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The Myth of The $7,000 Movie

Photo by Brian Perkinson

Producer as Video Clear: John Pierson

Producer John Pierson deflates some independent filmmakers and pumps himself up in the process

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Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema
By John Pierson
A Miramax Book/Hyperion; 371 pages; $22.95 cloth.

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Reviewed by Richard von Busack

Remember that old saying about how success has 1,000 fathers? John Pierson is one of those fathers. As a producer's representative--a liaison between independent filmmakers and the big studios--Pierson was present at the transformation of various ultra-low-budget independent films into national art-house phenomena.

He was there to invest $10,000 in She's Gotta Have It--hence Spike Lee's lukewarm endorsement on the back cover of Pierson's Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes. (The book is valuable, in Lee's perspective, because Lee's wife never got to meet "the struggling person that was Spike Lee ten years ago. ... She said she wished she knew me then.") Pierson went on to other feats, including shepherding Slacker, Go Fish and Amongst Friends from the film-festival circuit to video shelves near you. His biggest deal was brokering the $3 million payoff to Michael Moore from Warner Bros. for Roger & Me.

Pierson got his start as a movie programmer at some of the most eclectic art houses in Manhattan, picking films to run in revival (a dream bill for him was the Fritz Lang and James Bond pairing of You Only Live Once and You Only Live Twice). When the VCR all but killed off the repertory houses, Pierson began investing in selected independent movies, and has been doing so ever since, bringing parties together over contracts.

He has worked with the new generation of independent moviemakers, the ones bringing what used to be art-house fare into mainstream theaters. Pierson's own reminiscences alternate with excerpts from a conversation with former protégé Kevin Smith, director of Clerks (and, less memorably, Mallrats). On the credits for Clerks, Smith thanked Richard Linklater (Slackers), Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise) and Hal Hartley (Amateur) as his own guides, but he's especially indebted to Pierson. "That's what's so cool about John Pierson, he makes you feel so important," Smith says in a journal entry faithfully reprinted here.

Pierson obviously isn't one to hide his light under a popcorn tub: "I've been called a lot of peculiar things in print--guru, dealmeister, scout, shaman, veteran, angel." Some of his past associates might disagree about Pierson's celestial qualities, particularly those he once encouraged and changed his mind about. His former client Rob Weiss, of the suburban gangster film Amongst Friends, is derided for his high-handedness, his white-gangsta mannerisms and his profligacy. Pierson further revenges himself on "Vanilla" Weiss by reprinting a large portion of a very nasty interview with Weiss by Matt Zoller Seitz of the Dallas Observer.

Pierson's aim is ostensibly not revenge; his purpose is "to portray, in a reasonable fashion, the truth about profitability." Through budgets and deal memos reprinted here, Pierson thoroughly squashes the myth of the $7,000 movie. (While it's true that El Mariachi was brought in for that figure, it needed sound and visual cleanups that added three more digits to the budget.)

The budgets reproduced here are informative, and so are the basic tips to young filmmakers: Don't make movies about movies. Don't get your expectations of money too high. Don't flaunt your budgets as the lowest ever, lest you undercut yourself when the bidding starts. Pierson also raises an interesting point about American independent film: Could something like Pulp Fiction, high-budget and with name stars, really be considered independent?

Pierson can be funny at times, as when he describes a film-festival panel session during which a young director objects to being described as part of the "TV generation" but then goes on to discuss with his other filmmakers the nuances of The Brady Bunch. Unfortunately, Pierson is a clumsy, haphazard writer. "It's often said that life is what happens when you're making other plans," he offers at one point.

The book is swollen with cascades of dropped names, and Pierson exhibits the money-man's traditional contempt for films that didn't perform at the box office, even first-rate independent efforts such as To Sleep With Anger and Spanking the Monkey.

Even while getting what you need from this book, you pay for it by being in the presence of a career self-aggrandizer, so smug that he isn't even shaken when Smith describes what it is that Pierson actually does: "In essence, you're a very selective, very finicky video clerk." The difference is that a video clerk doesn't have a personal financial stake in what he rents. This advertisement for himself is more of a typically smart fiscal move by Pierson than "a tour across a decade of independent cinema."

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