Using Boys Don’t Cry (1999), directed by Kimberly Peirce, this essay aims to explore the relationship between ‘Independent’ cinema and mainstream Hollywood cinema. Independent cinema has evolved as an art form and its relationship to Hollywood cinema has also changed throughout its growth. Applying the research and knowledge of various academic sources, this essay will attempt to explore how said relationship has, eventually, become a mostly mutually beneficial one. By analysing Boys Don’t Cry and its textual qualities, the process of its production, its distribution and its funding, the differences between Independent cinema and Hollywood cinema will be highlighted and how the practices employed in the creation of the film were unique to an Independent production, as well as how a Hollywood project would have been treated differently. Due to the genre that Boys Don’t Cry comes under, the connection between the LGBT subset of Independent cinema and the mainstream Hollywood will also be touched upon, as LGBT themed films are more prevalent within Independent productions, due to the reason Independent features came to exist and how they are made. However, a definition of Independent cinema and its relationship concerning Hollywood mainstream cinema in a general sense must first be established.
The rise of Independent films began in the 1990’s, according to Levy (1999). Between then and the present day, the film industry has seen the success of Independent films continue to grow. This is due, in part, to Robert Redford, who in 1981 gathered together ten emerging filmmakers to the first Sundance Institute Film Makers/Directors Lab. This was a workshop during which they worked closely with writers and directors to help develop their ideas, and where they were also given the opportunity to take risks and create the film which told the story they wanted. Redford wanted to create an environment which encouraged new voices within the American film industry, and to create an Independent movement from mainstream Hollywood cinema. Sundance at Park City was born out of the Sundance Institute and the US Film Festival, also known as USFF. The USFF provided the traditional film-festival setting, which screened films which were not likely to find further distribution elsewhere. The first official Sundance Film Festival was held in 1991, which kick-started the huge rise in success of Independent films, as this was when Redford officially became part of the organisation in order to provide a venue to showcase the talent that the Sundance Institute had cultivated. Sundance has thus become, as Hall (2006) describes it, as a marketplace of sorts where Independent filmmakers hope to be picked up by studio representatives. This leads into a discussion about the relationship between the two branches of the film industry and how it has proved to be a mutually profitable one.
Although the Independent film movement initially began as an effort to move away from the structure of Hollywood and its limitations, a significant part of it has become connected to the Hollywood Major Studios as well as their practices (King et all. 2006). Independent cinema has found itself, more often than not, working alongside Hollywood, which has created a genre hybrid dubbed ‘Indiewood’, a term first created during the mid-1990’s (King 2009). The creation of ‘Indiewood’ was used to indicate that there were areas where Independent cinema and Hollywood overlapped; however this meant that the lines between Independent and Hollywood became blurred. For some, it meant total independence from Hollywood, from finance to distribution, which is argued by Lewis (2001, p. 67) as he defines Independent cinema as, “...any project not distributed by one of the majors.” However that can be perceived as unrealistic, as trying to operate with total autonomy from Hollywood can be seen as a difficult endeavour, as Hollywood is so integral to the film industry. This means that for many, an ‘Independent’ film is defined through possessing a unique aesthetic (Newman 2013) and through a particular work ethic. However the overlap of Hollywood and Independent is by no means a bad thing, as both Hollywood and Independent cinema both have benefitted from each other. Independent filmmakers who wish to stay away from the studios are afforded that opportunity and can focus solely on their artistic projects, as Hollywood representatives would essentially take care of the business side of things, which will be discussed in more detail within this essay. Hollywood actors looking to expand their portfolio and their range will often look towards Independent projects to achieve this, as Independent films are perceived to have more artistic merit than that of the Hollywood “Blockbuster”, as argued by Santas (2008). Hollywood also has a place to keep tabs on up and coming filmmakers within Independent filmmaking as they perfect their craft, which means that the pool of talent can become wider.
Whilst up and coming filmmakers use their time in Independent filmmaking to hone their skills, Independent films have become associated with a certain style and set of practices, compared to the Hollywood Mainstream, which will now be discussed in reference to Boys Don't Cry, which was released within the same era that Independent cinema was rapidly gaining popularity. Independent cinema has always striven to push the boundaries that Hollywood has set itself, be that in style or structure, but most specifically in its content. Queer cinema is a genre that has found a home for itself within the Independent filmmaking industry; in the mainstream, the topic has rarely been represented, or done so in a negative way (King, 2005). New queer cinema was finally able to push the boundaries of narrative content by telling the stories mainstream Hollywood would not show, and in doing so provided a voice for a cultural minority group (Tzioumakis 2006). Newman (2013) points out that films representing minority groups, like queer cinema, are often found to express a criticism of heterosexuality as the norm in mainstream cinema. Boys Don’t Cry is an excellent example of this, as the film not only depicts the story of a transgender character, which would have been unheard of in Hollywood at the time, but this character is shown as someone who remains desirable and attractive and exhibits other positive traits (Halberstam, 2005). It is also the story of how fragile the masculine ego is; the manhood of John Lotter and Tom Nissen is threatened to the point of them committing murder when they discover that Brandon is not only better at being a man than they are, but was born biologically female.
