During the late 2000s and early 2010s, I was swept along by the mumblecore movement that was shaking up independent film predominantly in the United States. Mumblecore is defined by the actors naturalistic style, improvisational dialogue, low-to-zero budget film production, a soundtrack of dreamy indie/folk music (think The Shins, but even more lo-fi), a DIY approach to filming, real world locations, and narratives that emphasized the lives, times, loves, and losses of geriatric millennials. Though a relatively minor concern, the mumblecore movement seemed like a breath of fresh air during a time of increasingly big-budget franchise movies, muscular movie stars, an increasing over-reliance on CGI, and an industry obsessed with box-office returns and international markets.

For a time, mumblecore felt reminiscent of the New Hollywood ethos of filmmaking that had reflected the radical and progressive movements in American society of the late 1960s and early 1970s and gave audiences youth-oriented films such as Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), and The Last Picture Show (1971). Those working within New Hollywood jettisoned the spectacle of the epic western and the showy musical and instead focused on personal stories that reflected the culture at large and the shifts that were occurring. There was also a hint of the late 1980s and early 1990s energy of the indie New Wave that brought films and filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, 1992), Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, 1992), Kevin Smith (Clerks,1994), Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, 1991), Richard Linklater (Slacker, 1990) and Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies, and Videotape,1990) to the forefront of cinema and popular culture in this era. These films fizzed with edgy dialogue, imaginative editing techniques and cinematography, sex and violence, and pop music soundtracks that indicated the filmmakers had come of age during the era of MTV. Every generation seems to get the indie film movement it requires, and mumblecore felt like that for those of us who came of age during the 1990s and entered the 2000s as sardonic, disillusioned, and bewildered adults.

There also felt to be a shift in the way the mumblecore films were made and distributed that showed a long-needed democratization of who could now make films. Unlike the practitioners of New Hollywood and the 90s New Wave who could still secure major studio funding, and flick through a Filofax of industry contacts to help get their projects off the ground, rent or buy film equipment, and find distribution, the filmmakers within the mumblecore scene were less reliant on the old ways of doing business. All that was required was a small amount of funds – usually raised through small donations on project funding websites, or from the participants’ own pockets – a group of willing friends to act and help with other aspects of production, and a fairly cheap set-up of easily purchasable and cheap digital equipment and editing software. Locations were usually the filmmaker and actors’ own homes and workspaces, and cast members were pulled from an inner circle of friends with narratives adapted from situations and experiences from the lives of the filmmakers.

One clear positive difference that mumblecore had from New Hollywood and the 90s New Wave was the absence of the domineering male auteur director that existed so overwhelmingly in the 1960s and the 1990s. Male presence existed within mumblecore with directors such as Joe Swanberg and Andrew Bujalski leading the charge, but the movement offered an inclusive and creative collaborative environment with an abundance of female writers, producers, directors, and actors taking center stage. Films written and directed by Greta Gerwig (Nights and Weekends, 2009), Lena Dunham (Tiny Furniture, 2010), Lynn Shelton (Humpday, 2009 Your Sister’s Sister, 2011), Sophia Takal (Gabi on the Roof in July, 2010), Mary Bronstein (Yeast, 2008), and Ry Russo-Young (Nobody Walks, 2012) were among the most celebrated within the movement and, as we’ll see, the eventual mainstream break-outs stars tended to be female.

The downside was that mumblecore films could not draw the same level of audience attention or critical praise seen by the previous film movements. None of the films could quite conjure the box office receipts or cultural impact of Easy Rider, or The Last Picture Show from the New Hollywood era, or Reservoir Dogs and My Own Private Idaho from the 90s New Wave. The budgets of these films, though small in comparison to the major studio productions being made at the time, often exceeded a few million dollars, featured well-known and already well-established actors, and would often, through word of mouth, and highly contested reviews by Siskel and Ebert, make it into the chain movie theaters for audiences to lap up.

The egalitarian ideals behind mumblecore were perhaps more popular and intriguing than the individual films themselves. Andrew Bujalski, director, and the person often cited for publicly coining the term “mumblecore”[1] commented to The Guardian newspaper that the “word has had a far wider reach than any movie”[2] he had ever directed. At first, mumblecore films predominantly featured unknown and non-professional actors and relied on small film festival screenings, and tiny subsidiary companies to market and distribute. Online streaming platforms, though certainly advantageous in getting people to sit and watch, were often the designated home of many of these films. This evolved slightly as more recognizable actors such as Anna Kendrick, Jonah Hill, Susan Sarandon, Olivia Wilde, and Emily Blunt began performing in films deemed mumblecore and the name recognition bumped up the budgets and popularity somewhat.

