IV

		ently, one could say that the big Hollywood movies have redefined the audience's expectations of what a film is. "Market norms" in effect, Robert Kuttner writes, "drive out non-market norms." 21 Small projects with an unknown cast, a more adventurous narrative, maybe even an idiosyncratic style, will find it increasingly difficult to reach the finish line. So while it is possible for a filmmaker to produce a film on a mini-budget with the help of actors and crew (and the continuous support of farsighted equipment companies like Clairmont Camera), the release of a film involves an entirely different group of players. Newspapers, magazines, and billboard companies are not likely to give you a rebate on your ads because you're a nice guy and your film got good reviews. The same with networks, local TV stations, and cable companies. As for Jay Leno, David Letterman, and the gossip press, your unknown actors have nothing to offer that could possibly interest them. All in all, if it costs the same to release a genuinely independent film as it costs to release a run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie, and the latter will far outperform the former in the marketplace, why go through the effort? For independent producers then, the temptation is to play the only cards that will guarantee them at least some distribution time: the sleaze, the freaky, the outlandish, sex and violence beyond the norms Hollywood is comfortable with. In the end, the winner-take-all environment has polluted the air, infecting most with jackpot fever, leaving independents with few options but to look for shock value.

		V

		My second point has to do with the changes in filmmaking brought about as a result of the counterculture movement in the sixties. As far back as 1962, Tom Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society was claiming that the national power structure excluded ordinary people from the "basic decisions affecting the nature and organization of work, rewards, and opportunities."22 Before long, the sixties saw the radical rejection by the younger generation of all the values held by their elders. Every entrenched segment of society came under attack: the political power, the world of business, the conventional social virtues, traditional morality, consumerism, the whole "Eisenhower-Disney-Doris Day fa ade" as a Rolling Stones editor was eventually to put it.23

		But we need to slow down here. Why this sudden rebellion by the young? First there was the excitement provided by a young president in the