And so on, and so on. This was unimaginable only a few years ago, when there was no canon of successful independent films to look up to. But now, people are withdrawing their life savings and maxing out their credit cards to make movies that look like other movies. My wife, Sam Maser, is a festival programmer, and she sees more imitations of Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino every month than you can imagine. It's painful to watch, because there's a big difference between imitation and influence.
Every filmmaker has influences.
That's how you learn. But the goal should be to internalize your influences, to let them spark your own originality. I watched Todd Solondz learn this very lesson. It was a lot like a Woody Allen movie. Ironically, it was the failure of his first movie that drove Todd to find his own voice.