How independent cinema ruled the 1990s
Some of the 21st century’s most well-known directors emerged from the independent cinema scene of the 1990s. From Quentin Tarantino to David Fincher, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater, a number of acclaimed filmmakers all got their start outside of the studio system, making a string of the decade’s most beloved and highly-regarded movies.
The 1990s witnessed a new kind of filmmaking materialise, one which challenged the attitudes of big-budget productions by showcasing violence, sex, and outsider culture in a way that hadn’t been successful since the 1970s. Essentially, the ’90s indie cinema boom mirrored the New Hollywood movement that completely changed the industry two decades prior.
Fed up with the control of studios, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, a young, new crop of directors took inspiration from foreign and arthouse cinema, singlehandedly transforming Hollywood with their dedicated and innovative approach to filmmaking. Movies like Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, Harold and Maude, and The Graduate were prominent examples of this new movement’s preoccupation with working against the cinematic status quo. These films were often graphic and depicted figures at odds with society, all while featuring unconventional filming and editing techniques.
However, two members of the New Hollywood movement accidentally gave blockbusters and franchises the chance to become the dominant mode of cinema – George Lucas and Steven Speilberg. With their late 1970s and early 1980s movies like Jaws, Star Wars and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, these directors found such astonishing success that a new wave of cinema began, and its effects are strikingly obvious today with the cult of Marvel and D.C. Sequels, spin-offs and prequels gained popularity, with all of the highest-grossing films falling of the era into the blockbuster or franchise category.
However, as the ’90s began, with movements such as grunge gaining popularity among young people, there was a clear need for movies to follow in a similar suit – to become conduits for expressing attitudes and styles that existed out of the mainstream. Everything changed with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s debut feature, Reservoir Dogs, in 1992, which became a huge success despite its small budget. The movie had its own idiosyncratic style, rife with pop culture references, quirky dialogue, memorable characters and intense violence.
According to Jami Bernard, who saw the film’s first screening, “[Audiences] didn’t know what to make of it. It’s like the first silent movie when audiences saw the train coming toward the camera and scattered.” After the success of the film, Tarantino made his indie flick Pulp Fiction, which grossed $213.9million against a budget of $8m. This was a watershed moment for independent filmmaking – never before had a movie made on such a small budget become so successful.
Independent cinema clearly had the potential to be more than a cheaply-made artsy drama with no mainstream appeal. If the success of Pulp Fiction tells us anything, it’s that audiences wanted to watch something that differed from the conventions of popular filmmaking typically fostered by studios. Tarantino’s movie was quintessentially ‘cool’, introducing non-cinephiles to techniques previously championed almost exclusively by arthouse filmmakers.
Subsequently, Tarantino’s success made it easier for independent filmmakers to be taken seriously, although this also led to the commodification of indie cinema, welcoming its inevitable downfall in the 2000s. Still, the 1990s was a time of great cinematic experimentation, with audiences lapping up independent movies that went against the grain. As young people found themselves increasingly disillusioned with society, many independent movies offered up forms of escapism through depictions of violence and sex or relatability in their exploration of issues such as gender, sexuality and youth culture.
The ‘90s saw the emergence of the New Queer Cinema movement, with independent filmmakers like Gregg Araki, Cheryl Dunye and Todd Haynes creating low-budget movies that gave visibility to marginalised groups and explored taboo topics such as AIDs and homophobia. With movies like The Living End and his ‘Teenage Apocalypse’ trilogy (Totally Fucked Up; Nowhere; The Doom Generation), Araki captured the state of ‘90s America through the eyes of cynical teenagers perfectly. Moreover, Duyne’s landmark independent film, The Watermelon Woman, became the first movie made by a black lesbian. Evidently, indie filmmaking gave marginalised filmmakers a voice – after all, big studios weren’t interested in such stories. But many audiences were, and still are.
An interest in youth culture saw the rise of filmmakers like Sofia Coppola, whose debut, The Virgin Suicides, is now one of the most coveted indie pictures of the decade. Elsewhere, Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith were tracking the lives of aimless slackers with refreshing authenticity through movies like Slackers and Clerks, respectively, and Larry Clark and Harmony Korine depicted teenagers navigating the AIDs crisis with Kids. Meanwhile, Todd Solondz created a cult classic with Welcome to the Dollhouse, centring around an unpopular, eccentric young girl, and Paul Thomas Anderson carved out a hugely successful indie career with movies like Hard Eight and Boogie Nights.
Without the oppressive backing of a studio system, many independent filmmakers challenged cinematic norms and provided audiences with grittier, unconventional narratives during the 1990s. Whether these movies were fuelled by underrepresented groups, intense violence or eccentric humour, or possessed distinctively low-budget or unconventional aesthetics, their success proved that audiences were in need of such stories. However, just as the ‘80s gave rise to blockbusters, the indie boom died out by the following decade after studios took advantage of the money to be made from these quirky indie pictures.