Sundance Kids How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood

Introduction: Pizza Knights, F-64 and The Mild Bunch Too many people have made a couple of good movies and burned out. The truth is, studios know how to make a successful film, one that works at the box office. Nobody believes in the maverick anymore. Rod Lurie1 Imagine the scene: a select club has gathered in Los Angeles to watch a private screening of Ulu Grosbard's Straight Time. This 1978 story of a burglar who attempts to reform keeps its viewers' rapt attention. Afterwards, its star, Dustin Hoffman, is on hand to take questions and talk about his time making it. The avid listeners are all Hollywood filmmakers, men and women working inside the studio system. They include David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson, Kimberly Peirce and Alexander Payne. Meeting once a month, they call themselves 'Pizza Knights'. Indebted to the filmmakers who inspired them as they grew up, they pay homage twelve times a year. They are the spiritual descendants of the so-called maverick filmmakers of 1970s Hollywood. They still believe, even if nobody else does. This book centres on the question: 'Are we returning to an age where formerly independent directors are using studio funds to further their own idiosyncratic vision?' In other words, is this the dawn of New Hollywood Part II? As the title of this book suggests, many of the contemporary filmmakers under consideration here have been connected to Robert Redford's Sundance Institute. For most like Alexander Payne, Bryan Singer, Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, David O. Russell or Steven Soderbergh it is with a film at the festival. Then there is Wes Anderson, whose debut feature began life as a short film showcased there. For others, like Kimberly Peirce or Paul Thomas Anderson, their debuts began life in the workshops of the Institute. Many of them flunked college and eschewed film school; it was Sundance that gave them their education. That said, David Fincher and Spike Jonze have never been anywhere near the snowy heights of Park City (at least not with a film). Both stem from a commercials/music video background. But these two Pizza Knights, as we shall see, are honorary Sundance Kids. Both were involved with the development of a short-lived filmmaking collective called F-64. Together with an article entitled 'The Mild Bunch', published in The Hollywood Reporter in 2002, it gave the inspiration for this book. But more of that later. A Brief History of Sundance Formed on the cusp of 1980, the Sundance Institute was the brainchild of Hollywood golden-boy Robert Redford. His plan was to lay the groundwork for an organization that would nurture independent filmmaking talent. Based in the wilds of Utah, where he had bought some land in the mid-1960s, it was named after his outlaw from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Redford, positioning himself incorrectly or otherwise as a true Hollywood maverick, was at the forefront of a new era in American cinema. The Institute quickly became known for its June Laboratory, which brought independent filmmakers together with talent from Hollywood. As it evolved, other events included an annual producers' conference, a playwrights' lab and even a children's theatre. The most high-profile face of the Institute was the film festival. Taking over the ailing United States Film Festival in 1984, Sundance to call it by its abbreviated nameMottram, James is the author of 'Sundance Kids How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood', published 2007 under ISBN 9780865479678 and ISBN 0865479674.