(narrator) with "reservoir dogs," quentin tarantino's use of sharp dialogue and graphic violence created a sensation at the 1992 cannes, turino and sundance film festivals. i just didn't think i was ever going to deal my way in. "you know, we're going to take a chance on you, kid." i just never thought that would ever happen. so out of frustration, i wrote "reservoir dogs," i had just sold a script so i decided to take that money and make the movie with that. i was going to shoot "reservoir dogs" for $30,000, 16-millimeter, black and white. that's why it takes place in one room. i begged him and begged him to let me raise more money, and he refused. no, no, no, no, i've heard that before, forget it, no way. no one's ever going to give me a chance and no. and he was saying this to me, i'm like, oh, man, but just let me, like, go raise some money, please. and finally after a long time of negotiating, he goes, "all right, give me two months with it.

you can wait three months to make your home movie." and i go, "well, okay, 2 months." in two months we got it going. i'm going to die, i know it! oh, excuse me, i didn't realize you had a degree in medicine. uh, uh... are you a doctor? are you a doctor? answer me please, are you a doctor? huh? no, i'm not, i'm not. so you admit you don't know what you're talking about. so if you're through giving me your amateur opinion, slide back and listen to the news, i'm taking you back. joe's going to get you a doctor and the doctor will fix you up. (harvey keitel) it's a film that hollywood did not want to make. quentin was going to give up directing the script, because of all the difficulty in raising the funding. and i urged him to direct it. i wanted him to direct it, because in the text his talent was so vivid to me that i felt he should direct it and i didn't want to do it

unless he directed it. the way i write, i get the characters talking. and they just start talking to each other and i'm like a court reporter, just writing it down. and they just get it going. and so since this was basically almost like a play as far as like the way they dealt with each other, they wrote it. (quentin tarantino) this is my quickest script, i wrote it in about 3 weeks. (man) if i'd known how you are i'd never have worked with you. are you going to bark all day, little doggie? or are you going to bite? what was that? i'm sorry, i didn't catch it. would you repeat it? are you going to bark all day, or are you going to bite? i got involved in helping quentin with the casting, which an actor of my experience should do for a young director, a first-time director. so i read with a lot of people and all that. and then i wanted quentin to see all the actors he could

to make the best choices he could. there wasn't money in the budget to finance a trip to new york to see new york actors, so i financed that. to me, if it was good acting and it was a clever dialogue and good writing or whatever, it would have been a failure, if it hadn't worked as far as the film going to a projector. (screeching tires) (gunfire) (quentin tarantino) it's cool because i get to be both actor and director. actually, i don't like most movies directed by actors. there's no cinema involved, they're all touchie-feelie. i like cinema. my heroes are brian de palma, sergio leone, mario bava, martin scorsese, nicholas ray, people like that. sam fuller. cinema guys.

ever listen to k-billy's "super sounds of the 70s"? violence in movies doesn't bother me at all. saying you don't like violence in movies is like saying you don't like tap-dancing in movies. it's a very cinematic thing, and you may not like it, but it's not up for questioning, you can do anything. ♪ i gotta feelin' ♪ somethin' ain't right ♪ i'm so scared ♪ i guess i'll fall ♪ off my chair ♪ an' i'm wonderin' how ♪ i'll get down the stairs ♪ clowns to the left of me ♪ jokers to the right ♪ here i am ♪ stuck in the middle ♪ with you ♪ hmmmmm! ♪ an' i'm wonderin' what ♪ it is you will do ♪ it's so hard ♪ to keep the smile ♪ from my face ♪ (man) hold still! (quentin tarantino) that was one of the only scenes that i actually shot two ways. i did another shot where the camera was behind the cop,

as michael straddles him and cuts off the ear. because i wanted to be sure about which way to go. in the rushes, the one where michael is on top and saws it off on screen, that was the powerful one. that was the one where we were, oh, wow, we gotta use that one. that's the one. but in the movie, where the camera pans away, that was the more powerful one. you could dismiss the other one because of its shock value. it was easier to explain away. the other one where your imagination takes it is the one that disturbs people. i wanted it to be disturbing. everyone talks about the violence scene in "dogs" as, god, it's just unbearable, people walk out and so on. when i saw it, women just left in droves at that scene. but it does create a selling point. and i think that something people perhaps overlook a bit in this kind of rarefied world of american art cinema, independent cinema is that there still has to be something

