For me, the discussion of independent films was, first and foremost, that the entire town began as an independent film. Fur merchants and suspected borrowers from New York banks came to the wild, deserts and seas of Los Angeles to escape the Edison patent enforcers and unbelievers, and the volatile personal history they ran on the East Coast.
Early photos tell the story. Dive into Silverlake’s Edendale Grill and pause the framed photos of the wall. These were my desire to walk the red carpet, not fortresses of social and corporate executives and brothers of hedge funds. These were artists, burglars, foresight, and immigrants and rebels. They wandered behind the dusty sheds of the fountain, made stories along the scrub brush and rode horses, sometimes taking too much heroin, sometimes having wild problems on boats from the jetty of Santa Monica. Something strange, unseemly, shit happened. Sometimes they made movies about it.
Studio executives have created a code for Hayes before self-censorship (and this sounds poignantly modern). And those filmmakers carried films across the country in real tents. Or an old vaudeville stage. Or they played them against the back of the white barn. Any way. These are the shoulders we stand on. Not even in the Giants, or those who thought they were Giants. They are dusty, strong, slightly hopeless, and innovative shoulders to their beloved.
Maybe if you twist everything we call “movie business,” these people are the true hearts and souls and flawed people of business, and the decades that followed, the money and technology money of Gala and Executive Class Shenangan and.com are the influence of late comers. Heavy attachment. And perhaps we have been very heavy by these feelings, by ourselves, by ourselves, by ourselves, by ourselves, and by ourselves, by ourselves. However, inside the tile rub, you can see the original DNA of Hollywood. Perhaps the original DNA is essentially, in a truly independent sense.
Natalie Dormer and Ami Canan Man on the set of “Audrey’s Children”Credit: Blue Harbor Entertainment
If I try everything again, I don’t know if I’ll go to film school or not. Certainly, I attended at a strange time. In USC in the late 80s and early 90s, I fell off the turnip truck from Indiana, where I grew up with my mother, and was plagued by Gordon Gecco-esque huffs and fanboys (I was filming student films that were the only two women in the production program).
The school put me in because of the average performance of Midwest public schools, some photos and perhaps good essays, but about academic probation status. If the film class didn’t maintain a B average before he started third grade, I would have been out. The skin of my teeth. The Italian class was a grade killer, but I still can’t speak it to save my life.
I started a film class and met my cohort and immediately knew these were not my people. I never happened to me when I could grab the camera and shoot myself. It all felt like I wasn’t sure I wanted to “win” some of the games I needed to learn the rules very quickly. My high school is competitive and I was kind of a nerd (speech and discussion, orchestra, student council, track), I liked competition and was keen to fight to win. But in Hollywood in the early ’90s, “winning” was a job with Harvey, Shane Black, which meant selling action films for $1 million or drinking cocktails at certain bars. And it all felt to me, I was Danno, somehow not substantive.
Perhaps this is the criteria for determining whether or not you should aim for an independent film, and is an inherent case of the independent film itself. Do you feel that the alternative is not substantive? We also need to all pay rent, buy Cheerios and make sure our children have health insurance. Also, when given the beautiful luxury of choice, is it worth redirecting to an independent film? If I redirect to an independent film, can I recreate the runaway instincts of fur dealers and suspicious borrowers and fiercely adventurous storytellers from the turn of the last century? Can you return to your beautiful roots?
Ami Canan Man with “Audrey’s Children” setCredit: Blue Harbor Entertainment
At this moment, LA is scared and exciting about itself. Painful stagnation. There is fire on the edge. I’ll check in to see which friends are working. Celebrate what isn’t, and celebrate what isn’t. Large economic disparities between the working class and the executive class. The town itself is a Victorian-era hyper microcosm and does not have it. Speaking to a friend of mine who was a studio lawyer, he said he was paid much less than his fellow studio lawyers, so I asked him how much he thought I had been paid to direct TV. He was surprised to hear it was about $40,000 in the previous episode of tax and rep ratio, so I filmed about 2-3 episodes a year. And I am one of the lucky ones. Grips, electricians, MUHs, writers, directors, and transpos are quiet machines with towers raised. And it might be fine if the tower falls. Maybe we can understand what to do with the tile rub.
If you love Hollywood, we all love, and come to adolescence at the depths of Great Repression (Garland, Capra, Chaplin, Sturgis, Stanwyck, Stewart, etc.), then perhaps show off the independent cinematic Argenmouth figure, as the country needed a free dream factory to naritize the Nightmare they lived in. Political content restrictions to do the same thing in 100 years.
And are we one of the lucky ones who knows with painful clarity that it is the reason why we come here and stand on the shoulders of people who have the same independent spirit in the first place?
Filmmaker Ami Canaan ManFuture features Audrey’s children, The premiere at Tribeca in 2024 is now in theaters.
