An indie filmmaker works outside the major studio franchise system, typically on smaller, director-driven productions. Benny Safdie is a leading example, known for intimate, anxious, richly textured films. His collaborations with Dwayne Johnson — The Smashing Machine and Lizard Music — are remarkable precisely because they pull the world’s biggest commercial star into independent cinema’s orbit, with Johnson playing an MMA pioneer and then an elderly eccentric called The Chicken Man for the modest, Brooklyn-shot production.
(Harald Krichel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0))
Mentioned in: From Mark Kerr to the Chicken Man: Why Dwayne Johnson Keeps Choosing Benny Safdie’s Strangest Roles