• 1950s - Late 60s: Studio Decline
– 1963: Worst year for US film prod. w/ 121 films
– 1969: Hello, Dolly! flops, ends Gene Kelly’s career
• Late 60s - Late 70s: “New Hollywood” Era
– Hollywood goes bankrupt; Auteurs go mainstream
• Late 70s - Present: “Blockbuster” Era
– 1970s: Jaws, Star Wars bring back big movies
– 1980s: Home Video Helps Studios and Indies
• 1990s: Emergence of “Indiewood”
– The Tarantino Effect: New Money for Odd Movies
• 2000s: “You wanna just stay home?”
– Netflix, On Demand, New Markets?
American History Cliffs Notes
• 1959-1975: Vietnam War
• 1964: Civil Rights Act
• 1967-1968: Assassinations of
Malcolm X, MLK, Bobby
Kennedy
• 1969: Stonewall Rebellion
• 1974: Nixon Resigns
• 1981-1989: Reagan
• 1981: First U.S. AIDS Case
• 1980s: “War on Drugs”
• 1989/1991: Fall of Berlin
Wall/Fall of USSR
• 1993-2001: Clinton
New Hollywood Era
•
•
•
•
Who Makes Hollywood “New”?
– Independent, Film-School-Educated, AuteurStyle Directors like Coppola, Scorsese, Kubrick,
Woody Allen
Thematically
– Moral Ambiguity, Rebellion and Anti-Heroism
– Sex, Drugs, Rock n Roll
– Revision of Established Genres
• Ex. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Western),
Bonnie and Clyde (Gangster Picture),
Chinatown (Film Noir)
Aesthetically
– Experimental use of sound (rock n roll!)
– Flashback and forward, Jump Cuts, Long takes
– Lyrical treatment of violence
Politically
– Paranoia and General Distrust of Authority
– Skepticism Toward “American Dream”
– Disillusionment with Consumerism
Hollywood Blockbuster Era
• Growing Budgets:
– Batman (1989): 50 Million
– Titanic (1997): 200 Million
– Pirates (2007): 300 Million
• “Franchise” pictures:
– Sequels, Action/Adventure
Movies
– Target Audience: 12-29 year-olds
(75%)
• Fast-Paced, Special effects-driven:
– CGI, Motion Capture, Digital
Sound, 3-D & 3-D Animation
– Quick Cuts: Fom 4-6
seconds/shot in ‘85 to 2-3
seconds/shot in 2000s
1970s
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Star Wars (1977)
Jaws (1975)
The Exorcist (1973)
Grease (1978)
The Sting (1973)
National Lampoon's Animal
House (1978)
The Godfather (1972)
Superman (1978)
Close Encounters of the Third
Kind (1977/80)
Smokey and the Bandit
(1977)
1980s
• E.T (1982)
• Return of the Jedi (1983)
• The Empire Strikes Back
(1980)
• Batman (1989)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
(1981)
• Ghostbusters (1984)
• Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
• Back to the Future (1985)
• Indiana Jones and the Last
Crusade (1989)
• Indiana Jones and the
Temple of Doom (1984)
1990s
• Titanic (1997)
• Star Wars: Episode I - The
Phantom Menace (1999)
• Jurassic Park (1993)
• Forrest Gump (1994)
• The Lion King (1994)
• Independence Day (1996)
• The Sixth Sense (1999)
• Home Alone (1990)
• Men in Black (1997)
• Toy Story 2 (1999)
2000s
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Avatar (2009)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Shrek 2 (2004)
Pirates of the Caribbean:
Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Spider-Man (2002)
Transformers 2 (2009)
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith (2005)
The Lord of the Rings: The
Return of the King (2003)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
The Passion of the Christ
(2004)
What makes a movie
independent?
• Its Funding:
– Does funding from a major studio disqualify a film from the
‘independent’ category?
• Its Audience:
– Smart people and cinephiles? A micro-targeted market segment?
• Its Distribution:
– Does it get a theatrical release? Does it play in multiplexes? Art
house theaters?
• Its Director/Writer/Actors:
– Are auteur-driven films independent? Is a David Lynch movie
‘automatically’ independent? What about Michael Mann?
• Its Aesthetics:
– Does deviation from classical Hollywood conventions make a film
independent?
