Case studies of key films, including , , and , reveal how Miramax went beyond influencing Hollywood business practices and motion picture aesthetics to shaping popular and critical discourses about cinema during the 1990s. does what other books about contemporary low-budget cinema have not—it transcends discussions of “American indies” to look at the range of Miramax-released genre films, foreign-language films, and English-language imports released over the course of the decade. The book illustrates that what both the press and scholars have typically represented as the “rise of the American independent” was in fact part of a larger reconfiguration of the media industries toward niche-oriented products.