to sell in them and that's exploitable. (narrator) while tarantino uses the spectacle of violence to propel his story forward, in "one false move," carl franklin portrays violence in a different way. i wanted people to experience a loss of humanity, the invasion of humanity, which is what happens when somebody dies, you know, somebody who was alive, somebody who had dreams, somebody who was loved, is not here anymore. and there are people who mourn that loss. there is a chunk of humanity that suddenly is gone. and there's a numbing kind of a feeling. it's not an exciting thing that somebody's dead, you know. and there's an absence. and i wanted to depict that. there's coke in the kitchen. take the money and the coke. (carl franklin) we shot it wide so you can see the perpetrator and you could see the victim.

and you could see the response of the perpetrator. and you could see the response of the people who cared about the victim, all of that was in the frame. (yelling and screaming) (carl franklin) i didn't write the script, but to accept the screenplay, you have to accept your own representation of violence. and if it is a horrid one, then you got to communicate it. the difference between sort of mindless hollywood violence and the kind of violence you occasionally confront in these independent films, "one false move," maybe "reservoir dogs," is that the artists putting these sequences on, that make you feel the horror and/or really make you think about what this means, it can really justify what they're putting on the screen. (carl franklin) we wanted to somehow break the genre. we didn't want it to be a conventional hollywood crime. slow down, ray. don't panic.

he recognized me back there, man, i know he did. if he recognized you, he'd arrest you in the store. he was just looking us over. white boy and a nigger girl in texas, that's all it is. (carl franklin) the characters weren't all good or all bad, they were flawed. i'm going to pull 'em over. and with that principle kind of established that this was a world where people had good and bad sides and where evil was not as clearly defined or as simple as it normally is in a hollywood film, that created a lot of room to interpret and to do a lot of human inner-character work. y'all want some rolls? (carl franklin) the fact that race was not the foremost issue in the film was in the writing, but it also coincided with my own view of racial problems that we have in the world. i hope to hell he does show his heinie up there, that piece of white trash and them two niggers are --

ow, shirley, you nearly broke my -- arnie, pass me them pickles, will you? most of the time people don't call me names, or confront me, people who are racist. but they'll do other things. and it's the same thing. in "one false move," pluto's not going to say, "i don't like the relationship of you and ray" to fantasia but you'll see it in his responses and his looks. we can buy all the blow we want when we get there. we'll be safe. pluto will take care of us. we'll be safe, baby. i have had offers, several offers from the studios wanting me to do things that are very hollywood, and really slick.

and it somehow escapes me as to why they've come to me. i don't know what they saw in the movie that would make them think that i can do those films, or that i would want to do those kinds of films. (slow percussion music playing) (julie dash) "daughters of the dust" is based upon african deities, so the structure unravels and the story reveals itself in a very west african way. in the way an african rio would recount and recall and retell his family's history. i was trying to shoot in tableaux that people would remember to redefine african-americans,

specifically african women, in historical drama. (african woman) when i was a child, mother cut this from her hair before she was sold away from me. now i add on my own hair, there must be a bond, a connection. i wrote "daughters of the dust" while i was a student at afi. and they marked a big "no" across it. and years later, after i had done "illusions" i started pitching this story to studio executives, because they kept saying, "oh, we're really interested in seeing how independents can make these films on such low budgets." so i pitched "daughters of the dust." and they said, "oh, um, is it like 'sounder'?" "is it like anything -- is it like 'the color purple'?" and i said, "no, it's something we've never seen before."

