Many of the dramatic elements pioneered by US indie cinema now represent some of its worst clichés, writes
JOE GRIFFIN
IT SEEMS THAT nearly every corner of popular culture could be placed into two categories: before and after commercial bastardisation. Just as hip-hop devolved to Puff Daddy, punk begat Green Day and Motown led to a Stevie Wonder duet with Blue, so the early work of Hal Hartley, Richard Linklater and Quentin Tarantino gave birth to the studio-sanctioned, awardbaiting indie-style films. Like indie music, the label initially meant independently produced, but now defines a movie’s style more than its financial origins. Here are some of the hallmarks of the indie movie, many of which have appeared at Sundance over the past two decades.
Emotionally distant academics
Ah, the genius who can’t connect with his loved ones. He (for it is usually a “he”) can solve the hardest mathematical conundrum (
Good Will Hunting
), write revered novels (
The Squid and the Whale
), hold a lecturing post in a university (
Fireflies in the Garden
), or even run a prestigious publishing house (
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
), but he just can’t open up to the special people in his life. A cynic might suggest that the film-makers are projecting tortured versions of their gifted/troubled selves on to the big screen, but surely that can’t be the case?
Soulful slacker
The soulful slacker can be identified by his majestic leather coat, greasy, attractive hair and goat-like facial growth. A nocturnal creature, they shun sunlight. To avoid the Wackness, they migrate at Once to Gigantic areas Before Sunrise in the Garden State.
Holly Golightly pixie girl
A misunderstood, soulful young man just can’t get his life together. What he needs is the love of a good woman, ideally one with wide eyes, a kooky young-Goldie-Hawnmeets- Holly-Golightly demeanour and colourful (small) dresses to bring him out of his shell. So, in descending order of kooky charm; step right up, saucer- eyed Zooey Deschanel (
Gigantic, 500 Days of Summer
), Natalie Portman in Garden State; Olivia Thirlby in The Wackness. Oh, and Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown, don’t call us, we’ll call you.
Family get-togethers
What better time to have chickens come home to roost than at a busy family dinner? It could be a recovering drug addict (
Rachel Getting Married
), a family funeral (
Fireflies in the Garden
), a Thanksgiving dinner (
Pieces of April
) or a Christmas get-together (
The Family Stone
). Expect one of the following: a drunk family member will betray a family secret; a patriarch or matriarch played by somebody famous will slam their fist down on a table and yell “That’s enough!”; a child will say something tactless; or, all of the above.
Kooky names
Who names their children Napoleon Dynamite, Lars Lindstrom (
Lars and the Real Girl
), Happy Lolly (
Gigantic
), Juno MacGuff, Donnie Darko or Royal Tenenbaum? Screenwriters who want to take a shortcut to eccentricity, that’s who.
Diners
The greasy spoon Eddie Rockets-style eatery is where moping slackers eat, drink, and often work. It’s where you’ll find the family bickering in
Little Miss Sunshine
, the sardonic outsiders eye-rolling in
Ghost World
and the lovable heroine of Waitress. The latter is also the definitive source of the staple diet of indie movie characters – pie.
Crumbling vehicle metaphors
For a voyage of self-discovery, indie protagonists often travel in broken down avatars of themselves, be it an unreliable Volkswagen van in
Little Miss Sunshine
, a morbid hearse in Harold and Maude or a renovated roadster in
Sunshine Cleaning
. Will their metaphorical vessel bring them to their spiritual destination? Probably.
Yap, yap, yap . . .
It’s never been clear why Kevin Smith’s
Clerks
, Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan or Richard Linklater’s Slacker were made as movies instead of plays. It seems these un-cinematic, relentlessly talky films were made by people who grew up on a diet of cinema, but might have been better served by a life in the theatre. Then again, it’s hard to imagine
Clerks II
sandwiched in the Gate’s schedule between Arthur Miller and Noël Coward.
Movie stars
One wonders what young, struggling actors think of movie stars working for scale in smaller budget movies, a la Julia Roberts in
Fireflies in the Garden
, Keanu Reeves in
The Private Lives
of
Pippa Lee
, Tom Cruise in
Magnolia
, and countless others. Perhaps they live in hope that in the next zero-budget film they work on, they’ll be starring opposite Will Smith? More likely they’re rightfully resentful of the megastars taking all the good parts, big and small.
