Guru stars in UNLV film department’s independent day

Debra D. Bass

Friday, April 11, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

"Stay true to your wild-ass instincts."

Though it sounds more like an anthem spouted by a cavorting band of beer-swilling deviants evading a police raid, it's actually become a lucrative strategy in the nebulous world of independent film.

Passing the wild-ass gut test paves the road to fame, fortune and personal fulfillment -- that is, if you don't go bankrupt in the process.

Or so the ballyhooed guru of independent film John Pierson, who takes pride in being among the few who have made a comfortable living in the financially tumultuous business, told UNLV film students during a daylong visit.

Among his wild-ass instincts was giving a skinny, shy, inexperienced, young director with a tendency to stutter under pressure $10,000 to finish a black-and-white flick about a nymphomaniac. That kid's name was Spike, and his investment spawned a legend in the making -- like him or not.

That was enough to prompt UNLV's fledgling film society to invite Pierson to share his anti-formula to success with the university's aspiring film set. Proclaimed a guru by no less than Hollywood's beloved trade magazine, Variety, Pierson agreed to stop by for the day following the Los Angeles Film Festival for the mere price of a plane ticket and a few meals. From 10 a.m. Tuesday to 1 a.m. Wednesday, Pierson chatted, philosophized and lectured to UNLV film students.

"We couldn't pay him what he deserves, so we just invited him to come. I was a little worried that he'd be gruff and rude and have an attitude like, 'You just better be lucky I came,' but once he got here he was nothing but nice," said Ben Adamczyk, a senior in film studies.

Adamczyk hopes to enter the American Film Institute for graduate studies in writing and directing.

"I still know I'm a few years away from investing $50,000 and getting something worthwhile, but I know it's possible later," Adamczyk said.

Pierson's specialty is imbuing would-be filmmakers with an I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can mentality.

"It's part arrogance. It is, but I have to believe that if I like it, others will, too," said Pierson, who insists that there is a reliable market for good independent work that doesn't conform to conventional Hollywood do's and don'ts.

He says it didn't take a leap of faith to support works like Lee's "She's Gotta Have It" and Michael Moore's "Roger & Me." They were bound to become blockbuster independent films. Why? "It was destiny." The two directors receive top billing in Pierson's book, "Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema."

The cream, he says relying on a hackneyed bit of guru wisdom, really does rise to the top. Though he admits that not everything rising to the top is cream and not everything that doesn't rise is without cream potential, which tends to pollute the sentiment of the trite analogy.

Everyone churning away in the talent vat thinks they are the cream, Pierson explains.

"Everyone who makes a film thinks it's the best, and they should. They have to to get through it," he said.

But when those efforts fall short, you shouldn't embark on a search for the secret conspirators thwarting your success. Too often, he says, filmmakers, and people in general, become so convinced their efforts are righteous that they refuse to address the real problem -- "honestly asking what did I do wrong."

UNLV film grad Sean O'Hair took that sentiment to heart and decided to try, try, again after a not-so-uplifting experience in the California film scene.

"It really gives me a firmer foundation to know that there is hope and to hear about the interesting journey of the people who got started from virtually nothing and managed to go from obscurity to stardom," said O'Hair, who is working on what will be his third attempt at making a feature film.

Heeding Pierson's words, he intends to make his obscurity a productive, rather than corrosive, experience.

In the meantime, Pierson has found yet another way to punctuate the plight of independent filmmaking using Split Screen, a program he and his wife, Janet, created to bring light to burgeoning and established talent. The half-hour venture produced for Bravo and the Independent Film Channel seeks to expose, if not mock, the quirky side of how the film industry and reality intertwine.

For example, his program investigated the "real" "Fargo," by confronting the alleged true story behind the film and the stereotypes of those lovable Minnesotans. Interviews in the piece include the editor of the Brainerd Daily Dispatch, Brainerd Mayor Bonnie Cumberland and Chief of Police Harry Gottsch, who admits that people do kind of act like those folks in the film, but doesn't think that's a bad thing.

Struggling filmmaker P.H. O'Brien is the mascot for the program. At the beginning of each program he announces, "How did I get the money to make my movie? I crashed my car." A financing technique he used not once but a total of four times. The film is perhaps appropriately titled "Asylum."