Things that look like mistakes.

I’ve been thinking about Mumblecore recently for several reasons. Firstly, writer, actor, director, and mumblecore stalwart Greta Gerwig released her fourth directorial film Barbie (2023), which blew past one-billion-dollar box-office gross and was the highest-earning film of 2023. The humble origins of Gerwig and her cohort have been largely side-lined as they solidified their place within mainstream filmmaking. Secondly, around a decade ago I contributed two essays to the journal Scholardarity that explored mumblecore and the cultural surroundings that informed the films. ‘Digital Socialism: How Mumblecore Filmmaking is Defying Capitalism’ considered mumblecore as a progressive, egalitarian alternative to mainstream Hollywood’s filmmaking style, its star system, egotistical directors, and the overly expensive marketing campaigns. It was essentially an essay that framed mumblecore as a film movement ‘for the people by the people.’ A youthful-led stab at a creative working-class utopia. The other essay, ‘Mumblecore in Obama’s America’, concerned the societal and political environment that these films were part of within the supposed halcyon days of liberal values and feel-good prosperity felt during the early days of Barack Obama administration (2008-2016). There was a sense that with a Black President in office, and with a left-leaning “hope and change” policy agenda that American politics, and therefore the wider society, had reached a post-racial, post-class comfort zone in which the laurels of the young liberals, and the left in general, could be safely rested. This would turn out to be a gross misjudgment in retrospect.

As naive and often cringeworthy as these two essays can now seem with the hindsight of time, personal maturation, and burgeoning knowledge, and the troubled times we currently occupy with a second Donald Trump Presidency, and the prospect of more right-wing authoritarianism across the globe, I had the desire to revisit the essays and some of the films discussed to discover what I got wrong and what I maybe got right about mumblecore and the era in which these films emerged. I was interested in reopening the investigation into why mumblecore, even after its apparent decline, still resonates as an important movement in independent film and a reflection of a wider cultural moment that may never again return.

To start, let’s offer some definitions of what mumblecore is/was, the key players, the important films, and where it stands today.

Mumble beginnings.

Mumblecore originated in the early 2000s, with Andrew Bujalski’s film Funny Ha Ha (2002) being cited as the starting pistol of an influx of films that would be considered mumblecore. A small, though notable rise of films accelerated before the peak years of 2007 to 2016 in which approximately sixty-six mumblecore films were produced.[3] This ‘golden age’ produced some of the most well-known films of the movement such as Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007), Nights and Weekends, Humpday, Cyrus (2010), Tiny Furniture, Your Sister’s Sister, Frances Ha (2012), Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2012), Drinking Buddies (2013), The Overnight (2015), and culminating with the mumblecore Netflix show Easy (2016-2019). After this peak moment, the number of productions begins trailing off with just a handful of films considered mumblecore being made from 2016 to the present day, and only two (2020’s Shithouse, and 2022’s Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater) in the current decade.[4]

There are a few reasons for this post-2016 nosedive, the most obvious one being that the participants began acting, producing, and directing within more mainstream films and television shows, working with bigger-name actors, and diversifying their output beyond the limitations of micro-budget independent film. There was also the case that the mumblecore tag had some negative implications in the post-2016 world. In a 2014 interview with Salon, director Joe Swanberg stated that mumblecore “became a dirty word. It was shorthand for a kind of shitty, low-budget movie following selfish white people.”[5] Swanburg’s assessment was possibly correct. All the films listed above during the so-called ‘golden age’ of the genre featured the trials and tribulations of predominantly white, middle-class, young adults, attempting to make sense of the world as they exit college and attempt to find work and their place within the world.

One more speculative rationale was that the relative calm of 2007-2016 American life and liberal values that mumblecore films thrived within and represented, the “selfish white” person perspective that Swanberg considers, came crashing down with the end of the Obama era and the implementation of the reactionary administration of Republican President Donald Trump and the backlash against the liberal consensus of the last several decades.

