Life without Miramax?

Following on my previous post, here's an essay from the New York Times Magazine (3/10/04) by A.O. Scott - Life without Miramax? - discussing what will happen to indie film if Miramax dies.

According to Scott, what Miramax "did was not primarily to cultivate the public's taste for exotic or adventurous films, but rather to revive the tradition of prestige filmmaking that the studios had allowed to languish in their pursuit of franchisable blockbusters, overseas receipts and cross-media synergy."

But now, every major studio has its own specialty divisions. "And there is a critical mass of small, brave, genuinely independent outfits - Palm Pictures, ThinkFilm, IFC and Wellspring, to name a few - dedicated to expanding, and challenging, the film audience. They generally lack neither taste nor marketing savvy."

Scott's conclusion is therefore "indie cinema, or whatever you want to call it, will continue to live and die, but there won't be a real New Yorker [Harvey Weinstein], or at least a Hollywood fantasy version of one, around to claim credit or invite blame."