Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema Review

Spike Mike Slackers and Dykes  aka  A Guided Tour Across a Decadeof American Independent Cinema is the 1995 book by independent film deal-maker John Pierson.  He was in the right place, at the right time and was crazy enough to take chances and roll the dice with people like Spike Lee (as he was trying to finish filming She's Gotta Have It),  Michael Moore (before anyone had seen his baseball cap or knew about the rabbit lady in Flint Michigan), Richard Linklater (before Slackers),  Kevin Smith (as he was making Clerks), Steve James (as he was finishing Hoop Dreams). 

If you ever wanted to know just how little films like  Lizzie Borden's Working Girls,  Parting Glances, Go Fish, Anna, Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line  and many other films were finished and sold for distribution, this book tells the tales.

John Pierson is part arts lover and supporter and part used-car salesman, shameless huckster and risk-taker-exactly the qualities needed to find, help complete and sell independent films by up and coming writer-directors.   

The stories of how he met, helped and publicize directors and films are told in a breezy, name, names gossipy style.   

Yes, Pierson has a big ego, but he's the first to admit that many of the films he championed and got sold, might have made it without him.  He admits to making mistakes and stumbling over himself and others.  He also tells the fairly ugly tale of Rob Weiss and his film Amongst Friends in a long chapter entitled, Amongst Jerks: Rob Weiss and the Dark Side of Overnight Success.

If you are a fan of independent films, the stories Pierson tells should be of great interest to you. If you are an aspiring film-maker , writer or producer, I probably don't have to tell you this book is essential.

The book get started with a running dialogue/interview between Pierson and Kevin Smith (writer director of Clerks, Dogma and other films).  Their discussions between the chapters of the book cover thoughts on sex lies and videotape, Sundance film festivals, Quentin Tarantino, Batman, Matty Rich,  Harvey, Rob Weiss, Marty and much more.

Then we get an introduction into the pre-1984 world of independent film-making and how Pierson got started in the business-he programmed films for reparatory houses in New York.    Extensively covered in succeeding chapter are the stories of films Pierson was involved in and the characters he met like Jim Jarmusch as he was showing his first movie Stranger than Paradise at Cannes, Wim Wenders, and others.  The almost forgotten story about Parting Glances is told and then its time to learn about Spike Lee and She's Gotta Have It..

This is a book detailing the Art of the DEAL, the business of getting some very important films finished and sold to distributors and studios so the people who made them wouldn't starve to death.  

I enjoyed -re-reading the book even more now.. that we know what has happened to many of the people Pierson writes about since he wrote the book in 1994/1995.

In fact Pierson was the subject of the documentary Reel Paradise that I reviewed recently.  He dropped out of the scene and brought all kind of movies to a small movie theatre in on a South Sea Island in the middle of nowhere for nearly a year.