My essay ‘Mumblecore in Obama’s America’ concerned the relative ease of life for the predominantly white, young, liberal arts educated, and left-leaning protagonists within this timeframe. The only real hardships faced by the many protagonists are relationship woes, often resolved in an understated fashion by the end of the film. Because of struggles faced with precarious jobs and living conditions, economic dependency on wealthy baby-boomer parents, who offer a place to crash, and emotional support, fill the narratives of these films. This is evidenced in Lena Dunham’s film Tiny Furniture, in which Aura (Dunham) returns after graduation to her mother’s Tribeca loft apartment and takes a minimum wage job while trying to figure out her future. Jeff (Jason Segel) in Jay and Mark Duplass’s Jeff, Who Lives at Home, still lives in his mother’s basement, smokes weed all day, and tries to extract meaning in the sense of mundanity that prevails. Both Aura and Jeff flutter through life seemingly unaware of other people’s actual hardships.

Films about these privileged white people post-2016 felt off-kilter when other pockets of American society were being disenfranchised, and outright targeted by the Trump administration. From immigrants to America, the poor, the sick, the unemployed were hurled on the coals. The mumblecore perspective that life’s a breeze when you’re white and wealthy, and time is afforded for your fuck-ups probably didn’t sit well with the filmmakers and crew, the actors, and participants within the film, and the audiences themselves who were crying out for some much needed criticism of the world they had landed in.

Within the narratives of these 2007-2016 films, there is a sense that the wider political and geo-political environment has little impact on the lives of these characters. Recall that within Obama’s two terms there was a war, a financial crisis, racial inequality, poverty, and displacement. Mumblecore as a place for political commentary was almost completely absent. I squirm at the idea presented in the essay ‘Digital Socialism’ that the movement was some kind of budding socialist experiment within filmmaking that would eventually impact the wider culture. Certainly, the creators, stories, and collaborations reflect the apparent left-leaning perspective of the filmmakers and the characters. However, branding them as a bunch of “reds” was perhaps a step too far on my part. There is an egalitarianism and a sense of collective responsibility and trust in how these films are made and the collaborative processes of production which is certainly commendable and an antidote to the usual egotistical bluster of Hollywood films. The creative process might well have been socialist-leaning, but the narratives they told were almost devoid of politics.

Entering the Mumblestream

While revolution may not have been on the mind, mumblecore acted as a coaching school toward future (and potentially mainstream) film production for those involved. This is something that I noted in both of my essays. Within the loose aesthetics of mumblecore, there was room for new approaches to writing, filmmaking, and acting with little to lose. A mentality of “if at first you don’t succeed, try again” was rampant and encouraged and could be activity pursued. The low-to-zero budgets and self-financing meant that stakeholders rarely required a financial return on their investment, and any mistakes during filming could be rectified easily thanks to the cheapness of the digital equipment and editing software. The willingness of those involved to replace pay cheques with experience and a credit on the Internet Movie Database meant that the movement could sustain itself if at the level if necessary, but also keep expanding if that was the desire.

I pointed towards this idea of a continued sustainable future for mumblecore in both essays, but in retrospect, I believe the long-term goal may not have been to take mumblecore mainstream but to take those involved out of the mumblecore movement and drop them into the mainstream. Gerwig is the obvious example of someone who started out within mumblecore, broke out by acting in larger films such as Greenberg (2010), Arthur (2011), and The Humbling (2014) eventually building up her directorial credentials with Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019) until fully embracing the mainstream with Barbie. There are many more examples. Joe Swanberg, who continues to produce low-budget films, also wrote (although it was mostly improvised), directed, and produced all three seasons of the Netflix anthology series Easy, which essentially transferred the loose flow, unscripted dialogue, and improvised performances of mumblecore to a television show revolving around the lives, loves, and hang-ups of a loosely affiliated group of Chicagoans. Adam Wingard, Swanberg’s co-director on the 2011 film Autoerotic, and his cinematographer on Art History (2011), and The Zone (2011) moved into mainstream directing with Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024). Godzilla vs. Kong’s Budget was estimated between $155–200 million, with a box office take of $470.1 million. Astronomical in comparison to Wingard’s $2,000 budget for his 2007 ‘mumblegore’ horror film Popskull.

Jay and Mark Duplass, who directed and appeared in mumblecore staples such as The Puffy Chair (2005) and The Do-Deca-Pentathlon (2012) have also walked the tightrope between indie and mainstream film and television. They created the HBO television shows Togetherness (2015-2016) and Room 104 (2017-2020). The pair also co-wrote the 2018 book Like Brothers which delved into their fraternal partnership.

