MOVIES: A declaration for independents from Viggo and Anjelica

  With the 10th annual CineVegas film festival winding down this weekend — it closes June 21 at the Palms — it's prime time to reflect on the festival's role in promoting independent cinema.
  Good or bad (I've seen both this year), many of the movies screening at CineVegas reflect a definite outsider spirit — and a chance to see something you might never see again. (Of course, some of these movies you'd never want to see again, but that's another matter.)
  Half-Life Award winner Viggo Mortensen — whose June 20 CineVegas tribute features a screening of "Alatriste," unreleased in the U.S. but a smash in Spain — seems philosophical about the never-ending struggle to make, and see, more offbeat movies.
  In general, he says, distributors ask themselves, " 'Is it worth the effort to put the posters up? Are we going to make any profit?' And, generally, the answer is no."
  Unless a foreign-language film is "selected for the Oscars or wins some big festival award, then it might, or it might not" make it to theaters, Mortensen points out. That's one reason good video stores (do any exist in Las Vegas anymore?) "are full of great gems" that "you don't know about unless you're a film buff." And "Alatriste," in which Mortensen plays a 17th-century Spanish soldier, "is one of those movies."
  Marquee Award-winner Anjelica Huston and another Half-Life honoree, Sam Rockwell, turn up in "Choke" (screening June 20), based on "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk's novel. And while Huston, like Mortensen, splits her time between studio and independent fare, she has no doubt that her legendary father — Oscar-winning director John Huston, who directed her to an Oscar in "Prizzi's Honor" — would be making independent projects if he were still working today. (Anjelica Huston is third-generation Hollywood royalty; her grandfather, actor Walter Huston, won an Oscar under his son John's direction for the 1948 classic "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," for which John won Oscars as director and screenwriter.)
  "For the last 10 years of his life, independent movies were very much his savior," Huston says of her father, recalling that he had trouble getting insurance to make studio movies due to health problems and he had to go to Canada "to do a picture he really loathed" simply to prove to studio officials that he was still insurable. (Huston's too polite to say which movie this was, but I'm guessing it's the eminently forgettable, fortunately forgotten 1980 thriller "Phobia.")
  The independent spirit suffuses father and daughter's final collaboration: "The Dead," a haunting 1987 James Joyce adaptation that "would never have been made" without independent financing.
  In low-budget movies, "people are taking a chance," Huston says.
  And taking a chance remains the essence of independent cinema — and the essence of CineVegas.
  So take a chance — while you still have time to buy a ticket and take the ride. See you at the Palms ...