'Queen of the indies'

One of the ways in which American independent cinema conventionally differentiates itself from big-budget Hollywood is in its rejection of genre and performer typologies. Yet the legitimacy of this presumption has been increasingly tested by the emergence of a set of performers (Steve Buscemi, John Leguizamo, Liev Schreiber, Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken) who, while perhaps not fully meeting the criteria for stardom in the conventional sense, nevertheless generate personae that operate as legible, functional trademarks. For the kind of independent film with the highest cultural and economic profile, the sort exhibited in a growing number of upscale art-house settings, the lure of a performer’s name brand may, in fact, be a key feature of audience attraction. Bearing these concerns in mind, this article investigates the aesthetic categories engaged by discourses of recurrent performance in independent film. A case-study of stardom in the independent realm will focus on Parker Posey, the actress Time magazine designated ‘queen of the indies,’ referring to her ubiquitous presence in low-budget independent features (Corliss and Ressner 1997: 82–3).