Independence Day was a Studio Project (and Seemingly a Declaration of Things to Come) In the business world, in any industry of the world, the word "independent" means the same thing: separate and apart from the market leaders in that industry. If you look at the home improvement industry today in the U.S., Lowe's and Home Depot are considered majors and the small hardware store down the street is considered an independent, and there is an independent hardware stores association. If you look at video stores, you see the same thing: Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are the majors, and independents are managed by the VSDA [Video Software Dealers Association]... The point here is, the categorizing of a product as independent has nothing to do with its budget or uniqueness; it has to do with the market influence of the owner. The film business is no different. The majors are the six studios and the independents are everyone else around the globe. Whether they're English, Japanese or Brazilian, and no matter the budget of their film, if they are not one of those six companies, they don't have the market reach or the guarantee to reach the marketplace. When a studio makes a film, they don't need to go country by country and hope to find an importer to get the film into theaters and onto the shelves in video stores, they simply send the materials to their own operations or joint ventures, and the film reaches its audience. An independent is not assured of reaching every village, hamlet and burrow of the world; a major studio is. And that's what differentiates the two. A sad story has evolved over the last 15 years. The word "independent" has been co-opted by the studios: Seeing the world start gravitating toward that word, the studios re-branded their specialty divisions as "independent." Whether it's Sony Classics, Paramount Classics, Fox Searchlight or my favorite, Warner Independent - a true oxymoron - these studios push these films out through the same output deals as those of their parent company. Fox Searchlight sends films to BSkyB through the parent company's output deal, and BSkyB is required to take these films on and, because of the minimums in the parent company's deal, pay a much higher guarantee than that film would otherwise commercially command. The buyer, therefore, ends up with less money to spend on truly independent film as well as less shelf space or programming space. So, it's not just an issue of semantics; it's truly an issue for independents to make sure the world treats that name fairly. Focus Features and New Line - despite the fact that their parent coy or shareholders are majors - produce and distribute films independently. Look at Lord of the Rings. This was not AOL Time Warner writing a multi-hundred-million-dollar check and crossing their fingers; this was New Line going territory by territory licensing the film, mostly by presales to local distributors around the world. This is the quintessential example of an independent film. In addition, it had a tremendous impact on the independent film industry because the profits from those films were held not by Warner Independent but by local distributors in those countries. This made those local companies flush and, because they were so healthy, increased the buying of independent film in subsequent years. [2004] was a most backward awards season. Not for the recognition of Million Dollar Baby, which truly deserved its honor, but for the lack of recognition it got at the Spirit Awards and for the absurdity of a studio film being crowned "best independent film of the year." The issue is not with the Academy or Million Dollar Baby but with the gerrymandering of rules of the Spirit Awards. |
