I think when you make something that is non-mainstream and people don't have automatic way of consuming, like you don't have a big star, or a hit song or marketing money then you need to find some way to make audience aware of your film.
Being an indie queen, people think I have all these choices. Like I've just been sitting around waiting for the best indie film that I deem acceptable.
There's something very cool about that indie spirit that I try to hang on to even now with the bigger films that I'm working on.
If I've got a script, you think I'll go to Hollywood to get money? I was bored with the people around me, so I just created my own movie, my own character. I'm the story of my own movie, and you know what? My movie is going to be better.
I definitely think independent film is very exciting, and you get to sometimes take bigger risks. So that's always a challenge and something that I look forward to.
Right now my career is totally schizophrenic, because when an American production like Hitchcock Presents asks to see my work I would never dream of showing them my independent films.
The film division at Amazon is made up of true cineastes who love movies and really want to try and provide opportunity for independent film visions to find their footing in a vastly shifting market. They love cinema.
If you want to be in Hollywood, and if you want to make big international movies, you have to be able to make movies that don't have anything to do with social status or politics. To limit yourself to just do these little small movies and call it black cinema itself is a mistake to me.
There's a big difference between the independent film world and the Hollywood film world, and I don't know that I understood that until I got into certain rooms, and people's faces go blank when you talk about Sundance.
When I'm making a big movie, I miss and appreciate all the subtleties that come with making a smaller film that is more intimate, more personal.
In the '80s, I can't say that Amy and I were aware of an independent film community. We could only get a certain amount of money for our pictures, which made them low budget movies, but they were distributed through studios.
The only reason I ever do an independent film is that I believe in it, and I think it has something special to offer. I'm certainly not doing it to be a millionaire.
I have a film I want to direct. Gena Rowlands was going to do it with me a long time ago. It's about an older woman who's running a ranch in the west the old fashioned way.
I'm a person who likes these sort of movies... sad but moving 'art movies' that normally are at a festival and then they go to a small art house theater and disappear.
Newlyweds shooting budget: 5k for actors, 2k insurance, 2k food and drink. 9k in the can. We only shot 12 days. That's how to make an independent film.
'Tangerine' was less than half the budget of 'Starlet,' and 'Starlet' was already a microbudget film. A director always wants more time, and we had a limited amount of resources.
We made this movie for $17, and nobody got anything. So it never dawned on me that we would get real people.
There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
I'm very excited about is that my son Scott is a director and he just finished his first picture. It's called "Lucky 13", it's a low budget picture, it stars Jeremy Dillon, Daryl Hannah and Jami Gertz.
I think there are advantages to different scales of filmmaking. You wouldn't want to do just one thing.
I love the energy of an independent film set. No one is there for the money. Everyone is there 'cause they really want to be there. It makes all the difference in the world. It's without ego and agenda, other than just wanting to fulfill a creative dream.
Saw' was a film that James Wan and I came up with back in Australia and we were just hoping anyone, literally, anyone would make that film and if nobody would give us the money we were going to shoot it in a garage somewhere.
I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff.
Indie movies got co-opted by the studio system. The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful.
Doing the big budget films really makes you appreciate doing movies like Shelter. It's because this is like doing theater, you just have to hit the ground running
