The Talent Management of Indie Authorship: From American independent cinema and short “films” to pay-TV and streaming

This book explores the roles that talent intermediaries, including talent agents, talent managers and producers, play in packaging, marketing and selling screen media products, services and brands by constructing and positioning their clients and collaborators as indie-auteurs. Exploring several case-studies across a range of screen media during an era of media convergence, including American indie cinema, high-end television, music video, advertising and branded content, the book explores the strategies that talent intermediaries adopt and the industrial, cultural, and social connotations and hierarchies that indie-auteurism as a promotional discourse and tool carries and reinforces. Taking a cultural production approach that involves analysing promotional, extratextual and critical discourse surrounding projects such as The Revenant, Judas and the Black Messiah, The O.A and Mr. Robot, the book links taste and professional legitimacy to race and gender inequalities as it scrutinises notions about the maverick White male auteur that have proliferated around contemporary indie productions. Providing new perspectives on the careers of indie-auteurs such as the Coen brothers, Steven Soderbergh, and Tyler Perry, and addressing the work of lesser studied figures such as Amy Seimetz, Dee Rees, and Shaka King, the book stakes out new ground that complicates popular ideas of indie-auteurs as highly autonomous and innovative filmmakers by exploring how this authorial discourse migrates between media and is constructed and reconfigured in relation to changing industrial and cultural contexts.