"The Cinema of Pseudomaturity": Summing Up '90s Indie Film

In the wake of the '90s-era fuss over independent film David Walsh raised the question of what exactly the term "independent" is supposed to signify in a filmmaker--and concluded on the basis of the movies they actually made that an independent filmmaker is no more than a "commercial filmmaker whose films have not yet made anyone a great deal of money--a hack commercial filmmaker in training."

It seemed to me then and still seems to me now that there is a good deal of insight in that understanding of the phenomenon, but it did not include what seemed to me a distinctive something that seemed to me characteristic of the films of figures like Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino. I have raised it from time to time over the years, discussing various of its characteristics--the pretentiousness, the edgelordism and the rest, and saw in it a certain sort of youthful attitude, namely that of the college graduate who spends his nights drinking Yoo-hoo as he plays video games in his mother's basement pretending he instead spends them downing shots of whiskey as he plays poker with his equally cool friends in his smoke-filled bachelor pad.

So do they remain now, even with the gray hair and the wrinkles still giving us just the "Cinema of Pseudomaturity."