suit is just one aspect of the problem, but I ran out of time and space to get to that.

The handwriting-on-the-wall is that distribution channels for indie movies are going to be increasingly channeled, e.g., through smaller studios that are subsidiaries of bigger studios or foundations ... and that the funding culture is going to change, too. It's not just actors' salaries at stake, it's the whole culture of where/how they get their money, how producers/directors pitch their ideas, etc. If funders/investors are going to be expecting the next big megahit with low investment, and they have the ability to put market pressure on a decreasing list of distribution channels that will be pressured to conform ... you can see where things can go.

It's a problem that needs a more general solution I think than the admonition: stick with little-known actors, writers, directors, etc. If we're talking about subsidiaries of major studios, the market pressure may be there whatever the line-up. Also, I get the impression that these sorts of things tend to be "hidden hand" sorts of dynamics ... that there's generally an upward pressure on actors', directors' salaries in the whole indie industry that's been increasing lately that's not reducible to any particular megahits, but just the economic environment that's pervasive. With every contract negotiation the pressure pushes it a little higher, just to feed into the next one, until it hits some equilibrium. It's that equilibrium that's worrisome, because unshielded market pressures will tend to push it up, and the cost will come in originality, etc.

I'm just thinking that there isn't a silver bullet so easy... That there needs to be a way to shield the whole industry from market pressures in a more sustainable way, to keep it in the fortunate bubble it's managed to sneak into for the last 15-20 years so far, if we want it to keep making the kind of original, thoughtprovoking, challenging, "risky" movies that it's valued for.

So that's my real answer. But even aside from all of this, a lot of big-name actors *want* to be in indies ... that's why they accept the miniscule payment. They do it for the love not the $. They come to the indie studios/projects, not the other way around (from what I've read). And if they're really great actors in their own right, it would be ashame and a diminishing of our culture for the industry to feel forced to exile them from these more artistic works. Also, there is something to be said for attracting more people into a love of indie works ... and if a big name does it, all the better.




Ha ha, I can't disagree with you there. The whole suit is pretty surreal on so many levels, not least the sort of "evidence" Quaid has been submitting to support his superstardom status. I'm sure those clips of him as Cousin Eddie in the Vacation movies will go a long way with the jury.