Every once in a while, a heretofore unknown little indie flick punches through and does its job so well that it simply puts a big smile on your face. Such is the case with co-writers Mike Wilkins and Stephen Kessler’s The Independent, a smart, savvy, funny and colorful send-up of indie-world angst and elbow grease as filtered through the story of an aging producer-director.

Produced in 2000 but just finally released on DVD by Allumination Filmworks, The Independent stars Jerry Stiller as Morty Fineman, a wildly prolific and equally headstrong director known for cranking out “social message” flicks (Twelve Angry Men and A Baby, Bald Justice, The Man With Two Things) that blend exploitative and/or commercial elements with from-the-heart if on-the-nose sentiment. From his debut movie, The Simplex Complex (“the first film about herpes the Army ever made”), on through 427 productions, Morty has lived, breathed and eaten movies, even using a promotional gimmick contest attached to one of his productions, Diaper Service, to name his then-newborn son. (The unfortunate result: “Rat Fuck” Fineman.)

When his latest production, the euthanasia-touting Mrs. Kevorkian (starring B-movie queen Julie Strain, lampooning her own reputation), is shut down, though, Morty finds himself broke, so he and his longtime assistant (Max Perlich) turn to Morty’s semi-estranged daughter Paloma (Janeane Garofalo) to try to help find a way to save the company. The bank through which he finances his movies offers Morty a deal on the rights for his library (“$8 a pound…”), reasoning that television is a meat grinder, and Fineman makes decent enough sausage. Morty, though, balks. He’s an auteur, and his movies are his babies. Convinced that he’s just one begged-favor festival slot away from redemption, Morty plugs ahead, the prime example of underdog persistence.

The Independent bills itself, not unjustly, as being in the tradition of Bowfinger and Waiting for Guffman, but what’s perhaps most pleasing is the manner in which its makers’ obvious affection for the indie filmmaking world shines through. Yes, the movie is filled with interviews from Morty’s celebrity friends and clips from his 30 years of films, and told in a cinema verité style which follows Morty and Paloma as they try to find the money to help him complete his latest work. For lesser creative minds, this could mean cut corners galore — merely a phony “cure-all” for a lack of money. But The Independent makes smart use of different film stocks when dipping back in time, and generally features great on-the-fly production value; the clips of Morty’s old movies, meanwhile — films like the biker-chick flick Eco Angels, or the anti-war Brothers Divided, about conjoined twins drafted to serve in Vietnam — are both overwhelmingly hilarious and dead-on in their referential aping of cinematic vocabulary and tropes, better than a few of Grindhouse‘s skeevy mock trailers. Even the movie’s throwaway dialogue (“How could the check bounce, I
signed it?!”) is clever and of a piece, feeding the grand-scheme
assessment of Morty and the rest of the movie’s characters. Powered by great performances and filled with plenty of recognizable faces (everyone from Karen Black, Peter Bogdanovich, Nick Cassavetes and Ron Howard to Billy Burke, Bob Odenkirk, Fred Dryer, Andy Dick, the younger Stiller and the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten), it’s hard to figure out why The Independent got hung up so long in home distribution hell, let alone why it labors in anonymity. Regardless, it’s a great little find now, though.

Housed in a regular Amray case, The Independent comes presented in anamorphic widescreen, with optional Spanish subtitles. Stiller sits for an engaging audio commentary track with co-writers Wilkins and Kessler, the latter of whom also directs, and Kessler also submits to a more technical-minded commentary track with editor Chris Franklin. There are also seven deleted scenes with introductory title cards, including a different version of the movie’s opening, featuring Monte Ash and Maria Ford, that had to be re-shot due to what’s deemed first-day tensions from union bickering. The other half dozen scenes feature the late Ted Demme, Laura Kightlinger (who invites a Stiller boob grope, then berates him), and a spot-on send-up of ’70s-era imprisoned-women flicks, with legendary Russ Meyer starlet Kitten Natividad cameoing as a warden. The final supplemental extra is a five-minute segment that takes a look at the recording of Nancy Sinatra’s breathy, 007-ish theme song for Morty. Kudos to all the behind-the-scenes material; it gives The Independent an extra sheen of class, something of which Morty himself would surely be proud. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) A- (Disc)

The behind-the-scenes, off-screen story of writer-director Amy Heckerling’s I Could Never Be Your Woman is a long and winding one. How a film from the director of Clueless, and starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd, sat on the shelf for years and couldn’t win theatrical distribution — even after last year’s warmly received Hairspray, Stardust and Knocked Up helped put the two actors back on the public radar — is hard to believe. And yet it’s all true — a convoluted tale of botched financial assessments, scotched release dates and swapped capital involving the movie’s original backer and domestic distributor, indie upstart Bauer Martinez.

