Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes

“A fast-moving account of the era bookended by Stranger Than Paradise and Pulp Fiction . . . [a] Baedeker of off-Hollywood where all roads lead to Park City.” —Interview

The legendary figure who launched the careers of Spike Lee, Michael Moore, and Richard Linklater offers a no-holds-barred look at the deals and details that propel an indie film from a dream to distribution. At the epicenter of the industry in the 1980s and ’90s, John Pierson reveals what it took to launch such films as Stranger Than Paradise, Clerks, She’s Gotta Have It, and Roger and Me. A chronicle of a remarkable decade for the American independent low-budget film, Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes also celebrates the nearly two dozen first-time filmmakers whom Pierson helped make a name for themselves and the hundred others whose success stories he observed at close quarters.

“John Pierson has faithfully chronicled the American independent scene. He was there, he knows.” —Spike Lee

“Sly, knowledgeable, deeply entertaining . . . You couldn’t do much better than to hop aboard this ten-year wild ride. Grade: A.” —Entertainment Weekly

“The most contentiously witty and revealing view of off-Hollywood around.” —Rolling Stone

“Mr. Pierson, who has lived, breathed, and hunted film for most of his adult life, covers his territory with urgency and conviction, and his single-mindedness is ravishing.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Pierson’s prose is quick-moving and witty and reads like a Who’s Who of the off-Hollywood mavericks who make the movies we’d like to see but can’t always find.” —The Washington Post

“A marvelously entertaining, educational, and caustic account of the rise of American independent filmmaking.” —The Globe and Mail