In Hollywood's foreshortened, weekend-to-weekend version of reality, "it was before its time" means a film that tested poorly nevertheless hit a box-office jackpot, garnered raves and/or awards or - at the very least - scored a last-minute surge in DVD sales. There are a lot of these delicious success stories in Rebels on the Backlot, journalist Sharon Waxman's portrait of a micro-generation of filmmakers who emerged amid the heavily corporatized, sequel-driven Hollywood machine of the 1990s to make more or less original films.
If we had any lingering illusions that the independent film was the bastion of art for art's sake, Chris Gore's The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide quickly dispels this notion. In one of the book's nuts-and-bolts Q&As, Sundance Film Festival director Geoff Gilmore compares the newest crop of indie filmmakers to "the '90s professional athlete - very interested in what's in it for them, in making money..."