Perhaps the biggest impact a former mumblecore filmmaker has had on the wider cultural landscape is Lena Dunham. Her film Tiny Furniture led her to the creation of the immensely successful HBO series Girls (2012-2017) in which Dunham wrote, starred, executive produced, and on occasion directed episodes throughout the show’s six-season run. Dunham has written a bestselling memoir and become an influential presence on social media and within wider celebrity culture. In 2016, as the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign was in full swing, Dunham openly endorsed the Democratic nominee, interviewed Clinton in-depth on her website, and joined the campaign trail as a reporter and speaker.

Did we have a good time?

There are many questions when considering the decline of mumblecore that may never be answered. The first that springs to mind is was mumblecore sucked up by the mainstream and spat out under a different guise of independent film? Arguably this is the case. But did this event occur as early as 2010 when big-name actors started attaching themselves to mumblecore projects, and the mumblecore elite started embracing larger roles (Gerwig in Greenburg for example)? Thus the bulk of supposed mumblecore films linger as post-mumblecore from 2010 onwards. This is an interesting prospect that would mean mumblecore’s influence on independent film from 2010 onwards was actually seismic and led to over a decade of films that longed to duplicate the original no-budget blueprint. Another question that emerges is did it ever really exist in the first place, or was it simply a casual way to categorize a series of films that had loose affiliations with one another and a shared vision? According to many who worked within mumblecore this is and was always the case. The democratization of filmmaking, the cheapness of the technology, and relative calm of American life led a dispersed group of creatives and their films to forge an identity within itself. Mumblecore simply ceased to be at some indistinguishable point. The filmmakers, unperturbed and not fully acknowledging its existence anyway, evolved and continued unabated, making it known that mumblecore was a tag that didn’t fit with their loftier ambitions.

The future impact of mumblecore films themselves may not be substantial. This isn’t to suggest the quality of these films does not compare to the two previous American independent film movements outlined above, nor that they should be dismissed and forgotten. There is some excellent work that emerged from the era and, despite the relative inexperience of the actors, some intriguing and moving performances emerged. These films are honest snapshots of an era that doesn’t seem all that long ago but has also vanished. Yet in the general hubbub of film today, the franchises, the event movies, the reboots, the film stars, and the need to secure more and more subscribers to the various and expanding streaming services, mumblecore is slowly slipping underneath the torrent of so-called ‘content.’ With time, mumblecore films may simply fall below the radar, and eventually drop off completely. The streaming services they occupy will replace them (potentially with shows and films made by the chief architects of mumblecore) and possibly never return them again if the demand doesn’t exist. Then what? Wait for Criterion to reissue the most memorable films as a box set to cash in on some anniversary? Honestly, I can see that happening. Especially if more and more of the mumblecore participants join the mainstream in some capacity and their past work is reconsidered in the wake of their mainstream success. The loss of access is a great shame, but unfortunately the conceivable outcome of the overall culture of accelerated capitalism that we currently occupy which means smaller, independently made films (or any art, really) fall by the wayside as bigger, more expensive productions muscle in.

Another aspect as to why mumblecore has vanished and may never return is that these stories of dysfunctional millennials juggling first-world problems no longer have much appeal. The luxury of time, lack of responsibility, and perceived innocence that mumblecore represents for its protagonists has gone. The arrested adolescence of mumblecore’s chief protagonists seems petty and inconceivable to audiences today. Escapism is important. Film can offer that in abundance and mumblecore itself provides a wonderful retreat that still feels very rooted in our recent history, yet also nostalgic for a time long past. The world we live in today with its accelerated climate change, war, pandemics, economic instability, and rise of right-wing populism tells us that we must begin to engage further and far more effectively than the laissez-faire attitude that the narratives of mumblecore offered if anything is ever to change. Film isn’t a crusade and it’s unfair to place the burden of activism upon filmmakers unwillingly. Alternatively, film can illustrate the conditions of punitive policies, change perceptions, and subtly create understanding in its audience. It doesn’t need to be political; it just needs to be real. Mumblecore, for a brief moment, felt like it could offer at least an alternative vision of filmmaking. It failed to succeed and that’s okay. The movement succeeds in other ways by placing decent, socially conscious human beings, excellent writers, collectively attuned directors, and producers at the forefront of modern film today. For now, that’s a win we can live with.