Telling these types of stories, however, is not easily achieved. Boys Don’t Cry took five years to make; three of those years were spent, in part, trying to find the perfect person to portray Brandon Teena, the central character of the film. Director Kimberly Peirce mentions in an interview that at the time gay culture was very repressed. Trying to find an actress in a time where big movie stars did not do small films, on top of the inherent negativity surrounding the topic of choice, was not an easy task. She also mentions what the impact of television celebrity Ellen DeGeneres coming out as a lesbian; a greater number of people were open to auditioning for the film, but these numbers were not significant. However it was only when she found the audition tape of a then unknown Hilary Swank, who approached the character with charm and likeability, that the right person had been found. The fact that everyone beforehand portrayed their version of Brandon as very serious and not particularly likeable gives an interesting insight into the general consensus of how a transgender character should be depicted, and how portrayals, even amongst auditionees from the queer community were implicitly negative. Huegel (2011) explains that these feelings would have been derived from the homophobic stereotypes perpetuated by Hollywood at the time.
In order for these types of stories to reach a wider audience, Independent filmmakers need to consider how they will achieve greater distribution. Sundance has the power to give an Independent film the distribution it needs via a large Hollywood studio. Boys Don’t Cry premiered in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival and was also given a special screening at Sundance where the worldwide rights to Boys Don’t Cry was purchased by Fox Searchlight, a subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox which specialised in Independent films, for $5 million. The film grossed $11.5 million domestically (Box Office Mojo, 1999), proving to be a major success as it earned back three times what it cost to make (Neimi, 2006), which was $2.5 million and despite the fact it only received a limited release. Due to the fact Boys Don’t Cry is an Independent film, it was given a limited release in the United States, which is usually a tactic used to build anticipation for the film through word of mouth and is normally only applied to Independent films, documentaries or art films. However in contrast, most Hollywood films spend a lot of time and money on the advertisement of a film in order to secure a profitable opening weekend.
It is important to note that the distribution provided by a major studio is generally the only help that an Independent film will receive from these companies, and this is after the film itself has already been made. In terms of funding, an Independent filmmaker has to source the money themselves, which explains why the budgets for Independent films are usually so low, compared to the features of its Hollywood counterpart. During 1992, the first attempt at Boys Don’t Cry was a short film project called Take It Like A Man. “‘I had saved up twelve thousand dollars - that was everything I had in the world,’ Peirce remembers.” (Martin, 2009, p. 24). Peirce explains that she was working two jobs whilst in grad school at Columbia and had managed to save up the money in an attempt to self fund the film. In 1995, when Take It Like A Man was made, the Columbia faculty nominated it for the Princess Grace Award and Peirce also received an Astrea Production Grant (arts.columbia, 2013), which helped her to fund the cost of developing the short film into the feature film that was Boys Don’t Cry.
Despite tight budgets, Independent cinema has always held a different set of values from those of the mainstream Hollywood. Location, for example, has always held a certain importance within Independent cinema. For Boys Don’t Cry Peirce had wanted to film in Nebraska where the incidents in the film took place - Peirce even attended the real life murder trials of John Lotter and Tom Nissen, who feature heavily in the film - but due to the budget, Texas became the primary filming location because it was cheaper. A sense of authenticity is constantly sought after in Independent films and a gritty type of realism became common for Independent projects (Hannon 2010), as it rebels against the mainstream Hollywood route of glitz and glamour (Dillion 2010), which used to provide the pathway to the escapism that the general public were looking for when they watched a film. Achieving this sense of realism was especially important for Peirce in the process of creating Boys Don’t Cry, as Brandon Teena was a real person, not just a character. For four weeks prior to filming, Peirce had Hilary Swank live as a boy, keeping a journal throughout the experience (The Advocate 1999). Before Swank was even cast, Peirce travelled to Falls City in Nebraska, which is where all the events of the rape and murder of Brandon Teena took place, where she herself decided to try and pass as a man in order to attain a deeper understanding of Brandon and how he might have felt; fear at the prospect of being found out, but the thrill of passing in public as who he truly was. Boys Don’t Cry won over twenty awards in both the film festival and industry awards setting, which goes to prove that this dedication for showing real people on screen truly paid off (Neimi 2006).
To summarise, the relationship between Independent cinema and mainstream Hollywood cinema is that although Independent cinema was born out of a need to distance itself from the mainstream, a beneficial working relationship has been established between the two sectors of the film industry. With Boys Don’t Cry as the case study, queer cinema has also been dissected to find that it holds highly positive connections to Independent cinema and negative associations with Hollywood. However it was the exploration of specifically Boys Don’t Cry’s production, funding, distribution and overall textual qualities which highlighted the differences that Independent cinema and Hollywood cinema maintain, but also where the two begin to overlap, resulting in an ever-changing relationship.
References
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