Gossip fest from Biskind (kind of his style) about Miramax, Sundance and various indie people in the '90s that makes a lot of people look bad--Harvey Weinstein and Robert Redford at the front of that list. I never liked Miramax and their whole schtick but now I really loathe ol' Harvey. What an ass.

I enjoyed reading, but its a lot of the same, even if i found it interesting. I feel like it needs an afterword though.

Excelente recuento de una época importante del cine estadounidense. Dos personajes emergen como los más interesantes, por lo menos tal y como los describe Biskind. Uno es Steven Soderbergh, que con su película 'Sexo Mentiras y Video' inicia, por lo menos oficialmente, la masificación del cine independiente y el subsiguiente interés de los grandes estudios por este. El otro es indudablemente Harvey Weinstein, a quien Biskind dibuja como un voraz y violento gangster del cine.

Very amusing description of the US independent film scene during the 1990s, especially of its business aspects. I am not sufficiently familiar with the field to judge each argument on its merits. In any case the notion that during the 90s there was an attempt to create a middle ground between the traditional independent film scene and large Hollywood studios, an attempt that eventually failed, makes sense.

Whilst somewhat lacking in the outrageousness and salacious detail of his previous book, 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls', this is a more than worthy follow-up. It details the rise and fall of 'indie movies', movies made outside of the studio system, often by unknown or first-time directors. Many of these movies were championed and sold at the Sundance Film Festival, which was initially set up to give these directors a pulpit and a place for their movies to be seen and sold. And many were bought by Harvey and Bob Weinstein's Miramix.

This book is really about these two organisations, Sundance and Miramax, and their role in first creating an atmosphere where indies filmmakers could flourish, and later, pressuring those same filmmakers into 'going commercial'. For many directors, their first movie was the only true 'indie' movie in their filmography, because once they'd had that first score, once they'd had a film hit the big time and their name become known, there was intense pressure on them to then make something big, something commercial, something that could draw on that cachet and make mega-bucks.

Slowly but surely, Sundance became a place for the studios to find the next big thing, and the indie world became almost a 'farm' for talent. In effect, Sundance sold out, betrayed what it was originally set up to nurture and protect. And Miramax moved away from the movies it had made its name with, edgy, daring, sexy movies like Pulp Fiction, and became just another studio, all the more so after it was bought out by Disney.

Way too much Weinstein.