In the early ’90s, according to a story that has now become mythologized in memory, Disney executives asked the actress Sarah Polley, who was 12 at the time, to remove a peace sign badge he was wearing. When she refused, Disney blacklisted her from him. And Polley became a political activist, and director of independent films.
He worked with Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Hal Hartley before he was 22. She and then she would become the director of “Take This Waltz,” with Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen; “Stories We Tell,” a critically acclaimed documentary that examined family secrets in Polley’s own childhood; and “Alias Grace”, the novel by Margaret Atwood, among others. But that would be old history. Last month came the announcement that Polley would be taking over the new “live-action” Bambi reboot following in the footsteps of Greta Gerwig with “Barbie.”
Gerwig, who emerged a few years after Polley, was So independent that his films didn’t even go to Sundance, but to South by Southwest. He was so independent that when he moved from microbudget films to a scripted film with Noah Baumbach (“Greenberg,” in 2010), the British newspaper The Guardian called it “his first steps into the mainstream.”
“Greenberg” was made with a budget of $25 million, which it did not recover. But now Gerwig comes from making “Barbie” for the film branch of the megacorporation Mattel, with a budget of 145 million dollars and a collection that exceeded 1.4 billion worldwide. Does Gerwig’s move toward the mainstream sound more like a “sellout”?
Gerwig and Polley are far from the only directors who have moved in that direction recently: Barry Jenkins, for example, already worked on the sequel to “The Lion King” for Disney. And Mattel is looking for other directors with “soul” to continue in the same vein, with films based on the dinosaur Barney and He-Man (see box).
Awards
Jenkins’ first feature, “Medicine for Melancholy,” also premiered at ultra-low budget South by Southwest in 2008, the same year Gerwig debuted her directorial debut there: “Nights and Weekends,” co-directed with Joe Swanberg, almost 10 years before she was nominated for Oscar with “Lady Bird.”
Jenkins, who won the Oscar for best picture in 2017 with “Moonlight”, a $1.5 million independent film that earned eight nominations, is now behind “Mufasa,” father of Simba, the protagonist of “The Lion King.” A prequel to the live action version. Would this be a triumph for the industry or completely the other way around? Along with the new Bambi and Lion King movies, Disney has a slew of reboots of its old intellectual property. Even includes a new version of The Aristocats by Questlove (stage name of Ahmir Thompson), the director of the independent documentary “Summer of Soul.”
Mattel and Disney, two huge corporations, used to represent everything these directors opposed. But as Groucho Marx once joked: “These are my principles, if you don’t like them I have others.” A recent article about Barbie in the New Yorker quoted Gerwig’s own agent: “Is it fantastic that our great actors and creative filmmakers live in a world where gigantic changes can only happen around consumer content? Or with mass produced products? I don’t know. But that’s business.” The thing is that even the concept of “selling out” has lost volume in the cultural debate.
That Gerwig explains that she was influenced by directors like Max Ophüls and Jacques Tati, as if that conferred greater legitimacy to his film about a hypersexualized doll, is nonsense. But the idea that Barbie dolls are somehow harmful also seems, in the current climate, as stagnant as the concept of selling out.
The prevailing thought would seem to be: “The bad guys won“We should all accept it.” “Since we are all hypersexualized anyway, we might as well do it in a more egalitarian way.” And “since big corporations rule everything now, we might as well get artistically talented people to be the face of their product.”
On balance, Barbie will most likely be as good and creative a movie as possible under the circumstances, with the temerity to lightly poke fun at the doll and its billionaire backers.
Strikes
The recent strikes by writers and actors in the United States, however, show that selling out is not just a matter of personal ethics, but a concern for the entire industry. A director’s decision to align himself with these Goliat of entertainment has consequences: it makes money for the big guys, as opposed to fostering an industry where smaller films and creators have more opportunities.
Activist and “Don’t Look Up” screenwriter David Sirota recently commented: “A quick reminder that literally not a single human being would pay money to see a movie or television show written and performed by Bob Iger (ed: the billionaire CEO of Disney). Which means the resources that pay his million-dollar salary are generated by writers and actors, not him.”
For his part, the former favorite of independent cinema Mark Ruffalo, now known for being the Incredible Hulk in the Marvel universe for Disney, tweeted: “How about we all jump into independent filmmaking now?” The above in reference to the fact that certain independent films can exceptionally continue to be filmed with the striking Sag-Aftra union. But the thing is, Ruffalo could always have made indie films. After all, that’s where he got his start, under the wing of directors like Kenneth Lonergan, and where many of his colleagues still ply his trade. But his most recent filmography has generated billions for Disney, through Marvel.
Of course, creators must take advantage of every opportunity that they can to create, within an increasingly committed industry. But personal responsibility still exists, and individual actions have a ripple effect. The impact of the current strikes on the industry remains to be seen; perhaps they will lead to a resurgence of independent cinema, as a fight against monopolies and the dominance of the intellectual property model. Meanwhile, in a changing world for cinema, the fight for the soul of cinema continues.
by RN
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