This raises the questions of where does one draw the line between the supposed creative freedom directors have over their films and the ownership of the studios that make those films possible?

Peter Biskind, the former executive editor at "Premiere" magazine, tries to answer this fraught question in "Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film" — a follow-up of sorts to 1998's "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls," his controversial account of the vanguard Hollywood filmmakers who rose to prominence in the 1970s.

Largely compiled of firsthand testimony, personal interviews and industry scuttlebutt, "Down and Dirty Pictures" opens during the 1989 Sundance Film Festival and Miramax Films' acquisition of "sex, lies, and videotape," director Steven Soderbergh's debut and the first "crossover" hit, i.e. an art film that could play at the shopping mall multiplexes.

In the course of a decade, the esteemed festival and once-maverick studio forfeited many of their initial artistic aspirations and succumbed to economic interests.

Sundance's founders originally conceived the institution as a lab and showcase for amateur filmmakers. Biskind and others propose that the program, like Miramax, fell victim to its own success: After "sex, lies, and videotape" the festival worked as a marketplace for "indie" distributors to buy films as if they were fresh, soon-to-expire and interchangeable produce, in effect ignoring the quality or marketability of the "product."

Meanwhile, Miramax Films, co-chaired by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the film industry's own two-headed dragon, became as influential and streamlined as the major studios it once positioned itself against as an independent alternative.

Biskind at first details the company's auspicious origins and the successes, yet a good deal of the book focuses on the brothers' pugnacious, violent temperaments and their apparent focus on profits over filmmakers' artistic integrity.

Although Biskind is prone to opining at times — especially while brazenly claiming Miramax's success killed independent film in America — his subject required a biased perspective, one that looked past the headlines in "Variety" and the Weinsteins' shameless Oscar-pandering.

His results may be occasionally disheartening, but, like "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls," they will never fail to entertain, captivate and provoke any movie geek.

Grade: AB