15 Careers That Were Made at the Sundance Film Festival

Image via Complex Original

Sundance breakthrough: Blood Simple (1985)

They're film critics' go-to directors for nuance, darkness, and off-center comedy, often all at the same time. Hell, they're even our pick for the best directors of the 2000s. Through four-star movies like Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, and, most recently, Inside Llewyn Davis, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have long cemented their place in the cinema history books, ranking up there with the Robert Altman's and Martin Scorsese's of the game.

Back in 1985, though, the Coen brothers were just a couple of hungry, aspiring filmmakers, coming off some second-unit work on Sam Raimi's indie horror flick The Evil Dead. Their first feature, Blood Simple (directed by Joel, produced by Ethan, and co-written by them both), got accepted into Sundance, and, by the festival's end, they were award-winners, with the film taking home the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic features.

And just like that, the names Joel and Ethan Coen were on Hollywood executives' minds, something that hasn't changed nearly 30 years later.

Sundance breakthrough: sex, lies, and videotape (1989)

Roger Ebert once called Steven Soderbergh the "poster boy for the Sundance generation." And that, folks, is really all you need to do know.

But, alas, we'll go a bit deeper. In the late '80s, American independent film was on the verge of an awakening, thanks to Robert Redford and his steadily growing Sundance Film Festival. In 1989, in came Steven Soderbergh, a confident 26-year-old writer-director who'd written his first feature, sex, lies, and videotape, on a yellow legal pad while driving across the country for eight days. En route to an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, Soderbergh's debut dominated the festival circuit, prefacing its Palme d'Or win at the Cannes Film Festival by taking home Sundance's Audience Award in January.

And Soderbergh hasn't taken a breather since. In the subsequent 25 years, he's directed 25 movies, including Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the Ocean's Eleven trilogy. Last year, he earned further accolades by directing Behind the Candleabra, the made-for-HBO movie with Golden Globe winner Michael Douglas starring as Liberace. Roger Ebert would definitely be impressed.

Sundance breakthrough: Reservoir Dogs (1992)

To say Quentin Tarantino came out of nowhere in 1992 would be an understatement.

Prior to heading to Park City, the then-29-year-old had worked at Manhattan Beach's Vide Archives, where his endless, somewhat freakish cinema knowledge came in handy; deep down, though, Tarantino wanted to work in movies, specifically as an actor. Thus, he cast himself as one of the enigmatic criminals in his feature film debut, Reservoir Dogs, an atypically starry movie for a first-time, unproven director, co-starring Harvey Keitel after the Taxi Driver/Bad Lieutenant actor read Tarantino's script, loved it, and helped provide funding.

Unsurprisingly, Reservoir Dogs, one of the most impressive cinematic debuts of all time, knocked everyone at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival on their asses. With Tarantino's name and his lively persona on front street, doors began opening for the young auteur. His script for True Romance got optioned and quickly turned into a fully funded movie; and by the time he went to the 1994 Cannes Film Festival with Pulp Fiction, he was a Hollywood fixture.

Sundance breakthrough: Cigarettes & Coffee (1993)

One of Sundance's largely undiscussed but hugely beneficial components is the festival's workshop programs, designed to give young filmmakers the tools and lessons needed to complete their first features. After bringing his first short film Coffee & Cigarettes, to Sundance in 1993, Paul Thomas Anderson, then only 23, was invited to attend the Sundance Feature Film Program the following year. There, he built the skills necessary to successfully make his debut feature, Hard Eight, for which he'd already secured funding.

Thanks to his Sundance grooming, PTA finished Hard Eight, headed to Cannes in 1996 to see his film screen in the Un Certain Regard, and enjoyed the buzz that mounted around him. A year later, his mainstream breakthrough came via Boogie Nights, that brilliant look inside the 1970s porn industry that's since led to modern-day masterworks There Will be Blood and The Master.

Sundance breakthrough: El Mariachi (1993)

Nowadays, Robert Rodriguez is known for splashy genre flicks like Sin City, Planet Terror, and Machete, as well as for directing the bizarre yet profitable children's film franchise Spy Kids. When he was 25, though, back in 1993, the Texas native earned a strong reputation as the newcomer responsible for "the movie made for $7,000": El Mariachi, a Spanish-language action movie written, directed, co-produced, and edited by Rodriguez himself.

The film was a big hit at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, earning Rodriguez the fest's Audience Award and impressing fellow Sundance breakout Quentin Tarantino. The new friends worked together in 1995 on the comedic anthology film Four Rooms, then again one year later on the horror-comedy From Dusk Till Dawn, and yet again on the ambitious ultimately misunderstood 2007 double-feature Grindhouse.

