Screen Grabs: Go Your Own Way

"You can go your own way," Lindsay Buckingham crooned in Fleetwood Mac's most famous song, more than 30 years ago. This was advice which a motley crew of rebels, strivers, and eccentrics in the film world seemed to take to heart last week. With Hollywood in the throes of the post-writers' strike blues, its attention diverted by the circus surrounding the wiretapping case against Hollywood P.I. Anthony Pellicano, it was a good time for people seeking to take matters into their own hands.

Let's start with the geeks. Star Wars fanboys around the nation banded together in attempt to save a film that may one day be seen as the Rosetta Stone of fanboy culture—it's called Fanboys, appropriately enough—from the evil clutches of Harvey "Darth" Weinstein, as the he was dubbed in a Photoshopped image and video created by said fanboys. Why the fanboy beef with the garrulous Weinstein? The Weinsteins were planning to release a new version of the film, about a group of friends who travel to the Skywalker Ranch so that a cancer-stricken pal can get a first look at Episode One, only without the cancer part. Outraged by this assault on the integrity of their treasured film, which received a positive response at festivals last year, the fanboys struck back against the empire, threatening a boycott of the Weinstein Company's upcoming Superhero Movie. The Weinsteins capitulated, promising to release two versions of the film, though it's unclear when we'll get to see them. (It was a multiple-Exedrin week for Darth—er, Harvey—as Bob Marley's family also refused to license his music for an upcoming Marley biopic.)

Not only did the week have its rebel alliance, it also had a Cinderella story. In a go-your-own-way yarn worthy of Diablo Cody, Brad Ingelsby, a 27-year-old insurance salesman living with his parents in Pennsylvania, sold his first script, The Low Dweller, a dark drama set in 1980s Indiana that's garnered comparisons to No Country for Old Men, for $1.1 million. Leonardo DiCaprio and Ridley Scott are already attached, and the film may shoot this summer. As one blogger put it, "Single men of the world who are sick of seeing shocked faces on their dates when they say that they live at home—this news bit is for you."

For those less blessed by Lady Luck, there's the old-fashioned DIY approach, perhaps the most time-honored means of going your own way. Even if you're not a successful director, you can play one on the Internet! Thanks to the the "sweding" craze for cheaply remaking existing movies, inspired by the plot and surrounding marketing of Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind continues apace despite the weak performance of the movie that prompted it, with various sites tracking a rapidly growing body of work. Meanwhile, the practice of recutting trailers so they seem to be for something else, which gained momentum a few years ago with a remake of the trailer for The Shining, also shows no sign of going away anytime soon. You can even watch the recut Shining trailer back-to-back with a sweded version of the film, or sweded Top Gun with a trailer for gay Top Gun. Meanwhile, YouTube announced its second annual Video Awards, prompting one ecstatic winner to tell the Associated Press, "It's the new Emmys, the next Oscars, the next People's Choice Awards." OK, maybe not so much. But when you go your own way, sometimes any recognition at all can feel like a true blessing.