and they kind of balked -- one of them even told me, "well, we don't do anything that we've never seen before." (todd mccarthy) if your film is something like "daughters of the dust," which is a very particular, special kind of film, that's the kind of film to make outside the system, because as soon as hollywood gets involved, they're going to want more of a story, they're going to want name actors. they're going to want some kind of a really strong narrative. and that's not the kind of film she was interested in making. when i'm pitching a story to a hollywood executive, it's usually a male. and men tend to want to see and hear male drama stories and coming of age stories of young boys. (julie dash) i think a lot of the films that we've seen recently from african-american male directors are doing well because these executives were able to role-play when they read the stories. and it's kind of like "national geographic" to them, and they can watch these films and role-play for two hours and walk out of the theatre and feel safe because they know, phew, that wasn't my life.

i never had too much trouble making a dollar. never needed nobody to help me do that. i can't stand still... (julie dash) when i pitch stories to them, i'm pitching stories about african-american women. so i'm asking these executives to extend themselves two hours to look at stories about african-american women who are not victims, who are living their lives, who are facing pivotal moments in their lives. and usually they disengage from the stories. (julie dash) they disengage from the pitch. and i really believe it's because they're not interested. this is not what titillates them. they do not want to extend themselves into being an african-american woman for two hours. they rarely want to extend themselves into being a white woman for two hours. that's why it's very difficult for women filmmakers in general to get stories about themselves on the screen.

(narrator) independent films often need specialized marketing. "daughters of the dust" made variety top-grossing list and remained there for over 30 weeks, using an innovative grass-roots marketing strategy developed by kjm-3, a company of african-american film professionals. their approach included direct distribution flyers and asking ministers to mention the film in their sermons. (narrator) "laws of gravity," directed by nick gomez illustrates how many filmmakers faced with low budgets turn a lack of money into a creative challenge. the films i want to make are films that speak honestly about people who live in this country. (nick gomez) maybe with a point of view, maybe even a little bite. we worked out of our apartments about a year-and-a-half ago,

and it's a hassle working out of your apartment. there's no separation between work and life. so we decided to create a place for those without money. (larry meistrich) the shooting gallery is a home for independent filmmaking within two floors here, about 10,000 square feet of anything you could think of having to do with making films. you could shoot here for a couple hundred dollars a day, cast and have a somewhat more professional atmosphere than casting out of your apartment. and at the same time, not spending a lot of money and keeping that money for the production you're working on. you've just got to get up and get the film stock, and borrow a camera and go out and shoot it, as opposed to sitting around and planning and submitting, trying to raise funding through the powers that be. well, the film that we made cost $35,000 dollars, so there isn't a lot of precedence for that. so what we were trying to do is create our own model.

(nick gomez) the economics of the characters and the geography of the film matched the economics of the making of the movie. it's very easy, especially shooting hand-held stuff to sort of just say, "well, let's just sit down and put the camera on a tripod, let's just relax for a minute." and the cameraman looks up to you exhausted, sweat pouring down his face with an aaton on his shoulder. but you just have to keep on pushing everybody to try to maintain a certain kind of level. (nick gomez) you create a live situation and the camera gets it and it's an intact moment from beginning to end. and that's a great way to work. instead of breaking scenes down and stopping and getting the action shot and blah, blah, blah, where the whole thing happens like it's live and the whole scene unfolds from beginning to end. (yelling and screaming) where are you taking him?

so if i didn't have these guys, if i just came in and had directed this movie i'd end up in hollywood waiting around for whatever, work, the phone to ring, or whatever to happen to me. but because we have this good little group here, we're able to approach things in a clear-eyed responsible way and just continue to make films the way we want to make them. we don't want to keep making movies for $35,000. we'd like to pay our crews and be able to feed them better and things like that. but we're not that interested in making $40 million movies. what's particularly exciting about american independent film now is it's giving a platform for many, many new voices. from america, from many different parts of culture. and i think that that's going to force actually, eventually, hollywood films to reflect more of america and the changing population and changing artistic voices.