The ‘Indie’ Umbrella
History of the Indie
•
•
•
•
Late 1970s:
– U.S. Alternative/Art films go
underground
– Ex. Eraserhead (1977)
1980s:
– ‘Mini-Majors’ and Major Indies
– Ex. Sex, lies, and videotape (1989)
1990s:
– Hollywood conglomerates establish
‘specialty’ divisions
– Ex. Pulp Fiction (1994)
2000s:
– Most ‘Indies” are produced and/or
distributed through major studios;
– “Indie” becomes a genre descriptor
– Ex. Juno (2007)
Why The American Indie Grew
•
1. Home Video
– 1976: VHS introduced
– 1988: Majority of U.S. Households own VCR
– 1997: DVD Introduced; Netflix launches,
currently at 23 million subscribers
– 2000: Hollywood takes in $20 billion in home
video revenue (3x domestic box office)
– 2010: Blockbuster Video files for bankruptcy
•
2. Hollywood Funders Seek Niche Markets
– Big pictures dominate, but there’s still money
on the table
– Mini-Majors, Specialty Divisions, “Indiewood”
•
3. Film Festivals Connect Buyers and Sellers
– Connecting independent films and major
distributors
– Ex. Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and
videotape debuts at Sundance 1989,
Grosses $100 million
What Does a Typical
“Indie” Film Look Like?
•
•
•
Thematically
– Focus on the “offbeat” and “quirky”
• Marketed to audiences not served by
Blockbusters
– More likely to have:
• Anti-heroes, Ambiguity, NonMainstream Values and Politics
Aesthetically
– Formal “flourishes” (i.e., discontinuous
editing)
• But usually w/ some kind of narrative or
character-based justification
– Strong personal vision of director
– Lower budgets
– Non-Professional and Character Actors
Politically
– All over the map, really
– Often designed to challenge viewers, make
them think
This Week: The Watermelon Woman
(1996)
• Director: Cheryl Dunye
• Country: United States (filmed in
Philadelphia)
• Movement: New Queer Cinema
• Formal Focus: Sound (Ch. 9)
• Why Are We Watching It?
– Good intro to the low-budget American
“indies” of the 1990s (think Clerks,
Reservoir Dogs, etc.)
– Raises questions about race and
sexuality in American cinema
– It works well in dialogue with other films
we’ve watched, esp. Perfumed
Nightmare, 8½, and Sherlock Jr.
– It’s smart and fun
The Watermelon Woman (1996)
In Three Claims
• 1. Cinema is a way of creating
and validating personal identity.
• 2. American Film History does
not represent the history and
lived experiences of AfricanAmericans or LGBT people.
• 3. When your history seems to
be absent, you either have to
dig it up or create a totally new
history.
African Americans
And Hollywood
•
•
•
•
•
History of Hollywood Racism
– e.g. Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927),
Disney’s Song of the South (1946)
All-Black Film Productions:
– Oscar Micheaux (1920s and 30s)
Black Actors in Hollywood
– Hattie McDaniel (1939), Sidney Poitier
(1963)
Blaxploitation and African-American Indies
– Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
(1971), Shaft (1971), Foxy Brown (1974)
– William Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm
(1968), Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1977)
African-American Indies in the 1990s:
– Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing (1989),
Malcolm X (1992); John Singleton’s Boyz n
the Hood (1991)
New Queer Cinema
•
•
•
•
•
Avant-Garde Roots:
– Kenneth Anger’s “Fireworks” (1947)
Early 1990s: “New Queer Cinema”
– Todd Haynes’s Poison (1991), Gus van
Sant’s My Own Private Idaho (1991),
Rose Troche’s Go Fish (1994)
Themes:
– Documenting (mostly young, mostly
urban) LGBT Life and Love: “We Exist”
– Often subtle critiques of discrimination,
Response to AIDS
The NEA Debates (1990s)
– Some “New Queer” films funded by
federal grants; Congress defunds NEA
2000s: Queer Cinema Goes Mainstream:
– Brokeback Mountain (2005), Milk (2008)
Questions To Consider
• Why does Cheryl want to find the Watermelon
Woman?
• When is the sound conspicuous? When is it
diegetic and when nondiegetic?
• How does this film compare with other films
we’ve watched to this point?
• What makes this movie “Indie”?