Home School: The Sundance Kids

With the invention of home video in the late 70s/early 80s, the course of film history was irrevocably changed. Film lovers no longer needed expensive prints and cumbersome projectors in order to own their favorite films. Practically the entire history of film was at their fingertips and they could watch it whenever they wanted, as often as they wanted. This is the generation that for better or worse, turned filmmaking into a rockstar profession.

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For a broad overview of the period I'd recommend both Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film AND James Mottram's Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood. Though they cover a lot of the same people and films they are radically different books. While Biskind's principle concern is the drama and battles behind the scenes, Mottram seems more content to discuss the aesthetic values of the films in question. Two great tastes that taste great together.

If you want a more personal and ground-level look at the period, Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of Independent Cinema by John Pierson is the book for you! As a producer's rep, Pierson helped filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Roger Moore and Richard Linklater to get their careers moving. This man saw it all. Also - the little interview fragments with Pierson and Kevin Smith that are peppered throughout the book, are priceless.

Though slightly dated (in that the all of the practical filmmaking tips are pre-digital), the journals kept by Robert Rodriguez (Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player) and Spike Lee (Spike Lee's Gotta Have It: Insider Guerrilla Filmmaking) while making their first films are indispensable tomes for any aspiring filmmaker.

The British Film Institute's American Independent Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader is a great resource of criticism on and of the period. Any book that collects the writings of Amy Taubin, Manohla Dargis and J. Hoberman is worth the price of admission.

For a little visual stimulation, check out the amusingly titled The Snowball Effect. Regardless of what you think about Kevin Smith, this documentary chronicling the making of Clerks serves as a great analogue for the story of many other Gen X auteurs. All the sign posts are there: raised on movies, video store regular,  maxed out credit cards, etc. This doc will also absolutely make you want to make a movie. Find it on the 10th anniversary Clerks DVD or the Blu-ray.

Celine Danhier's film Blank City is a wonderful chronicle of the New York indie scene from the late 70s to the early 80s. It's on Netflix Instant and will surely add a couple new titles to your queue.

Lastly, we'll end with the cautionary tale that is Overnight. What begins as a behind-the-scenes doc on the making of Boondock Saints quickly devolves into a fascinating study of the havoc that fame, ambition, and ego can wreak on a friendship. This is the dark side of Sundance. Check it out from Netflix. Disc only though...