When considering the sustainability of independent film, the increasing level of subservience to plutocracy stands out as a dangerous development. Filmmakers have always faced constraints when creating challenging work in Hollywood, of course, but to rely on the generosity of the progeny of the wealthy elite has a number of downsides. Nineteen of these affluent scions are young men, almost all white, whose biographies often read like a contemporary version of Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), minus the early, rural childhood spent in a boarding house.

XREF: Links to ongoing debates about the influence of private wealth and patron-class funding on artistic output, echoing criticisms of gallery and museum dependence on plutocratic donors.

Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, loc. 271