The movie itself, thankfully, is far less messy and angst-inducing. Probably as of yet the only film in which Pfeiffer can be glimpsed sporting an Iron Maiden T-shirt, I Could Never Be Your Woman‘s narrative is obviously to at least a small degree autobiographical, centering as it does around a successful, respected entertainment industry pro facing struggles both creative and personal. Pfeiffer plays Rosie, the head writer/show runner on You Go Girl, a teen-flavored, Saved By the Bell-type sitcom starring the decidedly non-teenage Brianna Minx (Clueless alum Stacey Dash). In her 40s, Rosie’s a loving mother to a smart, middle school-aged daughter, Izzie (Saoirse Ronan, of Atonement), and has a good if sometimes exasperated relationship with her ex-husband Nathan (Jon Lovitz). When Rosie becomes smitten with Adam Pearl (Rudd), a newly cast actor much younger than herself, though, she finds her world turned upside down.

As Rosie and Adam fall into a relationship and a reticent Rosie then pulls back, Heckerling sets up some of the traditional air-quote rom-com complications (a meddling secretary, Jeannie, saves a saucy picture of Adam’s costar as the wallpaper on his cell phone) and then seemingly breezes past them, only to arrive back at the same sort of core, nagging doubts regarding the age disparity between the pair. The plotting itself here is nothing new, and Heckerling doesn’t till much new psychological ground. That hardly matters, though, given her gift with dialogue and the quality of actors appearing here. (In addition to the aforementioned main players, Fred Willard costars as Rosie’s perpetually distracted boss, while Tracey Ullman is Mother Nature, who shares a few pointed conversations with Rosie.)

Owing to its industry backdrop, the movie has plenty of Los Angeles in-jokes, some of which are hilarious (Izzie and her friend crank call celebrities from Rosie’s Blackberry, which leads to a scene involving Henry Winkler reading Jean-Paul Sartre), and some of which fall flat (rescuing Izzie from being bullied, Rosie spits to the offending kid, “Hey Noah, I heard Brad Pitt‘s firing your dad’s law firm”). Rosie’s constant battles with network censors are also amusing. There’s some connective tissue missing, yes, but I really fell for this Woman; it’s wry and spirited, and Pfeiffer and Rudd are a truly great match.

Presented in a matted widescreen format with an English Dolby digital 5.1 audio track and optional Spanish and English subtitles, the PG-13 rated I Could Never Be Your Woman comes housed in a regular Amray case with snap-shut hinges, which are always a nice touch. In addition to a trailer for the movie, there are also three deleted scenes, two of which — centering around a conversation between Rosie and her daughter about blowjobs — obviously confirm an R-rated cut of the movie, if an early, poorly dubbed sequence with Jeannie didn’t already properly arouse suspicions. Heckerling also confirms some of the autobiographical inspiration in a droll, slowly paced joint audio commentary track with producer Cerise Hallam Larkin, citing specifically as ripped from real life a scene in which Willard’s TV exec is busy playing computer solitaire while taking an in-person meeting. Other tidbits and tossed-off asides — concerning everything from Lovitz’s late replacement of another actor to bon mots like, “When you do a spit take, you have to make sure the liquid is backlit, otherwise you miss how well the person is able to project” — are endearing and amusing. Most interesting, though, may be the fact that due to its British financing, the film had to shoot for six weeks in London at Pinewood Studios and only three weeks in Los Angeles, as well as cast a significant number of English, Australian and Canadian actors. Maybe that fact gave Beyonce Knowles pause in approving a song Heckerling wistfully mentions as perfect for Pfeiffer’s first post-coital work arrival. Thankfully, Will Smith had no such qualms; he approved use of his skip-to-the-loo “Switch” at a discounted rate, which makes for plenty of fun when Rudd drops some mad dance moves. B+ (Movie) C (Disc)