Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film
By Peter Biskind
Simon and Schuster
544 pages

A man races down a hotel hallway as three men follow him, yelling frantically. The man sees the fire escape and heads out into the rainy night. Soaking wet, heading down the stairs with his cell phone, he hears, “You can’t be out on the fire escape.”

The man yells back, “I’m talking to Harvey Weinstein.”

“Oh, OK!” This isn’t a film, it’s the film business.

In theory, independent film is an artistic escape from the money-making world of Hollywood. But Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film reveals that the industry behind the independents is just as dedicated to money as the major studios—and being small can make them even more ruthless.

While Biskind’s classic look at the new hollywood of the ’70s, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, looks at filmmakers jacking the system, Down and Dirty Pictures is, for the most part, about how the system is jacking independent filmmakers. Biskind’s fascinating history follows the people with the real power, those who control which films will get seen. This cynical look at how success changed the indie film will be an addictive read for anyone who uses Miramax as a verb.

Through a series of anecdotes, Biskind is able to form an enthralling dark history of independent film. Sometimes the stories behind the acquisition of films are just as interesting as the films themselves. Somehow “The Apostle” seems more interesting after reading that desperate executives chased the rep around a Toronto hotel in a bidding war. Plus, you’ll find out how Roberto Benigni managed to win the best-actor Oscar.

Miramax co-chairperson Harvey Weinstein is clearly the star, an antihero who dominates this book with his insatiable appetite for food, films and profit. Sundance’s more subtle founder Robert Redford is featured less. Bingham Ray, a co-founder of October Films, is the idealist who believes more in film than in money (uh-oh).

Biskind also interviews filmmakers about their experiences. Even a Sundance success like Steven Soderbergh has some problems with Robert Redford. There are Miramax lovers like Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith, and those whose experiences with the Weinsteins left scars, like Bernardo Bertolucci, Todd Haynes, Merchant-Ivory and many more lesser-known directors.

The book begins as Steven Soderbergh arrives at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival with “sex, lies and videotape.” The film would make stars of Soderbergh, Miramax and Sundance, but more importantly, it announced that there was money to be made in independent film. The indies had lost their innocence. Biskind sees the events that aided the rise of independent film as the ones that took away its independence. Disney’s purchase of Miramax and the “Pulp Fiction” phenomenon changed the expectations of independent film.

Biskind isn’t shy about giving his opinion. He is almost merciless to Weinstein, whom he compares with the exploding diner from “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.” That is certainly not the worst thing said about Harvey Scissorhands, a sort of greed-driven monster who wants to devour as many films as he can. Biskind reveals his monstrous tactics in negotiating, editing, Oscar campaigning and breaking people’s spirits. Despite his fits of rage and abusive behavior, Biskind manages to create some sympathy for the man who in recent years lost his golden touch.

Somehow, while much better behaved, Redford comes off as less sympathetic. Biskind paints him as a passive-aggressive control freak who is afraid to make any decisions, for whom Sundance is merely a vanity project that is dropped whenever something more important comes along. These representations are pretty harsh, and the world Biskind portrays is one where bad behavior creates success.

When a book is full of as much juicy gossip as this one, it will raise the question how much of it is true. I noticed two factual errors while reading the book. While they are irrelevant, they could both have been checked on the Internet Movie Database. It makes one doubt other information and wonder how the writer of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls does not know that “Taxi Driver” was released after “Mean Streets.”

Biskind’s history ends at last year’s Oscar ceremony with a postscript about the screener controversy. While it is clear that Miramax may have peaked as an independent film force, it does not quite feel like indie film has run its course. Since the publication of this book, surprising Oscar nominations and an exceptionally good Sundance have made it seem like the art of independent film is blooming again. Keeping that in mind, this is an addictive read for anyone who can take the film industry with a healthy dose of cynicism and wants great stories to tell his or her friends while browsing at the video store.
jessica@red-mag.com