(narrator) in "swoon," director tom kalin reinterpreted the scandalous 1920's chicago trial of nathan leopold and richard loeb, two lovers accused of murdering a young boy. rather than obscure the characters' homosexuality, kalin took a different route. (muffled screams) (tom kalin) at the heart of "swoon," and it's one of the things that makes many audiences maybe disturbed by the film, is its unrepentant quality or a refusal to moralize. "swoon" doesn't have as its core a desire to locate leopold and loeb as victims or as heroes. come on. (tom kalin) "swoon" really tries to tell the film from inside the relationship. the chaotic, contradictory, complex relationship of them.

so that in a certain degree, you are made to participate. i'm not peddling family values in "swoon," for instance. i'm peddling values that are much more complicated, that ask you to ask questions about, for instance, the ideology of the family, or sexual or racial roles, or various positions in society. and i think at the heart, a lot of movies in hollywood do have an extremely strong and unself-critical promotion of family values, et cetera. (tom kalin) and i think "swoon" wants to interrupt that and recognize that the audience is more complicated and diverse than it's been constituted by mainstream film. using "new queer" cinema as a banner in which to market films has its pluses, obviously because films get more press, they get a movement. but on the other hand, i think it's a great disservice to a film like "swoon," which i think, certainly,

transcds issues of sexuality and gender into much broader, stronger ideas of desire and passion. where was i? (judge) you were discussing their pathology. (attorney) your honor, if the defense is proposing these murders -- (christine vachon) i don't think we are saying, "oh, there's absolutely no way we'd ever work within a hollywood system or whatever" but i do thi there's certain fundamental things. i mean, ultimately, the things that make our films interesting are exactly the things often that those systems strip away, like choice of cast, like final cut, you know. and like the chance to really be innovative, take chances on people and on structure and on form. so once those things are gone, then who does it really matter who's making the film?

(narrator) with "the living end," a movie about two men with hiv, gregg araki added another voice to queer cinema. where's the party, animal? (rock 'n roll music playing) the world is ours. so, like, figure this: there's thousands and maybe millions of us walking around with this inside of us, this time bomb ticking, making our futures finite. suddenly i realized we got nothing to lose. you know, i went to the usc film school. and being in a really industry-oriented school really pushed me more towards an independent underground edge in that i knew my films were, in terms of content and form, a little too weird or esoteric or artsy for mainstream tastes. (woman) now, don't kill him until i get back. and no more flirting.

you know, she shouldn't go out there alone, there are snakes in those bushes. fran can take care of herself, you better believe it. (prolonged scream) snakes. (gregg araki) i really wanted the film to be as weird and as radical and as bold and out there as i possibly could. and i think that the difference in, say, a hollywood film, they very much want to do the opposite and to rein you in. and "don't make it too weird," or "don't offend that part of the audience." ow, ow, f---. do you really want to go back to: i'm-hiv-positive-and- everything's-hunkie-dorie? go f---' right ahead. just don't forget to have sex in a plastic baggie and don't plan anything too far in the future. (gregg araki) the best thing about being an independent filmmaker is freedom of the underground,

in that you can do things, say things, try things that hollywood films can't. i think he's going to keep doing that. that's what he wants to do. to use somewhat better actors, the budget may go from $25,000 to $500,000; same with 35-millimeter shooting. but this last film was mixed on a macintosh computer, for almost nothing. and as the technology changes, it's going to be easier and easier to make these very cheap films for someone like gregg who's got that much talent. if you're determined to make a film now, i am convinced that you can find a way to make it. whether you shoot it on video and get it transferred, or you get everyone and all the equipment for free, or you save up for two or three years, all those ways now are possible. whereas before, it was completely out of the question. i think i'll always be a guerilla filmmaker. at one point, one critic called us outlaws and so, yes, i am a film outlaw

and i think that's a good thing to be.

h e annenberg media ♪ and:

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august 9, 1999. on december 8, 1997. november 30, 2002. i was hit by a drunk driver. i lost both of my legs. a stranger tried to kill me with a hammer. our 7-year-old son, evan, was murdered after signing up for basketball. i was severely beaten in a hate crime. i was raped. when your child is murdered, it's devastating.

you have to re-think life again. it just keeps on running over and over in my head all the time. while i was in the hospital, a friend told me about victims' services. they helped me with my medical expenses. they helped me with counseling. a victims' advocate stood by us through the court process. victim assistance paid all my hospital bills. i needed them to fight for me while i was fighting for my life. with the right help, you can move on with your life. i will dance the salsa again. justice isn't served until crime victims are.