John Pierson | |
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Born | United States | April 10, 1954
Occupation(s) | Filmmaker, film producer, writer |
John Pierson (born April 10, 1954) is an American independent filmmaker. He is best known for helping to produce the first works by filmmakers Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Michael Moore, and Kevin Smith, which he wrote about in his 1995 book Spike, Mike, Slackers, & Dykes (reissued in 2004 as Spike, Mike Reloaded). [1]
After the publication of Spike, Mike, Slackers, & Dykes, Pierson began producing and hosting the TV show Split Screen , which premiered on IFC in 1997 and had an initial run of 60 episodes containing interviews and video essays covering topics related to American indie film. Season 10 premiered on January 13, 2018, on the Criterion Channel on FilmStruck. [1] Pierson is founder and president of Grainy Pictures, Inc., a film and television production company. [2]
Pierson lives in Austin, Texas, and teaches in the University of Texas Radio-Television-Film department. [3] His wife, Janet Pierson, is the chief programmer of the film section of South by Southwest. [1]
An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies. Independent films are sometimes distinguishable by their content and style and how the filmmakers' artistic vision is realized. Sometimes, independent films are made with considerably lower budgets than major studio films.
Slacker is a 1990 American comedy drama film written, produced, and directed by Richard Linklater, who also stars in it. Filmed around Austin, Texas on a budget of $23,000, the film follows an ensemble cast of eccentric and misfit locals throughout a single day. Each character is on screen for only a few minutes before the film picks up someone else in the scene and follows them.
Ilene Kristen is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Delia Ryan in the ABC soap opera Ryan's Hope and her Emmy-nominated performances as Roxy Balsom on One Life to Live (2001–2012).
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is a 1982 comedy-drama film and an adaptation of Ed Graczyk's 1976 play. The Broadway and screen versions were directed by Robert Altman, and stars Sandy Dennis, Cher, Mark Patton, Karen Black, Sudie Bond, and Kathy Bates.
Bob Ray is an American independent filmmaker based in Austin, Texas.
Shari Roman is an American artist, author, screenwriter and director.
Indiewood films are made outside of the Hollywood studio system or traditional arthouse/independent filmmaking system yet managed to be produced, financed and distributed by the two with varying degrees of success and/or failure.
In the Soup is a 1992 independent comedy directed by Alexandre Rockwell, and written by Rockwell and Sollace Mitchell. It stars Steve Buscemi as Aldolfo Rollo, a self-conscious screenwriter who has written an unfilmable 500-page screenplay and who is looking for a producer.
Captain Mike Across America is a film written, directed and narrated by Michael Moore. It was filmed prior to the 2004 election, when the polling margin between candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry could have tipped either way. It debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7 and 8, 2007. The film was re-edited by Moore into Slacker Uprising, which was released for free on the Internet on September 23, 2008.
Cinecom Pictures was an independent film company founded in 1982 by Ira Deutchman, Amir Malin and John Ives. Its first release was Robert Altman's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Ira Deutchman is a producer, distributor and marketer of independent films. In 2000, he moved into film exhibition as co-founder and managing partner of Emerging Pictures, a New York-based digital exhibition company, which was sold in January 2015 to Vancouver-based 20 Year Media. He also served as Chair of the Film Program at Columbia University School of the Arts from 2011 to 2015, where he has been a Professor since 1987. Deutchman is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He was one of the original creative advisors to the Sundance Institute and formerly served on the board of advisors for the Sundance Film Festival. He has also served as a board member and former board chair for the Independent Feature Project, the board of advisors for the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, the Williamstown Film Festival, IFP/West, and the Collective for Living Cinema, and was a member of the board for Kartemquin Films.
Split Screen is a television series that originally aired from 1997 to 2001 on IFC.
Spike, Mike, Slackers, & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema (1996) is a non-fiction book about independent cinema by John Pierson. The title references Pierson's interactions with Spike Lee, Michael Moore, Richard Linklater of the film Slacker and the lesbian-oriented film Go Fish.
Geoff Marslett is an American film director, writer, producer, animator and actor. His early career started with the animated short Monkey vs. Robot which was distributed internationally by Spike and Mike's Classic Festival of Animation on video and Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation in theatres. More recently he directed several successful narrative feature films including MARS, as well as producing and acting in the experimental documentary Yakona. He appears onscreen in Josephine Decker's Thou Wast Mild and Lovely which was released theatrically in 2014. He currently resides in Austin, Texas and splits his time between filmmaking and teaching at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Dana Offenbach is American film and television producer and director. She is the founder of CinemaStreet Pictures, LLC. Her credits include feature films, TV, shorts, television commercials, awards show segments, public service announcements, interstitial programming, documentaries and music videos.
American eccentric cinema is a mode of contemporary American filmmaking that emerged in what has been termed the metamodern or new sincerity. Its attachment to indie cinema has led some to consider it a movement and genre of cinema in the United States. Its key filmmakers, including Wes Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, and Spike Jonze, are at times referred to as the "American Eccentrics". It occurred during the 1990s and 2000s, when indie directors sought to create films that diverted from the style and content of Hollywood franchise films. American eccentric cinema came in opposition to the mainstream ideas of formulaic narratives and the digitisation within films and new technologies that came about during the time period. American eccentric cinema is marked by films that are "deeply concerned with ethics and morality, the obligations of the individual, the effects of family breakdown, and social alienation."
Valentino Returns is a 1989 American romantic drama film written by Leonard Gardner, directed by Peter Hoffman and starring Frederic Forrest, Veronica Cartwright, Jenny Wright and Barry Tubb. It is Hoffman's feature directorial debut and based on Gardner's short story "Christ Has Returned to Earth and Preaches Here Nightly."
Michael Barker is an American film executive who has been co-president of Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) since 1992. Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom, after working together at Orion Classics, founded SPC in 1992 as co-presidents. Barker and Bernard have now been co-presidents of SPC for over 30 years, producing, acquiring and/or distributing over 400 films there.