It’s a Wonderful Life was an indie film? Yes.

For those who think that independent film was invented by Steven Soderbergh in 1989, or John Sayles in 1980, or John Cassavetes in 1959, Phil Hall's The History of Independent Cinema offers a welcome crash course in the filmmakers and entrepreneurs who made the movies what they are today. I spoke with Hall, a Film Threat editor who lives in Fairfield, about his book, out from BearManor Media.

Advocate: I think many people will be surprised to learn that It's a Wonderful Life was an independent film.

Phil Hall: That's correct. [Director Frank] Capra had planned to launch a new independent film venture based on that.

A: Why didn't that happen?

PH: The film was a commercial disappointment, and the people that he hoped to partner with preferred the stability and the security of the studio system. So Capra had to go back to working within the confines of the studio system.

A: Why had he decided to go independent?

PH: In the postwar era it wasn't very easy for him to reintegrate — a lot of people within Hollywood and across the country had difficulty getting back into the ebb and flow of things. Ironically, one of the most remarkable independent films of that era focuses on that very subject, The Best Years of Our Lives, which was produced by Samuel Goldwyn, one of the most successful independent film producers.

A: Another filmmaker that I don't think many people think of as independent was Walt Disney.

PH: Walt Disney was reliant on the studios to distribute his films until the mid-1950s when he created Buena Vista Releasing. He was originally reliant on Columbia Pictures to get "Steamboat Willie" out in 1929, then he was with United Artists for a while, then he was with RKO Radio Pictures up until the Howard Hughes era, at which point he decided to go out on his own. He was actually the only successful independent producer from Hollywood's golden age who made the leap to being his own studio/distributor.

A: Why do you think that was?

PH: He had already gone through three major studios and had been unhappy with all of them and the only other thing he could have done was to tap the studios he hadn't worked with yet. But he figured, much the way the United Artists founders figured in 1919, why not be your own distributor and pocket the profits?

A: Another interesting claim you make is that L. Frank Baum invented the movie franchise.

PH: I would say he accidentally invented the movie franchise. He figured if he could publish a series of Oz books, why not make a series of Oz films? It was actually a commercial and artistic failure, which is a shame, but some things don't adapt well into a particular medium. The Oz stories, which rely very heavily on dialogue and perhaps music and color, were missing something in the silent monochromatic world that he was making films in in 1914 and 1915. He also didn't have any experience in filmmaking; he was just copying what a lot of filmmakers were doing which was raucous slapstick comedy, which has nothing to do with the Oz stories.

A: Your synopsis of His Majesty, The Scarecrow of Oz is delightfully gruesome. How do you get to see these films?

PH: That's a public domain film; it's not difficult to track down. Just go to the Internet; you can even go into eBay and pick them up. Almost all of the films in the book are very easy to locate.

A: I was really intrigued by the inventions that didn't catch on, like Electronovision. I recently saw "The T.A.M.I. Show," and while I didn't think the performances were as bad as you made them out to be, it did look like a blown-up TV show.

PH: Electronovision was a solution without a problem. There was really no need to shoot films on video and then put them on to 35mm. Video was very primitive, so the visual quality was really inferior to what was being shot even on 16mm. Electronovision disappeared within two years of its introduction, which is a shame because there was a lot of talent behind it. The first Electronovision film was Richard Burton's Hamlet; "The T.A.M.I. Show" had an all-star cast.

A: You also write about the American Film Theater series, which I have fond memories of. The subscription series is another idea that seems to have been forgotten.

PH: It was an interesting idea. It didn't quite work for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that it was incredibly inconsistent. But the idea of a subscription series caught the imagination of some people. Shooting Gallery did something similar in the '90s and that didn't work either.

A: They had a subscription series?

PH: They didn't have a subscription but they had a block of films that they were trying to put forward. Film Movement tried to have its own monthly series of films; they're doing it now on DVD.

A: Who do you think is worth watching among local independent filmmakers?

PH: There's a lot of talent locally. Thomas Edward Seymour, Mike Mongillo, Joel Vetsch, A.D. Calvo; those are filmmakers who I know of that are doing interesting work. [All have lived or made films in Connecticut.]

A: How can readers see their films?

PH: Keep your eye on film festivals in the state and in neighboring states. Go to the art house theaters and take a chance to look into a film you may not have heard of; you might be happily surprised.