Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film

As in his previous work, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (1999), author Peter Biskind is interested in capturing a pivotal moment in modern film history: the rise and – as he seems to suggest – fall of independent film. Both books are deliciously gossipy reads, but whereas Biskind’s canonization of the renegade directors of the 1970s in Easy Riders utilized their drug-fueled lifestyles to better evoke the heady environment from which their film masterpieces emerged, in Down and Dirty Pictures, the movies quickly recede into the background, giving way to a full-out attack on Miramax and Sundance.

The main problem may be that Biskind is chronicling very recent events (the book ends with a discussion of this past winter’s screener debate), and, lacking any sense of historical perspective, he gets bogged down in character assassination and blame games. In addition, Down and Dirty Pictures is filled with typos and small (but noticeable) factual errors, suggesting the haste in which it was pushed toward release (nicely coinciding with the Sundance Film Festival), and perhaps accounting for its lack of reflection on some of the larger issues facing the medium. To be fair, Biskind’s most frequent targets (Sundance’s Robert Redford and Miramax’s Weinstein brothers) hardly seem deserving of any employer-of-the-month awards, but after so many pages of Harvey Weinstein’s infamous tantrums, one longs for a more sustentative analysis of the films behind them.

Biskind does, however, provide a valuable service in calling greater public attention to the Weinsteins’ penchant for cutting and/or dumping films for petty (and occasionally, personal) reasons. Upon recently viewing Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa (2003), I noted that the film’s feel-good ending didn’t jibe with the rest of the picture’s aggressive misanthropy, and was not especially shocked to read that Bob Weinstein (whose Dimension Pictures produced the movie) had strong-armed Zwigoff into making it more upbeat.

When Biskind is not attacking Redford or the Weinsteins, he shifts his focus to one of the book’s more interesting storylines – the up-and-down fortunes of October Films. Founded in 1991 by Jeff Lipsky and Bingham Ray as a means to distribute Mike Leigh’s Life is Sweet (1991), the company soon acquired another partner, Amir Malin, and raised enough capital to become a vital force in the indie world. Their first proper acquisition was Gregg Araki’s The Living End (1992), and, as Miramax increasingly opted for sentimental fare, October continued to acquire more challenging fare, such as Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996) and Leigh’s Secrets & Lies (1996).

However, internal strife soon began to rear its head, and the company eventually dumped both Lipsky and Malin before being purchased by Universal in 1996. However, October’s odyssey did not end there – soon after, Universal sold the company to Barry Diller, who transformed it into USA Films, which in turn was gobbled up by Vivendi and returned to Universal, where it was merged with Good Machine to become Focus Features (p. 449). These continual re-shufflings are indicative of rapidly changing landscape of independent film during the 1990s, as the studios began to take a greater interest in acquiring "indie" divisions, which ultimately became outlets for them to release "quality" pictures for Academy Award consideration. More compelling, however, is the story of Ray’s determination to hang onto his ideas about artistic integrity in films while surrounded by waves of people solely interested in the bottom line.

Although the constant drama surrounding the Weinsteins makes for an entertaining read, one ultimately wishes Biskind had paid more heed the stories of people like Ray and Steven Soderbergh, whose ability to alternate between mainstream studio fare such as Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and smaller, more experimental films such as Schizopolis (1996) – not to mention successfully combining these two modes in Traffic (2000) – makes him emblematic of the decade’s vast changes.

While it may be tempting (and in some cases, quite easy) to blame the failings of the independent film movement on the twin beasts of Sundance and Miramax, this is neither an entirely true nor especially productive route to take. For all intents and purposes, Miramax has long ceased to be an independent film company, so Biskind’s continual insistence on singling them out seems irrelevant once he reaches the mid-1990s. Also, while Redford may very well be an incompetent leader, to place the majority of the blame for the commercialization of Sundance on him seems wrong-headed.

Ultimately, the book works far better as an exposé of inner workings of Miramax than it does as a revealing look at the independent film movement of the 1990s. Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film By Peter Biskind