Even though his current budgets exceed $7,000, Robert Rodriguez is still considered an indie maverick. Just ask all the wannabe filmmakers who look upon his 1995 memoir Rebel Without a Crew as a kind of Bible.

Sundance breakthrough: Clerks (1994)

A Sundance all-star, Kevin Smith is back in Park City this year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Clerks, his 1994 debut that began it all for the outspoken, omnipresent writer-director. Made for a scant $28,000, the black-and-white Clerks introduced Smith's unique style of comedy to unsuspecting festival attendees—conversational, profane, and rooted in fanboy logic and excitement. That year, Smith won Sundance's Filmmaker Trophy and began his business relationship with Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Miramax Films.

To some, the Weinsteins are to blame for everything that's come since. Lately, Smith's been more known for his off-set antics and self-serving talkiness than his films, which haven't been all that good since 1999's Dogma. Still, whether you think his juvenile sense of humor is hilarious or heinous, one can't deny Kevin Smith his place in the Sundance annals. Though, yeah, he'd probably prefer you spell that "anal."

Sundance breakthrough: Spanking the Monkey (1994)

Attention, all young filmmakers desperately trying to make "Oscar bait" movies: just study the recent filmography of writer-director David O. Russell.

Since 2010, Russell is three-for-three in terms of receiving Best Picture nominations, with The Fighter (2010), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), and last year's American Hustle all earning that top honor. Even better, both Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle have strong-armed every acting category, placing one name in both years' Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress fields.

Russell hasn't always been so Oscar friendly, however. Spanking the Monkey, his darkly comedic 1994 debut, had a decidedly anti-AMPAS premise: a son forced to skip a big internship to stay home and take care of his mother develops an incestuous relationship with her. Although, on paper, that's not exactly Oscar material, it's definitely Sundance-ready, and the film's 1994 Audience Award at the festival is proof.

Sundance breakthrough: The Brothers McMullen (1995)

Yes, Edward Burns is still working in Hollywood—just not in anything you've probably seen recently. Well, save for the reasonably entertaining TNT miniseries Mob City, in which Burns gnawed on scenery as a heightened version of infamous gangster Bugsy Siegel. Otherwise, though, the Queens native's acting career has been marked by movie titles like One Missed Call (oof!), Man on a Ledge (eek!), and the Tyler Perry-led Alex Cross (double eek!).

In 1995, though, Burns was on the talk of the town—"the town" being Park City. Hitting Sundance for the first time with his debut film, the homegrown dramedy The Brothers McMullen, Burns went on a dream run in Park City, accepting the festival's Grand Jury Prize and striking a distribution deal with major studio 20th Century Fox that led to a $10 million theatrical box office gross. Not too shabby, considering the film was made for only $23,800.

Sundance breakthrough: Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996)

Yes, we all have the fine folks at the Sundance Film Festival to thank for all of the discomfort we've felt watching Todd Solondz's movies.

Not that Solondz makes unwatchable films—on the contrary, his singular brand of familiar, domestic darkness is always compelling, representing the refreshing audacity of independent film. But, man, can his movies be icky. As in, Happiness (1998), that unsettling dark comedy in which, among other nastiness, a father tells his son about that time he drugged and raped his son's 11-year-old friend.

Solondz's 1995 debut, Welcome to the Dollhouse, certainly set the precedent for all of the creepiness to come. A fascinating and uncompromising look at high school alienation and bullying, Welcome to the Dollhouse disturbed Sundance jurors profoundly enough to make them give Solondz's first feature the Grand Jury Prize.

Sundance breakthrough: Pi (1998)

In March, longtime indie film stalwart Darren Aronofsky will try his hand at achieving blockbuster status with his first mega-budget Hollywood, the Biblical epic Noah (starring Russell Crowe). It's a bold move by an exceptional writer-director known for intimate, psychologically brooding character studies like Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and Black Swan.

It's also about as far removed from his 1998 Sundance breakthrough film, Pi, as humanly possible. Reportedly financed through $100 bills given by friends and family, Pi is a black-and-white mind-fuck about a mentally unstable numbers guy who accidentally finds himself the target of religious extremists. Shot in black-and-white with frantic energy and an off-balance demeanor, Pi was unlike anything else at Sundance that year—or any year before, for that matter—and Aronofsky was awarded the Best Directing prize.

Sundance breakthrough: Girlfight (2000)

Just call her the "billion dollar woman." Having co-starred in James Cameron's record-breaking Avatar and nearly all of the Fast & Furious movies, Michelle Rodriguez is one of the most successful actresses in Hollywood, even if she's rarely given the props she deserves for such an accomplishment. But when it's time for casting directors to find a tough, action-ready female badass for their latest big-budget production, there really is no better choice out there.

