The argument for independent film for me is, first and foremost, that this whole town began as independent film. Fur merchants and dubious borrowers from New York banks came to the wilds and deserts and oceans of Los Angeles to escape Edison patent enforcers and disbelievers and whatever shaky personal histories they were running from on the East Coast. The photos of early LA tell the story. Pop into Edendale Grill in Silverlake and pause at the framed photos on the wall. These were not bastions of society or corporate executives or hedge fund bros looking to walk a red carpet. These were artists and thieves and visionaries and immigrants and rebels. They hung out behind dusty shacks on Fountain making stories and rode horses along the scrub brush and sometimes took too much heroin and sometimes had wild affairs on boats off the Santa Monica pier. Weird, unseemly, shit happened. Sometimes they made movies about it. Before the studio execs self-censored (and this sounds achingly contemporary) and crafted the Hays Code, films were made about poverty and prostitution and drugs and the struggles of everyday folks. And then those filmmakers hauled those movies across the country in actual tents. Or old Vaudeville stages. Or played them against the backs of white barns. Any way they could. These are the shoulders we stand on. Not giants, or even people who thought they were giants. They are dusty, strong, slightly desperate, darlingly innovative shoulders. Maybe, if you twist the whole thing...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - 2 days ago