A few nights ago, hanging out on my lovely rooftop, I met a filmmaker named David Rosfeld. We started talking about, you know, what I always end up talking about — the state of the independent film industry — and the next day I sent him a link to Mark Gill’s much-discussed Chicken Little statement, and received this articulate and inspiring response:

Actually, once I got past the bombast, he re-enforced a few things I
rarely say but actually think about indie film. Making these comments
is about like criticizing your own child, but none the less I feel
them. I think he alluded to a real problem, but that problem is not
so much distribution. We know the current and older models are really
dead. The biggest point I think he made is quality. For a long time
with the current distribution network, there has been room for indie
to also mean second rate. As long as you could find someone or some
company with deep pockets, you could get away with it. I hope that
doesn’t sound too harsh. But it seems indie producers and even
filmmakers have become too conservative.

I feel as though the films we make should stand up in the history of
art to anything ever made. There is no reason we shouldn’t work, or
at least strive to work on the level of Mozart, Shakespeare, Becket or
Melville. There is a resistance in indie film to great achievement
sometimes and that can no longer be supported.

Let’s take the Smiths for example. Not only were they left of center,
they were damn good. The albums that Morrissey and Marr created were
quirky and unlike anything we had heard. But they were also without
peer when it came down to the inventiveness of melody, the sonic
textures and the technical ability of Marr’s playing. There was no
slouching involved. And they weren’t for everyone, but they found a
solid audience.

I went to see Pavement once in college. They showed up to the
midwestern show, turned their backs to the audience and kind of sagged
through maybe fifty minutes of music and left. I decided to say fuck
you to them, in spite of enjoying their albums. Years later I saw
them in London and they played a better show, so so be it. I still
admire though a Bruce Springsteen who plays for three hours when he
doesn’t have to. That’s followed by several encores. Or how about
Morrissey? I saw him play in Oklahoma City a few years back. He
wasn’t on tour, he just played a few dates in the midwest to warm up
for South By Southwest. He played a long solid set to a small crowd
and gave it all. The band was really kicking it out. This I like.

I think indie film has suffered from a lack or even fear or heartfelt
ambition. Instead it’s an apology for Hollywood slickness. This is
the wrong idea.

I remember seeing the trailer for Billy the Kid a while back. I
watched it again today on the website. I was reminded by how much
work, how much curiosity and how much raw talent goes into making a
film on that level. This is what we need to strive for. It’s what I
sometimes fail to do, but what I hope to stay focused on.

So I believe in content. I believe in cutting out the champagne and
constructing realistic budgets and I believe there is an audience who
is starved for this. I also believe that this is the hardest thing.
Making engaging content is so much harder than figuring out a new
distribution model. Like chicken little, when we believe the sky is
falling, it’s actually just proof of our own inadequacies. But let’s
step up to the plate and do something great. Mankind ain’t dead yet.