[Editor's note: This post was originally published February 8, 2010.] You know a situation is dire when Gawker puts away the snark and gets serious. And that’s just what they did Friday, in a guest post by film industry expert Edward Jay Epstein in which the author asks the question, “Can Indie Movies Survive?” His thorough, well-considered response, which cites everything from the huge profits major studios need to project to purchase a movie to the rapidly disappearing world of independent distribution, pretty much amounts to “no.”
Reading Epstein’s piece, it occurred to us that while indie film may be in the midst of a crisis, indie music has never been stronger or more vibrant. The number of new and exciting bands out there seems to increase exponentially every few years, bigger groups like Animal Collective and Vampire Weekend are all over the Billboard charts and vinyl sales are growing every year. So what gives? Why is indie film dying while indie music thrives? We’ve listed our best guesses after the jump.
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The indie world rarely raises its flanneled ears to celebrity gossip — except when it involves their own kind. Within this sector of semi-musical obscurity, headlines like “Kirstie Alley Eats Own Dog…by Accident!” are replaced with “OMG M.I.A. is Preggers” or “Miley Cyrus Disses Radiohead.” The most recent talk of the town, however, is “Wavves Self-Destruct in Barcelona.” Wavves, the lo-fi superstars, rode the Pitchfork hype train to success this spring, all the way to Barcelona’s Primavera Festival. There, the band experienced, in the words of Pitchfork themselves, “the most epic onstage meltdown a band of their small size could conjure.” Read More »
Yes. Here it goes.
1. You fool! That’s not Advil… that’s Ratatat poisoning!
2. Do you have Cat Power? Or more importantly, have you walked your Dr. Dog lately?
3. Yo, I heard the Wolf Parade was sick last weekend… who knew murderous woodland creatures could be so organized?
4. Chicago’s Pitchfork Zoo opened today, but their Animal Collective is seriously lacking. What d-bag thought it would be a good idea to have only one Panda Bear? I give it a 7.4. Read More »
