Strong Bad Explains Independent Film
Filed under: Independent, Fandom, Home Entertainment, Movie Marketing, Trailers and Clips
Independent film isn't really independent film anymore. We've got big studios who created "independent" arms to bank on that slice of cinema, and we've seen indie films with budgets in the bazillions. (Or, at least, the millions.) It's gotten to the point where true home-grown fare will have to find a new moniker to make their own, or fight to the death to reclaim "independent" from the monied studio types. But for now, we've just got confusion ... and Strong Bad to clear things up.It's been a while since I sat down and watched the snarky animated icon's e-mail videos, and I'm thinking it's time to catch up. Ex-Cinematical scribe Eric Kohn's Twitter alerted me to this gem from the Homestar Runner camp, where Strong Bad talks film festivals, and more specifically, the divide between "independent" and "indie" films. It's awesome.
To Strong Bad, those two names are "locked in a civil war." Strong Sad's "independent" ways come from the "lifer, artist type" who might even go so far as to make a "faux-money" production (the use of Monopoly money for cash). Pom Pom, meanwhile, is the "indie" dude -- "slicker, catchier" to the young 20-somethings, the "tech-savvy hipster." From there, Strong Bad talks about the artistic leaps Strong Sad makes for his art, while Pom Pom gets busy with a faux-hand-made feature with catchy names and pencil-drawn opening credits.
Snarky, it most definitely is -- but it also rings so very true.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-26-2009 @ 6:35AM
Nick said...
Interesting to note that Matt Chapman (creator of Home Star Runner) is/was friends with David Gordon Green and apperared in a cameo in Green's "All the Real Girls." What he says about Indie/Independent films could both apply to Green. "All the Real Girls" does infact take place a small factory town, and has characters with considerable quirks. Granted outside of "Pineapple Express" and "Your Highness," Green's budgets and grosses have been tiny, buy he's certainly made movies with stars working for scale. He's also made five distinct, great films, but I digress.
"Juno" seemed an obvious target of derision on the indie side, but hope he was refering more to "Garden State" than "Synecdoche, New York" with the city/state thing.
I realize it's an animated lucha libre responding to an e-mail, but these issues need to be raised.
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