When Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape took the Palme d’Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, it signaled that the gates had officially been kicked in. Here was a movie made for just over $1 million that seemed more fitting for Sundance (where it also won). But it was just the sort of reckoning that other indie minds needed. Enter Richard Linklater and Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez and on and on, who helped change the face of cinema with independent film – for a little while, anyway.
Richard Linklater – whose debut, Slacker, was made for just $23,000 – is currently at the Cannes Film Festival himself. And it’s there that he wondered just where the independent film has gone and what it means for another moment for the scene. “It still happens, but the mainstream doesn’t fully embrace or acknowledge it, and I think that’s why it’s gone now. But there’s always newness. It was probably the last time it got recognized. You could be on the cover of Time. Those institutions, those gatekeepers were ‘alternative curious’ in the ’90s.”
Linklater would elaborate by basically stating the obvious: independent films will never have the box office power of flicks with dudes in capes. “Our currency is financial success. If it hasn’t sold a million albums or grossed $100 million, they just go, ‘Is it important? Should we pay attention?’ Unless it’s got money all over it, nobody gives a sh*t…It’s kind of cool to have been aware of something while it was going on and to be a part of something at a certain time or place, but these things don’t last.”
Fittingly, Richard Linklater’s new film, Nouvelle Vague, tracks the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, which itself shattered what the world knew about cinema back in 1960. Come to think of it, we could see a film about the making of Slacker getting produced at some point…Nouvelle Vague was recently acquired by Netflix following its World Premiere at Cannes.
In addition to Nouvelle Vague, Linklater also has Blue Moon – a biopic on songwriter Lorenz Hart (played by Ethan Hawke) – out this year.
What do you think of Richard Linklater’s comments about the state of independent film?
