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Back in the late '90s, I saw the great indie filmmaker Richard Linklater interviewed on The Independent Film Channel (IFC). Although it had been at least half a decade since his breakthrough films, Slacker and Dazed and Confused, had made their initial splash, Linklater still enjoyed a great deal of outsider cred as a hip, young filmmaking voice in an industry that was doing everything it could to leverage the marketability of its insurgent indie icons. When the IFC interviewer asked him if he had any advice for students who wanted to build careers outside the Hollywood system, Linklater said that technically, he hadn't been an "indie" filmmaker since Slacker; all his subsequent films had had mainstream studio support. What makes you an independent filmmaker, he said, is making your own films, and--regardless of who's backing and distributing your work--producing the movies you want to make.

Naturally, that's easier said than done, and not everyone gets the chance to come in from the Rebel Without a Crew cold and become a rebel with a budget and mass distribution. People will tell you there are always compromises that must be made; it's a cruel irony that backers don't always have your back and don't always share your vision of the film you want to make. (I'll never forget the Star Wars making-of documentary I saw in which...

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