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6. Run Lola Run: For those of you who say, yeah, you can do drama, documentary-style, and horror with indy, but not action films because they require too much special costs, here’s a high-intensity, high-suspense, blood-pumping movie that gets its “action” from the premise and the execution of the premise. Lola has a very limited amount of time to get something done or something she cares about will be endangered. Not only is the plot an action-based one (or action-demanding: that is, to execute it action is required), but the character is creativity-based. She must solve how to get through each obstacle to continue the plot.
7. The Celebration. (It was called “Festen” in Danish.) A 1998 film about a group of family members who congregate at a house on a father’s birthday. Family conflict and various relationships are the subject of the film. The budget of this film was $1.3 million, but how they spent that much on a small cast of people in a house I don’t know. You could shoot this for nothing.
This was the first film shot under the Dogma 95 set of 10 rules which strictened the indy requirements of film-making. Dogme 95 was proposed by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg (Celebratio is Vinterberg’s). The rules supported film-making that was cheap and stressed story, acting and theme.
8. Shadows. In 1959 the successful film and tv actor John Cassavettes, who had taken the money he’d made and opened up a theater and put out ads for limited time free membership, made a film that had been worked out organically at the theater called “Shadows.” The subject was one most of Hollywood wouldn’t have touched in 1959 (pre-civil rights movement): a black young woman starts dating white men, and what this means within her family.
Filmed on streets and in buildings, the premise and its demands keep getting intensified throughout the film. Cassavettes made several other pictures in this way. Using actors from his theater and “scripts” that had been worked out organically there.
At this point I don’t care what the other films are. The important ones are noted already.
9. My Own Private Idaho. Unforgettable scenes and based somewhat on some of Shakespeare’s better and more famous plays (those that revolve around the young king Henry IV), this film cost $2.6 million dollars. It has a star cast and was produced professionally. I would have enjoyed it just as much if it had no stars and was shot on a handheld video camera (so long as the stars were as magnetic as Phoenix, Reeves and the others). This film has a great script and some interesting happenings, some great shots and videography, some great acting, memorable characters and situations. This is a film not every kid could produce because it succeeds based on a lot of quality elements, but for those indy writer-filmmakers out there it may be an inspiration for what great writing and film-making can be in the independent — and alternative — genres.
It was shot in a lot of locations, both in America and in Italy, so you’d need at least the price of a few plane tickets to shoot something like it. Locations include motels, tenements, hotels, a city park, long prairie roads, and Roman outdoor architecture.
10. A bunch of films that you don’t need to watch if you know the ones already listed. For example, Withnail and I, a British film about some interesting characters who get into some interesting situations in the country. If the other films in this list hadn’t been made, I might cite this one. Slacker, a 1991 dialogue and normal-life film that preceded Clerks. Some other great films but maybe not seminal: Last Life In The Universe, Love & Pop, Lost in Translation, Drugstore Cowboy, Fargo.
11. Breathless. Yeah, I want to mention Breathless by Jean Luc Goddard. A lot of his films could be shot by anyone. This early one influenced us a ton.
12. Naked. I want to include this one too. Because it’s carried off excellent. Very deep and real characters, very good writing, and some laugh-out-loud humor. Cost almost $2 million to make but shot in houses, streets, empty buildings at night, and a lot of the dialogue is improvised.
A few characters and shot in city streets, apartments, cars driving down the road.
The films I listed aren’t the MOST SUCCESSFUL Indy films or the Cheapest Successful Indy Films That Succeeded. They are the films that anybody could have made.
