The new kings and queens of American indie cinema

Greta, Lena, Noah and the rest — the Brooklyn-born low-budget scene is bursting with a new class of movie royalty. Jane Mulkerrins pays homage
Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano in Ruby Sparks
Jane Mulkerrins26 July 2013

A decade ago the US independent cinema scene was in a sorry state. Hollywood had come calling on the most exciting new talents taken them out of the game. But now there is a new band of hip young auteurs and actors led by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, whose Frances Ha, has scored with critics and cinema-goers all round.

What marks out this new crowd of cineastes is that they do it all themselves — writing, directing, producing, editing, even composing the score — and are unfettered by adherence to one size of screen for their storytelling, wheeling freely between television and film. They star in each other’s shows and movies and are often to be found living, working and drinking coffee in Brooklyn, the hipster Hollywood. So who are these new chiefs of the indie screen?

Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach

Officially the golden couple, 29-year-old Gerwig and Noah Baumbach 43, right, co-wrote Frances Ha, which he also directed and she stars in, as a dancer in Brooklyn (where else?). It also features Adam Driver of Girls fame, Michael Segen (soon to join the cast of Girls) Grace Gummer (offspring of Meryl Streep) and Greta’s parents Christine and Gordon.

Alongside solo projects — including Baumbach’s Oscar nomination for directing The Squid and The Whale, and Gerwig’s starring role in Joe Swanberg’s LO and Hannah Takes the Stairs — the pair previously wrote, directed and starred together in Nights and Weekends, but kept their domestic collaboration under wraps until recently.

Michael Cera

The sweet, awkward, sportswear-clad father to Ellen Page’s illegitimate offspring in Juno and Canadian former child actor, grew up on the set of Arrested Development and has since graduated to indie classics that include Superbad, Scott Pilgrim vs the World and The End of Love.

At 25, he’s reprising his much-loved role in the new Netflix-produced revival of Arrested Development, which he now also writes episodes of, and he composed the soundtrack to the film Paper Heart. This summer he has a cameo in Seth Rogen’s current release This Is the End, as a drug-munching sex addict version of himself, and is in the process of decamping from California to Brooklyn.

Alex Karpovsky

Most familiar to Girls fans as Ray, the oddball slacker (now-ex) boyfriend of Shoshanna, Karpovsky met Dunham when they both were showing their first films at SXSW. Friendship and collaboration followed — he starred in her film Tiny Furniture before Girls and, like her, he writes, directs, produces and acts, and has an upcoming role in the new Coen brothers flick, Inside Llewyn Davis (due out in January 2014), probably doesn’t regret dropping out of that PhD programme in visual ethnography at Oxford University a decade ago. No less unconventional than Ray, he refuses to reveal his birth date; he views age as “a medical condition”.

Miranda July

The actress, director, writer and artist, 39-year-old July is completely unhindered by form, flitting between film, fiction, books, digital media and performance art. She wrote, directed and starred in her films Me, You and Everyone We Know and The Future, and her current creative project is called We Think Alone. In it, July asked 10 notable names to provide personal emails on 20 intimate topics, starting with money. Lena Dunham submitted an email exchange between her assistant and herself about a $24,000 custom-built Italian couch: “Decided it’s just too expensive.”

Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano

Zoe Kazan could probably script dialogue before she could speak. The 29-year-old daughter of screenwriters Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord, she is also the granddaughter of Elia Kazan, who directed A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront. So it’s perhaps inevitable that she’d become an actress, playwright and screenwriter too.

In her sweet indie romance, Ruby Sparks, she starred opposite her long-time boyfriend, Paul Dano (soon to be seen with Jake Gyllenhaal in Prisoners, out in September) 29, himself also a producer and musician. And she’ll appear opposite Adam Driver in another alternative love story, The F Word, due out on Valentine’s Day next year.

Lena Dunham

Dunham, 27, right, made her first film, Creative Nonfiction, while still at college, won prizes for her next, Tiny Furniture, at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, and is now (just in case you hadn’t heard), the writer, director and lead actress in her own close-to-the-bone, Brooklyn-based TV comedy Girls — the third season of which is currently in production, and for which she’s nominated for three Emmys.

She has a reported $3.5 million book deal and somehow still finds time for friendships with Gerwig, Adam Driver, Alex Karpovsky (who she persuaded to be in her film Tiny Furniture as well as Girls), Miranda July and the 1.1 million fans who follow her on Twitter.

Joe Swanberg

Detroit-born Swanberg, 31, has written, directed, produced and edited almost every one of his 15 films himself, the latest of which, Drinking Buddies, starring Olivia Wilde and set for UK release in November, made a big noise in the cinemas — and bars — of the festival circuit this year. A frequent collaborator with Gerwig, who starred in his films LOL and Hannah Takes the Stairs, he favours more democratic internet-based distribution for independent films, and made his 2011 film Marriage Material, available for free on his Vimeo page.

Adam Driver

As Adam, Hannah’s on/off love interest in Girls, he is depraved and damaged – the hipster Don Draper — but the surprise heartthrob of season two, with heroic potential. Now starring in Francis Ha opposite Gerwig, he is likely to earn a further legion of female fans, and will join his Girls-buddy Karpovsky, plus Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake in Inside Llewyn Davis. The 29 year-old former Marine is intensely private and publicity-shy; his underwhelming response to Dunham, when she phoned last week to tell him he’d been nominated for an Emmy: “Yeah, I heard.”

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