I think when you make something that is non-mainstream and people don't have automatic way of consuming, like you don't have a big star, or a hit song or marketing money then you need to find some way to make audience aware of your film.
Being an indie queen, people think I have all these choices. Like I've just been sitting around waiting for the best indie film that I deem acceptable.
There's something very cool about that indie spirit that I try to hang on to even now with the bigger films that I'm working on.
If I've got a script, you think I'll go to Hollywood to get money? I was bored with the people around me, so I just created my own movie, my own character. I'm the story of my own movie, and you know what? My movie is going to be better.
I definitely think independent film is very exciting, and you get to sometimes take bigger risks. So that's always a challenge and something that I look forward to.
Right now my career is totally schizophrenic, because when an American production like Hitchcock Presents asks to see my work I would never dream of showing them my independent films.
The film division at Amazon is made up of true cineastes who love movies and really want to try and provide opportunity for independent film visions to find their footing in a vastly shifting market. They love cinema.
There's a big difference between the independent film world and the Hollywood film world, and I don't know that I understood that until I got into certain rooms, and people's faces go blank when you talk about Sundance.
When I'm making a big movie, I miss and appreciate all the subtleties that come with making a smaller film that is more intimate, more personal.
If you want to be in Hollywood, and if you want to make big international movies, you have to be able to make movies that don't have anything to do with social status or politics. To limit yourself to just do these little small movies and call it black cinema itself is a mistake to me.
Newlyweds shooting budget: 5k for actors, 2k insurance, 2k food and drink. 9k in the can. We only shot 12 days. That's how to make an independent film.
In the '80s, I can't say that Amy and I were aware of an independent film community. We could only get a certain amount of money for our pictures, which made them low budget movies, but they were distributed through studios.
Yeah, it was always a low-budget passion project. It's my directing debut. I've always wanted to make an improv movie because I have so much experience in it, but it's not a big studio movie. It was an experiment that turned out better than I thought.
I love the energy of an independent film set. No one is there for the money. Everyone is there 'cause they really want to be there. It makes all the difference in the world. It's without ego and agenda, other than just wanting to fulfill a creative dream.
The only reason I ever do an independent film is that I believe in it, and I think it has something special to offer. I'm certainly not doing it to be a millionaire.
I have a film I want to direct. Gena Rowlands was going to do it with me a long time ago. It's about an older woman who's running a ranch in the west the old fashioned way.
Indie movies got co-opted by the studio system. The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful.
We made this movie for $17, and nobody got anything. So it never dawned on me that we would get real people.
There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
I'm a person who likes these sort of movies... sad but moving 'art movies' that normally are at a festival and then they go to a small art house theater and disappear.
I don't think American independent films have ever really been particularly experimental, except for the original guys from the '60s who were huge influences, like Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, and Stan van der Beek. They were the true independents.
For 'Filth,' we had about 12 producers on the thing. The opening credits go on for months. Most of them are actually financers rather than producers. And the only way that we could raise the budget without interference from a studio was to have a lot of different financers on board.
'Tangerine' was less than half the budget of 'Starlet,' and 'Starlet' was already a microbudget film. A director always wants more time, and we had a limited amount of resources.
I've spent a great deal of my life doing independent film, and that is partly because the subject matter interests me and partly because that is the basis of the film industry. That's where the film-makers come from, it's where they start and sometimes its where they should have stayed.
You are at the mercies of the dailies. With an indie you don't have that.
