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It used to be that only big studio movies were susceptible to the virus of imitation. When "The Sound of Music" broke box office records, all the studios said, "Ah, they want musicals with Julie Andrews! We'll give them 'Star' and 'Darling Lili.'" But audiences just wanted "The Sound of Music." They just wanted that particular movie. When "Star Wars" took off, the studios said, "They want science fiction! We'll give them 'Krull' and 'Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone!'" When "Dances With Wolves" took off, we got "Tombstone" and "Wyatt Earp." And so on, and so on.

But now, with the success of independent movies over the last decade, we're getting imitations of "Pulp Fiction" and "Clerks" and "Slacker" and "The Full Monty," and, soon to come, "The Blair Witch Project." And it should go without saying that people don't want more lo-fi mockumentaries on video; they don't want more stories about filmmakers lost in the woods; they just wanted that particular movie.

What saddens me is that these imitations aren't all coming from studios, from mini-majors, or from the production divisions of quasi-independent distributors -- they're coming from actual independent filmmakers. 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. It's one thing to work within an established genre -- but "Quentin Tarantino" is not a genre. I watched Todd Solondz learn this very lesson. Not many people know that Todd's first feature wasn't "Welcome to the Dollhouse" -- it was a movie called "Fear, Anxiety and Depression." (I know, because I was the executive on it for the better part of a year, at a studio that didn't end up financing it.)

"Fear, Anxiety and Depression" was like a Woody Allen movie. It was a lot like a Woody Allen movie. And Todd was one of many filmmakers who learned the hard way that there's no market for a Woody Allen movie that isn't made by Woody Allen -- because Woody Allen makes them better. Ironically, it was the failure of his first movie that drove Todd to find his own voice. "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Happiness" could only have been made by Todd Solondz, and that's when people sat up and took notice of him.

As this story illustrates, not only is imitation not artistically satisfying -- it isn't even commercial. At least when the studios churn out films like "Disturbing Behavior" and "Urban Legend" to capitalize on the success of "Scream," they have the marketing and distribution muscle to get those films shown around the world. But if your film is the 17th Tarantino imitation Geoff Gilmore has seen this month, then you're not even going to get to Park City. In fact, you're not even going to get to the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, or South by Southwest. Slamdance had over 2,000 submissions this year. Not Sundance, Slamdance. It's film-eat-film out there. So you have to ask yourself before you make your film: Are you making "Star Wars" or "Krull?"

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