Who Needs Film School, Anyway?

PW: What attracted you to write about maverick filmmakers [in Rebels on the Backlot, click here to read the review]?

Sharon Waxman: Once you start seeing movies continuously, you can't help noticing how bad most of them are. I wanted to write a book and understand why Hollywood makes such mediocre films. Then I realized that an exciting new group who aspired to make great movies—not Scooby Doo, not a sequel to whatever Tom Clancy thing was already done—were emerging toward the end of the 1990s, and they were battling a corporate system, a Hollywood bought up by big corporations. If you're a studio, you're trying to make movies that fill the pipeline and make a profit. I started studying the two conflicting objectives.

PW: Why do you think these young filmmakers are so attracted to violent content?

SW: It's the next evolutionary step, the need for the next generation to redefine and press the boundaries beyond what the last one did. A number of filmmakers in the book have said they regret it, and don't want to do violence anymore. It's part of a youth thing, a youthful impulse, until you're a bit older and wiser.

PW: Would you say all of them have David Fincher's mentality: "Take me or leave me. My way or the highway"?

SW: No. Steven Soderbergh is much more accommodating, more savvy in that way. He can manipulate people to get what he wants, and he works in a more intellect-combative way with the studios. He doesn't view studios as the enemy, the way Fincher does.

PW: None of these directors went to film school.

SW: You're right. And two of them didn't even finish high school. I think film school can be useful, but these guys were born with some kind of gift, a drive to match it, and every day they were picking up a camera and making movies from the age of seven or eight. That's the most indicative and important thing. I think that not going [to film school] liberated them from feeling the weight of filmmakers before them.

PW: What's your feeling about the pre-testing of movies, the testing that initially made executives believe Boogie Nights would be a disaster?

SW: For a movie that's not conventional, marketing research can hurt a film. You sit down and show a test of Being John Malkovich to random sample audiences, and a lot of them are not going to have any idea of what they're seeing. With a movie like Boogie Nights, they told people it was a movie about sex. Actually, it was a heavy drama, set in the porn industry. It's a dangerous way to go about making great movies.

PW: Do you think most of these directors will sell out to the big studios, become "fat and happy," or will they keep their early edge?

SW: These guys are going to continue; they're at the height of their filmmaking powers. Every studio would be thrilled to make movies with them. Already, though, the edge has dulled on some of them. I don't think you can help that. You're surrounded by people who say everything you do is brilliant, and you start to believe it. But I'm hoping. I'm taking the optimistic view.