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Curated playlist

English-language independent films

  • Psycho (1960 film)Paramount refused to fund Hitchcock's Psycho, so he financed the 1960 film himself. He used his television crew.
  • The TerminatorThe Terminator began as a fever dream in Rome. Director James Cameron, ill, dreamed of a metal torso crawling from fire.
  • RoboCopRoboCop's leading actor was fired partway through filming. The 1987 film's suit was too bulky for him to move in.
  • Mad Max 2In the United States, Mad Max 2 was renamed The Road Warrior. Warner Bros. also cut Mel Gibson's character from the ads.
  • Waking LifeWaking Life opens with a boy floating up from a driveway into the sky. Linklater's 2001 film is animated.
  • There Will Be BloodThere Will Be Blood is a 2007 American epic period drama written, directed and co-produced by Paul Thomas Anderson. It closes with a boast about a milkshake: "I drink your milkshake!" The line sounds absurd in a film about drilling for…
  • 28 Days Later28 Days Later is a 2002 British horror film directed by Danny Boyle from a screenplay by Alex Garland, and it begins in an empty hospital. A bicycle courier named Jim wakes from a coma in St Thomas' Hospital in London. Nobody comes to his…
  • Synecdoche, New YorkRoger Ebert named Synecdoche, New York the best film of the decade in 2009. Another critic gave it a D+.
  • Annie HallAnnie Hall began as a murder mystery, not a romantic comedy. Woody Allen's 1977 film dropped the murder plot.
  • Mad Max (film)The 1979 Australian film Mad Max cost roughly A$400,000 and earned more than US$100 million worldwide.
  • Ex Machina (film)In Ex Machina, an office contest prize turns out to be a test of a robot.
  • The Hunt for GollumA Lord of the Rings fan film made for less than three thousand pounds reached millions of viewers.
  • Everything Everywhere All at OnceEverything Everywhere All at Once began as a script for a male lead, written with Jackie Chan in mind.
  • Good Will HuntingGood Will Hunting began life as a homework assignment that came back far too long. Matt Damon, in his fifth year at Harvard, was asked for a one-act play for a playwriting class. He turned in a script of around 40 pages instead. That…
  • Easy RiderRip Torn walked away from Easy Rider after an argument with Dennis Hopper. Hopper then called Jack Nicholson.
  • Hardware WarsHardware Wars, a 1978 Star Wars parody, starred a steam iron as a spaceship. It cost eight thousand dollars.
  • Session 9Session 9 was filmed in a real abandoned hospital that needed almost no set dressing.
  • Cultural impact of Star WarsAfter Star Wars opened in 1977, Fox's stock jumped from $6 to $25 a share within months.

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