CINEMA: INDEPENDENTS' DAY

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The current declaration of independents is really Hollywood's declaration of artistic bankruptcy. The majors are less capable now than ever of making and marketing the high-quality, middlebrow "people pictures" that the Academy has always rewarded, from Marty to Annie Hall to Ordinary People to Driving Miss Daisy. The allure for the high-stakes gamblers who run the studios is the $100 million special-effects film, like the Twister-Flood-Dante's Peak epics--"movies that seem programmed off the Weather Channel," as Bob Weinstein drolly says.

The moguls are like teenagers: they want movies with big kicks and fast returns. That makes the slow-fuse payoff of the quieter people pictures anathema. "Normal thinking at the studios is if audiences aren't there the first weekend, they're not coming," says Gramercy's Russell Schwartz. "But our films have to be discovered. We live by word of mouth." And Oscar has the biggest mouth around. The day after the nominations were announced, the box office for Shine jumped 40% from the previous Wednesday.

The strong indie showing seemed a victory for a favorite hero of old Hollywood films: the nervy little guy. That can be misleading, since most of the "independent" companies are owned by media conglomerates: Miramax by the Walt Disney Co., Gramercy (which released Fargo) by Polygram, Fine Line (Shine) by Time Warner. October Films (Secrets & Lies) is partly financed by mighty Allen & Co., but despite rumors that it is open to a takeover bid, Bingham Ray vows to maintain autonomy. "We're at the peak of our game right now as a privately held, true independent," he says.

Harvey Weinstein has his own definition of independence. "It has always meant independent of the seven major studios," says Harvey, "and that's how we operate. Disney is our big daddy or rich uncle. Basically, they're our bank. You can say Disney or you can say Chase Manhattan." Miramax has the freedom to run its business so long as it works within budget guidelines and doesn't buy movies rated NC-17. "A hundred-percent freedom," says Disney CEO Michael Eisner. "They're completely autonomous. And they should be. They keep their costs down and their ideas up. They look rough-and-tumble, but I always knew they were secret intellectuals and closet film experts. They run the business very well." Eisner has reason to be pleased. In 1993 Disney bought Miramax for about $75 million, the cost of a single A-budget studio film. Today, one movie boss believes, the company is worth more than $1 billion.

Not bad for a couple of movie-mad kids from Queens, New York. Their parents, Bob recalls, "used the local theater as a baby-sitter. They'd drop us off at a triple feature and pick us up six hours later." (The boys must be grateful for the benign neglect of Miriam and Max Weinstein; the company is named after them.) After a stint as rock-concert promoters in Buffalo, New York, Harvey and Bob got into film distribution, making their rep with the 1989 hits sex, lies, and videotape and My Left Foot. Often they saw themselves as custom tailors, trimming foreign films to make them more accessible to U.S. audiences and earning the elder brother the withering sobriquet "Harvey Scissorhands."