Quentin Tarantino and the indie rebels who followed him changed Hollywood in the '90s -- but in the end, Hollywood also changed them.
BY ANDREW O'HEHIR | Talent isn't democratic and doesn't play fair. That's one of the things we already know about human existence -- after all, van Gogh was an insufferable pill and Picasso an egomaniacal womanizer -- but we keep trying to convince ourselves it isn't true. Certainly the lesson is driven home again and again in "Rebels on the Backlot," Sharon Waxman's admirably reported chronicle of the 1990s' indie-film wars that changed the culture of Hollywood, at least temporarily.
The more talented the young (or youngish) directors Waxman profiles are, it seems, the more obnoxious they are. Quentin Tarantino comes off as a ruthless social climber who has dropped all the friends who helped him when he was a struggling nobody, and won't take calls from his own mother. David O. Russell has infamously poor social skills, picks meaningless fights and is gratuitously mean to crew members on his shoots. Paul Thomas Anderson is a fathead control freak who treats any suggestion or criticism as an insult to his masterly creative vision.
Spike Jonze, while not as cantankerous as those three, comes off as an immature, insecure skate-punk prankster with little intellectual curiosity and a blissful ignorance of pre-"Star Wars" culture. This may be why his movies, "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation," seem so original -- he isn't imitating classic films of the past because he's never even seen them. Waxman reports that one day on the set of the former film Jonze took Malkovich aside to tell him he was overacting a scene. "I was getting a little Blanche there, wasn't I?" the star agreed. Jonze looked puzzled. "Blanche Dubois," responded Malkovich. "Tennessee Williams? 'A Streetcar Named Desire'? Blanche Dubois?" Jonze could only shrug; he had no idea what Malkovich was talking about. "What did you get me into?" Malkovich moaned to producer Steve Golin, who could only respond, "At least it won't be derivative."
The only filmmaker in Waxman's book who seems to be a truly smart and likable guy (and yes, they're all guys) is Steven Soderbergh. Is it an accident that Soderbergh (to my way of thinking) never had half the raw visionary talent of those other three, and looks more and more, at this point in his career, like an amiable, slightly eccentric Hollywood craftsman in the vein of Sydney Pollack or John Schlesinger? Soderbergh's unlikely rise-and-fall-and-rise saga -- from the early indie hit "sex, lies, and videotape" in 1989 to the total obscurity of "Kafka" and "Schizopolis" to his resurrection with "Out of Sight" and "Erin Brockovich" -- is a heartwarming tale set in a realm of ruthlessness, and he's stayed commendably loyal to his old film-student pals from Baton Rouge, La., several of whom still work for him. Furthermore, he's used his success to help produce breakthrough films by others, especially Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven" and George Clooney's "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind."
