In the film industry’s annual battle between David and Goliath, the burly giant may have finally cried uncle.
When Oscar nominations were announced last month, four of the five slots for Best Picture were occupied by independent films: “Chicago” and “Gangs of New York” from Miramax Films, “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” from New Line Cinema and “The Pianist” from Focus Features. (Even Paramount’s “The Hours,” the sole Hollywood entry, was co-distributed by an independent.)
This near-sweep has some wondering if the Hollywood studios, who once had a monopoly on the Academy Awards, have given up on Oscar.
“The Hollywood studios have less to gain from the Academy Awards than they used to,” said Jonathan Kuntz, professor of film studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. “If ‘Spider-Man’ won an Academy Award, what difference would it make? With a low-budget movie like ‘The Pianist,’ it definitely makes a difference. It helps broaden the film’s appeal.”
Benefiting from traditionally low budgets — and, consequently, the ability to experiment with more provocative subject matter — independent production companies have been a high-profile component of the industry for more than a decade.
But even in an indie-friendly era such as this, the current Oscar season has stood out as a particularly woeful one for the major studios. In 2002, so few Hollywood productions were embraced by critics — the ones that were, like “The Road to Perdition” and “Minority Report,” were long forgotten by the time awards season rolled around — that an indie rout was all but a forgone conclusion.
Living up to history
Despite periods during which Hollywood has drawn criticism for commercialism and vulgarity, the studio system was once thought to work from the premise that high-quality dramatic pictures — if well directed and cast — could sell. Consequently, the studios were handsomely rewarded come Oscar time.
Filmmaker Gus Van Sant, who counts “the American classics” as having the greatest influence on his work, explained the Old Hollywood philosophy: “A lot of times they used to combine aspects of serious filmmaking and escapist filmmaking,” he said. “So that a movie like ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ was an action movie and a dramatic movie at the same time.”
Until recently, filmmakers under contract at the major studios seemed willing to take that approach, blending solid characterizations and serious themes with a presentation that was palatable to mass audiences. From 1970 to 1980, seven of the 10 Best Picture winners were among the five highest-grossing pictures of their respective years.
In the past decade, however, only two films — “Forrest Gump” (1994) and “Titanic” (1997) — have managed to accomplish the same feat.
One factor in Hollywood’s shift away from innovative moviemaking may be the corporate mergers which have transformed nearly all of the major studios. As the tumultuous events surrounding the Time-Warner-AOL case demonstrate, the optimism that marks the birth of these endeavors can easily turn sour, forcing the movie studios under their influence to make ever-more-conservative filmmaking decisions.
The advent of the mega-budget movie has also been blamed for the growing schism.
“The studios used to make fifty pictures a year, so a number of them could be the sort of prestige pieces that appeal to Oscar voters,” said Ken Wlaschin, a historian at the American Film Institute. “Now they only make 10 or so a year, and all of them cost a tremendous amount of money. They can’t afford to take a risk on prestige — all of the pictures have to be pure entertainments.”
Independents’ day
Hollywood may be suffering an artistic crisis, but why should independent production companies reap the benefit? In part, it’s because they’re fashionable.
With the advent of the foreign film craze of the 1960s, movies made outside the studio system attained a new luster. The “B movie” was dead, the “art film” was born and by the 1990s, the popular press was trumpeting independent movies as a smarter, leaner, more audacious alternative to an increasingly formulaic Hollywood product.
But with budgets ballooning and more independent companies being bought by major studios — Disney has owned Miramax for almost a decade — many analysts have begun to question whether the films coming out of these companies are truly “independent.”
“The independents aren’t that different from the majors anymore,” Kuntz said. ” ‘Gangs of New York’ cost Miramax $100 million to make. Are you telling me that there’s no pressure coming from the studio on a film like that?”
Matthew Hiltzik, senior vice president for corporate communications at Miramax, said his company’s willingness to finance the violent, downbeat “Gangs of New York” is precisely what makes it different from the majors.
“A lot of studios had a chance to make ‘Gangs of New York’ and passed because Martin Scorsese’s films, while considered classics, haven’t always made money at the box office,” he said. “But we financed the picture because he is a unique artist who had a passion to do this film.”
Both sides may have a point. In some ways, money and success have doomed independent companies to more conventional and restrictive modes of operation. At the same time, their stubborn insistence on good storytelling doesn’t seem to have abated in the face of increasing corporate pressure.
This compromise, ironically, may have brought independent cinema closer in spirit to the Hollywood classics of old — big and glossy, but also thoughtful and character-driven — than anything coming out of the studios today.
From the point of view of the Academy, which is famous for both its sentimentality and the advanced age of its membership, that looks like a fairly good place to be. Whether or not the major studios are paying attention may not be obvious for some time.
