13 FEDORA
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: William Holden, Marthe Keller, José Ferrer (USA, 1978)
You’ll probably be aware that Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is one of Hollywood’s most beautiful and acidic masterpieces. You might not, however, know that there was a sequel… Well, kind of. Almost 30 years on, Wilder and his star, William Holden, staged this twilight reunion, essentially a meditation on their earlier collaboration based on a story by writer and former B-movie actor Tom Tryon (star of I Married a Monster from Outer Space). In Fedora, Holden again plays a washed-up movie man: this time, not a screenwriter, but Barry ‘Dutch’ Detweiler, a haggard producer. In need of a hit, he travels to Corfu to attempt to persuade an, exiled old actress to return to movies and save his career. This sad, ghostly movie itself became a phantom. Deserted by its studio, Wilder’s penultimate film sat on the shelf for three years before limping out on release, and remains seldom seen.
Expect to pay: You might be able to find an odd-looking import for £20

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12 THE GREY FOX
Director: Phillip Borsos
Starring: Richard Farnsworth, Jackie Burrows, Ken Pogue (Canada, 1982)
The debut feature by the tragically short-lived Tasmania-born Borsos (27 when he directed this, he died at 41) was produced via Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, showered with awards and nominations on its cinematic release, and has since been designated a ‘Masterwork’ by the Audio Visual Preservation Trust Of Canada. Astonishing, then, that the copyright holders have never sanctioned a DVD. Borsos’ autumnal western tells of “The Gentleman Bandit”, Bill Miner, a real life train robber who plied his trade off and on between 1865 and 1911; more off than on, because he spent most of those years in jail. It opens in 1901, as Miner is released after three decades in San Quentin, only to discover the stagecoaches he’d robbed as a kid have disappeared, replaced by trains. This was the first starring role for Farnsworth, a veteran Hollywood stuntman, then 62, but still riding horses with the reckless joy of the cowboy he’d once been, and still doing his own stunts. Farnsworth would wait 17 years for his next, and final, starring role, in David Lynch’s The Straight Story riding a lawnmower instead of a horse.
Expect to pay: £25 for an old VHS

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11 YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Peter Kastner, Rip Torn, Geraldine Page (USA, 1966)
Initially made for Coppola’s university thesis, this story of a young man’s awakening into the adult world has obvious parallels with The Graduate. Shot in and around New York, with both the bohemian Chelsea Hotel and the construction of Madison Square Garden as constant backdrops, it has impeccable counterculture credentials, as Kastner’s yearning for the love of a good woman brings him into contact with all manner of female eccentrics. Coppola pulled off a series of showy set-pieces, although distributors Seven Arts were seemingly none too impressed, tacking on the rock soundtrack (including The Lovin’ Spoonful’s title song) in post-production against his wishes. Despite the film’s poor theatrical performance, Page went on to earn an Oscar nomination, and it remains a much sought-after item among hardcore Coppola fans.
Expect to pay: The 1998 Warners VHS is pricey at £30 or so

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10 GAS FOOD LODGING
Director: Allison Anders
Starring: Brooke Adams, Ione Skye, Fairuza Balk  (USA, 1991)
“Nineteen ninety two was the first year it became clear that the American independents were not just a director here or there with an indie sensibility, but a fully fledged movement,” Allison Anders tells Uncut. Certainly, 1992 was the year that a generation of indie filmmakers – Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs), Alexander Rockwell (In The Soup), Tom DiCillo (Johnny Suede) and Anders herself (Gas Food Lodging) – grabbed the limelight at Robert Redford’s independent Sundance Film Festival.

“Sundance propelled us all into existence,” agrees Anders. “It was for us what Cannes was for the French New Wave.” Anders, a UCLA film school graduate who’d broken into the industry as a production assistant to Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas, had already made “one ultra-indie feature”, Border Radio, before writing and directing Gas Food Lodging (based on Richard Peck’s novel, Don’t Look And It Won’t Hurt). Set in the truck-stops and trailer-parks of Laramie, New Mexico, it followed waitress and single mother, Nora (Adams), and her two teenage daughters, Trudi (Skye) and Shade (Balk), as they struggled to fill the gap left by their absent father, John (James Brolin).

“I knew I could make this my own,” says Anders. “It’s strange – it was one of my easiest shoots ever. I was relaxed and elated, although it was a battle and a dance to cast people I wanted.” J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr played a small role and composed the film’s lean score.

Beyond acclaim at Sundance, the film also won Anders the New York Film Critics award for Best New Director: “That still blows my mind!” But why is the film currently unavailable? “I don’t exactly know,” muses Anders. “Sony have the elements to strike good prints, and there was a small American DVD release in the late ’90s. I’d be over the moon if Sony would let [prestige reissue label] Criterion do it; they did a kickass job with Border Radio.”

Anders went on to make 1993’s LA girl gang drama Mi Vida Loca, but by 1994 the indie boom kickstarted by the Sundance generation had imploded. “The biggest thing was when Pulp Fiction had that outrageously good opening box office weekend,” Anders has commented. “That victory was the beginning of the end for the rest of us, because very few indie films can compete in that same kind of way.”

Looking back, though, on Gas Food Lodging, she realises, “It was ahead of its time. There was a personal quality to those characters that was new then. So much of my life went into them. We were emboldened by the DIY punk movement. We certainly didn’t wait for Hollywood’s approval. They’d never have said yes anyway.” Chris Roberts

Expect to pay: Get lucky, and it’ll cost you just £10 for the VHS