Parker Posey Laments Loss of the True Indie Movie Era
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlEDxknMn2c
Parker Posey starred in 32 independent movies throughout the 1990s and became the leading face of small budget, creative films. Nearly 22 years since her first major role in a feature film, 1993’s “Dazed and Confused,” the 46-year-old says that the independent film movement as she knew it is long gone, infiltrated by Hollywood heavy hitters and studios that wield influence to control how projects are developed and feted for moviegoers.
“I was called ‘Queen of the Indies’ by Time magazine (1997),” she tells Made in Hollywood. “Around that time, the whole [industry] changed — a kind of a studio-indie film, a stindie kind of formed.”
“Financers looked at movie stars whose films made lots of money that they would cast, so bigger stars were also looking at independent directors because that was where the good material was. And then Hollywood movies became more action-franchise — so more movies based on cartoons or superheroes became popular as the true independent movie with the auteur director-writer-producer able to cast who he wants in the movies was lost.”
She continues: “The producers would say, ‘you have to have these actors in your film to get financing or you can’t get your movie made,’ so just the way movies are made changed.”
Though the rest of the industry has changed dramatically, it’s still business as usual for Woody Allen. In his latest project, the writer-director continues his time-tested method of handpicking his cast in “Irrational Man,” of which Posey stars opposite Joaquin Phoenix and his budding muse Emma Stone.
The dark comedy sees Posey as Rita, a married chemistry professor at a small town Rhode Island college who begins an affair with Abe, played by Phoenix, the school’s new philosophy professor who turns to violence to renew his passion for life. Stone re-teams with Allen, following last year’s “Magic in the Moonlight,” as college student Jill, who finds romance with her professor Abe.
“Irrational Man” lands in theaters on Friday. Watch the trailer below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP8mPkyBntw
