Before "500 Days of Summer" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, director Marc Webb admitted to a packed theater that he had once worked as a volunteer at the fest when he was a senior in high school, valet parking cars for Sundance founder Robert Redford. A few months later, Webb's directorial debut is already generating the type of buzz typically reserved for Hollywood veterans. After its premiere at Sundance, the film was hailed by Variety as one that could prove to be a "real commercial winner with young audiences," furthering Fox Searchlight's development of "something akin to such a style, or at least a keen feel for the tastes of its bright and youthful niche audience."
"500 Days," which opens July 17, tells the story of a young man who writes greeting cards (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who becomes smitten with his co-worker (Zooey Deschanel). Webb's background is as a music video director -- he won a few MTV VMA's for his work for bands like the All-American Rejects and Weezer. He talked to TheWrap about overcoming the stigma of being a first-time director, the importance of film festivals and what the heck the word "indie" means. 
What was it like being aligned with Fox Searchlight after the recent success of their indie darling "Slumdog Millionaire?"
We developed the movie with them, and when we shot the film they let us do what we wanted. They trade paying you a lot of money for creative control, so films that come out of there tend to be filmmaker-driven. We collaborated with them and we had disagreements, but I was never forced or coerced into something I thought was a bad idea. But Fox Searchlight is not an independent entity. It's owned by News Corp and Rupert Murdoch, and that's who has autonomy. So it's not really an indie movie in the strictest sense of the word.
What does "indie" even mean nowadays?
Indie is a fake word. I don't even know what it means. I think to others, it means low-budget. To me, it's sort of insulting. It's like the word "hipster" --- no one will claim to be a hipster, and if they do, you should punch them in the face.
Yikes. Are there any positive connotations to the word?
Indie comes from independent -- a little movie that people find money to make that's outside of the studio system. Searchlight was generated because there was a demand for these smaller movies that have a soul and a spirit that tends to appeal to a smaller group of people.
Even though the film was with Fox Searchlight when it debuted at Sundance earlier this year, it was the talk of the festival. In what way can films still benefit from festivals when they already have distribution set?
I think film festivals are hugely important, especially now in the days of the Internet. It gives you a platform to showcase smaller films that don't contain huge movie stars.
