Culture

Is the age of distraction killing indie cinema, or is that just old person talk?

Hugh Linehan: Richard Linklater thinks filmmaking and fiction are losing their central place in the culture. He has a point

We need a hit, man: Adria Arjona and Glen Powell in Richard Linklater's new film, Hit Man

Hugh Linehan's face
Hugh Linehan
Sun Sep 17 2023 - 05:15

Douglas Adams’s aphorism that anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things should always be borne in mind when people of a certain age bemoan the state of the world. So when the director Richard Linklater, promoting his new film at Venice last week, gave a downbeat assessment of the prospects for American independent filmmaking, it would have been easy to reach for the Adams quote. Linklater is 63, so was well over 35 when the smartphone, social media and streaming were invented.

Speaking in sorrow rather than anger, he offered his diagnosis of how these technologies have led to the marginalisation of several artforms, including cinema. “It’s hard to imagine indie cinema in particular having the cultural relevance that it did,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s hard to imagine the whole culture is going to be on the same page about anything, much less filmmaking. Some really intelligent, passionate, good citizens just don’t have the same need for literature and movies any more. It doesn’t occupy the same space in the brain. I think that’s just how we’ve given over our lives, largely, to this thing that depletes the need for curating and filling ourselves up with meaning from art and fictional worlds. That need has been filled up with – let’s face it – delivery systems for advertising. It’s sad, but what can you do?”

The traditional audience has shifted to streaming, but the streamers are giving up on independent features

Linklater’s first film was the Gen X-defining Slacker, so one could see his lament as a raging against the dying of the light as that generation slides towards its 60s. After all, people do still watch independent films and they do still read books. Just not so much. But he’s correct that, in the battle for what the marketing people call mind share, traditional forms such as film, television and print have been in retreat for 20 years. It’s hardly unreasonable to suggest that this inevitably leads to a tipping point at which they lose their previous salience in the general culture.

And in the specific case of US indie cinema, market forces do seem to reflect this. Linklater points to the apparent collapse of the distribution market for independent films in the United States since the pandemic. Two factors are at play. The first is that audiences for art house and independent cinema skew older (a problem in itself) and more affluent, which means they were more likely to invest in OLED screens and soundbars and the rest of the paraphernalia that nudges the domestic viewing experience marginally closer to the theatrical one. The other is that indies, it seems in retrospect, were being artificially juiced over the past 10 years by the streamers’ quest for status and legitimacy. All those big announcements about Netflix or Amazon buying up the critical hits from Sundance or Toronto now seem part of a different era, as the platforms downsize their catalogues and pivot from prestige drama to cheaper reality shows. So the traditional audience has shifted to streaming, but the streamers are giving up on independent features.

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It seems appropriate that the biggest, brightest star of the 1990s wave has announced his next film will be his last

If Linklater is correct, and independent American cinema as he knows it is coming to an end, then the patient will have expired at the relatively young age of 40. The idea of independent cinema in the US is malleable and shifting, and can refer to filmmaking practice, aesthetic sensibility or the source of financing. The 1990s wave that he reminisces about so wistfully was initiated by a handful of hip young 1980s innovators – Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee. Before them there had always been a handful of extraordinary mavericks like Orson Welles and John Cassavetes.

It seems appropriate that the biggest, brightest star of the 1990s wave has announced his next film will be his last. Quentin Tarantino’s The Movie Critic is currently in pre-production in Los Angeles but, like everything else, is stalled until the writers’ and actors’ strikes are resolved.

From the patent wars of the early 20th century to the Golden Age of the 1930s, and the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls generation of the 1970s, American cinema – the pre-eminent cultural form of the 20th century – has evolved and mutated repeatedly. As the 1990s generation matured into the 21st century, it came to replace the old mid-range studio pictures that had been regarded as the benchmark of quality in the industry and that dominated awards season and critical attention. In that sense it is true that, a la Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond, the pictures got smaller. Best picture Oscar-winners such as Moonlight, Coda and Nomadland were made on a sliver of the resources of 1990s winners like The Silence of the Lambs or Schindler’s List. Now that even these low-budget productions are under threat, will there be a space anywhere for intelligent, original American filmmaking? Don’t ask me. I’m well over 35.

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