•
Jim Jarmusch Stranger Than Paradise Caméra
d'Or award for debut films, Special Jury Prize at
the Sundance Film Festival
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best
Picture of 1985
•
Coen Brothers: Blood Simple 1984 (Genre film)
•
David Lynch: Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Twin
Peaks
•
John Waters (a decade earlier)
•
Steven Soderbergh: Sex Lies and Videotape
(Palme d'Or at Cannes 1989 )
•
Quentin Tarantino Pulp Fiction
Golden Age
Independent cinema was at one time
a way of describing films that were
pretty far from Hollywood in many
ways
indie cinema has become more of a
corporate branding strategy than a
true alternative to commercial
mainstream cinema
(Palme d'Or 1994)
•
Todd Solondz Welcome to the Dollhouse Grand
Jury Prize for best dramatic feature at the 1996
Sundance Film Festival.
•
Lost in Translation 2003 Sofia Coppola Acadamy
Award for best original Screenplay
Profitability
• Stranger Than Paradise (1984) Budget
US$100,000 Box office $2,436,000
• She’s Got to Have It Budget $185,000 Box
office $7,137,502
• Blood Simple: Budget $1.5 million Box office
$4,218,701
• Sex, Lies and Videotape Budget $1.2 million
Box office $24,741,667
Comparison with current Blockbuster
• Pulp Fiction (Studio Indie) Budget $8.5 million
Box office $213,928,762[3] +approx 205 Million
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Budget $170
million[2] Box office $768 million [3] Million (so far)
Independents
• Indie funding allows filmmakers to
take risks
• What does it mean to take a risk?
• What risks were taken in Stranger
than Paradise?
Breaking of Conventions (risks)
• There are expectations of films from moviegoers
• We expect the films to be moralistic (or at least the
central characters tend to be good)
• All of the boring moments have to be cut out
• The central characters do not end up alone at the end
• A central character’s will meets clear obstacle and the
goal is met before the conclusion
• Clear exposition
• Clear causality (every scene has clear motivation that
moves the plot forward)
• The apparatus is hidden
Funding of Spike Lee films
• His first two films She’s Gotta
Have it(1986) and School
Daze(1988) were independently
funded and financially
successful
• This allowed for Spike Lee to
receive more funding for Do the
Right Thing
• At the time Indie films weren’t
coopted by the studios
• Rare to have so much creative
control over a project with
mainstream backing
Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing 1989
• Exceeded Lee’s earlier efforts thematically and
artistically
• energy and craftsmanship
• realistic portrayal of African American
neighborhood in Brooklyn
• Mise en Scene, music, and dialogue rich with
allusions to African American culture
• Open ending, two divergent points of view
Modern Greek Tragedy: obeys the three
unities.
• The story takes place in one setting,
Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuy, on the hottest
summer day
• And there is also continuity of time, which
spans about two days
• Unity of Action (one central story and all
secondary plots should be linked to it.)
Spike Lee
• controversial
• portrayed poorly in the press
• Do the Right Thing was rumored as a threat
in movie theaters even before it was
released.
• Pioneer filmmakers (Charles Burnett and
Gordon Parks are the only African American
Filmmakers that precede him--many
followed)
Spike Lee’s memories of the film
• MOOKIE THREW THE GARBAGE CAN through the
window in the penultimate scene “In reaction to
seeing his best friend murdered by New York
City’s finest. People have a breaking point and
that was Mookie’s.”
• HE ENDING OF THE MOVIE was not hopeless. “It
was a realistic portrayal and that’s why the film
was made at Universal Pictures, not at
Paramount, ’cause the powers that be didn’t like
the ending. They wanted Mookie and Sal
hugging, singing, “We Are the World.”
Spike Lee (Bio)
• Communications Major
• Studied Film at New York University (Tish
School of the Arts) like Scorsese,
Seidelman, Jarmusch
• She’s Gotta Have It, 1986
• Most Commercially Successful film Inside
Man was released in the last decade
(Critical Success as well)
• More on Spike Lee’s bio can be found
Do the Right Thing
• Spike Lee’s first Union Film
• Studio Funding
• Diverse cast and crew
How did the script for Do the
Right Thing come together?
I had the title of it before I had anything
else. Then it was bits and pieces--it was
going to take place on the hottest day of
the summer on one block in Bed-Stuy.
Then I added the whole ItalianAmerican/African-American conflict
• One of many questions at the end of the
film is whether Mookie "does the right
thing" when he throws the garbage can
through the window, thus inciting the riot
that destroys Sal's pizzeria. Critics have
seen Mookie's action both as an action
that saves Sal's life, by redirecting the
crowd's anger away from Sal to his
property, and as an "irresponsible
encouragement to enact violence".[16]
The question is directly raised by the
contradictory quotations that end the
film, one advocating non-violence,
the other advocating violent selfdefense in response to
oppression.[16]
• Spike Lee has remarked that he himself
has only ever been asked by white
viewers whether Mookie did the right thing;
black viewers do not ask the question.[17]
Lee believes the key point is that Mookie
was angry at the death of Radio Raheem,
and that viewers who question the riot's
justification are implicitly valuing white
property over the life of a black man
Hashtag: #IfTheyGunnedMeDown
Emmarr Butler, 26, depicted with his friend
Roderick Morrison:
"They say never judge a book by its cover," said Darien Williams. "For me I'm both of
those. I left an impoverished environment to do something better for my life. Now
when I return to that environment, I'm what people look up to."
• "The true purpose of placing the two pictures
together juxtaposed," said C.J. Lawrence, "was
to show that [neither] our appearance nor class
nor academic achievement should be the
determining factors for whether we live or die.”