1950s - Late 60s: Studio Decline

1

• 1950s - Late 60s Studio Decline
• 1963 Worst year for US film prod. w/ 121 films
• 1969 Hello, Dolly! flops, ends Gene Kellys
  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?

2
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

3
New Hollywood Era

• Who Makes Hollywood New?
• Independent, Film-School-Educated, Auteur-Style
  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

4
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

5
1970s 1980s

• 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)

• 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)

6
1990s 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)

• 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)

7
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?

8
The Indie Umbrella
9
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)

10
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 theres 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 Soderberghs sex, lies, and videotape
  debuts at Sundance 1989, Grosses 100 million

11
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, Non-Mainstream 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

12
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 weve
  watched, esp. Perfumed Nightmare, 8½, and
  Sherlock Jr.
• Its smart and fun

13
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
  African-Americans or LGBT people.
• 3. When your history seems to be absent, you
  either have to dig it up or create a totally new
  history.

14
African Americans And Hollywood

• History of Hollywood Racism
• e.g. Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927),
  Disneys 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 Sweetbacks Baadasssss Song (1971), Shaft
  (1971), Foxy Brown (1974)
• William Greavess Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (1968),
  Burnetts Killer of Sheep (1977)
• African-American Indies in the 1990s
• Spike Lees Do The Right Thing (1989), Malcolm X
  (1992) John Singletons Boyz n the Hood (1991)

15
New Queer Cinema

• Avant-Garde Roots
• Kenneth Angers Fireworks (1947)
• Early 1990s New Queer Cinema
• Todd Hayness Poison (1991), Gus van Sants My
  Own Private Idaho (1991), Rose Troches 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)

16
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 weve
  watched to this point?
• What makes this movie Indie?