The adjective "badass" has been applicable to Michelle Rodriguez from day one, too. Her breakthrough came via the 2000 Sundance attention-grabber Girlfight, a Grand Jury Prize winner in which Rodriguez earned rave reviews playing a woman trying to overcome her rough family life through boxing. Her performance caught the attention of producer Neal Moritz and director Rob Cohen, the two guys behind the original Fast and the Furious movie, leading them to cast her as Vin Diesel's rugged yet vulnerable love interest Letty.

Billions of dollars later, she has Girlfight's Sundance run to thank.

Sundance breakthrough: Saw (2004)

Horror fans are in a slight state of mourning these days. Why? Because James Wan, Hollywood's current king of scares, is leaving the genre behind, at least momentarily, to enter the blockbuster league.

Next April, the much discussed sequel Fast & Furious 7, recently disrupted by star Paul Walker's untimely passing, will begin James Wan's run as a big-budget action filmmaker. And good on him—he deserves that major look. Independently, he and screenwriting collaborator Leigh Whannell made Insidious, one of the best horror movies of the last 10 years, and with some actual Hollywood cash at his disposal, he brought back old-school terror with last year's hugely successful The Conjuring. He's more than proven himself in the horror field.

Especially since Wan directed the film that defined horror in the new millennium. Debuting at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Saw (also written by Whannell) blindsided distributors and critics alike with its visual abrasiveness and wildly original concept, that of a serial killer who doesn't actually kill anyone. Lionsgate bought Saw's distribution rights at Sundance that year, and when the film opened in theaters that October, its triumph was massive: Saw, which only cost $1 million to make, pulled in a whopping $103 million. And, of course, spawned six profitable sequels.

Sundance breakthrough: (500) Days of Summer (2009)

Like so many filmmakers before him (i.e., David Fincher, Michael Bay), Marc Webb started his career off directing music videos, working with a variety of artists ranging from Green Day to Twista and Maroon 5.

For his first movie, Webb signed on to make an indie romantic comedy that, on the surface, sounded painfully twee. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, (500 Days of Summer) subverted the rom-com standard and made the guy the victim of heartbreak, a noble concept that could have been an emo disaster. Fortunately, Webb handled the material with just the right balance of humor, emotion, and visual flair. Fox Seachlight Pictures, for one, took notice, picking up the film's distribution rights and pushing its August 2009 theatrical release to a robust $60 million gross.

A solid character piece hinging on young love, (500) Days of Summer struck a chord with the producers trying to reboot the Spider-Man brand with younger characters. Thus, Webb was hired to direct Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone in The Amazing Spider-Man, a $750 million worldwide earner that already has a Webb-directed sequel scheduled for this May.

Sundance breakthrough: Precious (2009)

Before Precious wowed critics at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, director Lee Daniels had only directed the 2005 indie non-starter Shadowboxer, a crime thriller co-starring Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Helen Mirren and co-produced by Damon Dash. He did have a producer credit on Halle Berry's Monster's Ball to his name, though, but other than that, Daniels didn't have much juice as a filmmaker. His Precious star Gabourey Sidibe, meanwhile, had never acted professionally before. But their lives were about to change as Sundance's 2009 edition got underway.

Winning both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, Precious made stars of both Daniels and Sidibe, namely the director. Without Precious, Daniels wouldn't have landed on Oprah Winfrey's radar and began a friendship with the media titan that led to her starring in his latest picture, Lee Daniels' The Butler. As for Sidibe, there'd be no scene-stealing on American Horror Story: Coven, nor her 2010 Saturday Night Live hosting gig.

Sundance breakthrough: Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Unlike most Sundance newbies, Elizabeth Olsen arrived at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival with some built-in, familial notoriety. The younger sister of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Lizzie, as she's often referred to, could have easily been hit with nepotism charges—if her acting chops weren't so damn impressive.

Establishing herself as something of a new-age indie scream queen, Olsen entered that year's Sundance with a pair of horror films, one more psychological (Martha Marcy May Marlene) and the other more gimmicky (Silent House, a haunted house flick pitched as a single 87-minute take). Though Martha Marcy May Marlene director Sean Durkin won a directing award at the fest, Olsen emerged as the film's biggest star, riding its heavy buzz to roles in several respected indie pics (Liberal Arts, Kill Your Darlings) and Spike Lee's Olboy.

Now, she's ready for the title Ms. Blockbuster—Olsen co-stars in this May's humongous Godzilla reboot and will play Scarlet Witch in Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron.