Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema

#66, The 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time, The Hollywood Reporter The legendary figure who launched the careers of Spike Lee, Michael Moore, and Richard Linklater offers a no-holds-barred look at the deals and details that propel an indie film from a dream to distribution. Pierson, a producer's representative, explains how he has helped filmmakers with no profile at the time to get their work made, sold and seen by the world, sharing stories about Lee's She's Gotta Have It, Moore's Roger & Me and Linklater's Slackers, plus Hoop Dreams, Clerks and many others. Chats with Kevin Smith serve as interstitials between chapters. “A fast-moving account of the era bookended by Stranger Than Paradise and Pulp Fiction . . . [a] Baedeker of off-Hollywood where all roads lead to Park City.” — Interview The legendary figure who launched the careers of Spike Lee, Michael Moore, and Richard Linklater offers a no-holds-barred look at the deals and details that propel an indie film from a dream to distribution. At the epicenter of the industry in the 1980s and ’90s, John Pierson reveals what it took to launch such films as Stranger Than Paradise , Clerks , She’s Gotta Have It , and Roger and Me . A chronicle of a remarkable decade for the American independent low-budget film, Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes also celebrates the nearly two dozen first-time filmmakers whom Pierson helped make a name for themselves and the hundred others whose success stories he observed at close quarters. “John Pierson has faithfully chronicled the American independent scene. He was there, he knows.” —Spike Lee “Sly, knowledgeable, deeply entertaining . . . You couldn’t do much better than to hop aboard this ten-year wild ride. Grade: A.” — Entertainment Weekly “The most contentiously witty and revealing view of off-Hollywood around.” — Rolling Stone “Mr. Pierson, who has lived, breathed, and hunted film for most of his adult life, covers his territory with urgency and conviction, and his single-mindedness is ravishing.” — The New York Times Book Review “Pierson’s prose is quick-moving and witty and reads like a Who’s Who of the off-Hollywood mavericks who make the movies we’d like to see but can’t always find.” — The Washington Post “A marvelously entertaining, educational, and caustic account of the rise of American independent filmmaking.” — The Globe and Mail Variety called John Pierson the "guru of independent film." Why? Perhaps because he wrote Spike Lee a $10,000 check to finish She's Gotta Have It; helped make "slacker" a household word; sold the documentary Roger & Me for $3 million; made Clerks famous; and has seen over 1,000 debut features, and (unlike most independent film companies) managed not to lose his shirt while backing those films he liked most. In short, he's been at the epicenter of the tumultuous last decade that changed independent film forever, and launched a new generation of hilarious, ambitious, talented, and sometimes wacked filmmakers. Here, for the first time, he tells it like it is - the unvarnished truth about film financing; the importance of timing and lighting; creating a sensation on the film festival circuit; the dark side of overnight success; the anatomy of the deals that get films to a theater somewhere near you; and what definitely not to do if you want to make a film (illustrated with dozens of embarrassing examples - like having Elvis come back as a golfing vampire who's shooting a feature). As punctuation throughout the book, Pierson and Clerks creator Kevin Smith dish about everything from Batman, sex, and Quentin Tarantino to American Psycho, Matty Rich, and of course, Rob "Vanilla" Weiss, who "typifies everything you don't want to be as a first-time filmmaker." Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes is a first of its kind: an inside look at the art, the heart, and the enterprise of the spiteful, fractious, and finally, entertaining place that is the world of independent film.