Each day this week, Christopher Campbell will take a look back at a “classic” film that played the Sundance Film Festival. Today’s installment: Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998).
Today’s story is a little shorter than the rest in this series, but it’s worth remembering because it involves another instance where one Sundance success directly resulted in the making of a later Sundance success (a la Slacker leading to Clerks). The earlier film in this case was Welcome to the Dollhouse, which Darren Aronofsky saw at the 1996 festival. In Peter Biskind’s book Down and Dirty Pictures, Aronfsky comments on the experience: “I thought it was such a unique, weird film, that it really gave me the courage to go back to New York and just try to throw something together.” That November he was in production on Pi.
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Each day this week, Christopher Campbell will take a look back at a “classic” film that played the Sundance Film Festival. Today’s installment: Scott Hicks’ Shine (1996).
1996 was a monumental year for independent film. It began with a Sundance Film Festival that, according to Peter Biskind’s book Down and Dirty Pictures “would go down as Ten Days That Shook the Indie World,” because of the tremendous buying frenzy that occurred, including the infamous acquisition of The Spitfire Grill by Castle Rock for $10 million. The year then transpired with a slew of popular specialty titles that boosted business at many arthouse multiplexes while also exposing them as being unsuited for large crowds (the boom in indie film attendance was something I experienced first hand, having that year begun my first career at NYC’s Angelika Film Center). And the year ended (in 14-month Hollywood terms) with an unprecedented number of specialty films receiving nominations for Academy Awards.
Most astonishing, certainly, was the fact that four of the five Oscar nominees for Best Picture were specialty titles, one of which had been discovered at Sundance. The film, Shine, might not have had a chance at such an honor, however, if Miramax and Harvey Weinstein had gotten their way.
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Each day this week, Christopher Campbell will take a look back at a “classic” film that played the Sundance Film Festival. Today’s installment: Kevin Smith’s Clerks (1994).
It’s only fitting to follow yesterday’s post on Slacker with the Sundance story of Clerks, since Kevin Smith was directly influenced by Richard Linklater’s film. And like Linklater, Smith nearly didn’t go to Sundance with his breakthrough indie, although in his case it was initially a matter of choice rather than rejection. According to Peter Biskind’s book Down and Dirty Pictures, Smith says about the decision, “We never even thought about Sundance. That was not a festival that we were meant for.”
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Karina will be AWOL for most of Wednesday and at least part of Thursday. While I’m gone, you need to go to Hollywood Elsewhere, because Jeff Wells has obtained the script for the movie adaptation of Peter Biskind’s 90s indie film expose, Down and Dirty Pictures. I mean, I think he has––technically, he posted scans of pages on April 1, but he groveled for a copy of the script several days before, so it’s likely legit. Anyway––the pages he’s scanned are…something to behold. They appear to be the first four pages of the screenplay, and they set the film up as a decony film-within-a-film, wherein Bingham Ray and Jeff Lipsky argue over the portrayal of their own foibles. Read, and talk amongst yourselves. Wells says they’re hiring “name actors” for a Toronto shoot beginning in the fall. Um…casting ideas, anyone?
