Spending time around independent film people can test the olfactory senses. Bullshit isn’t unique to Hollywood, of course. People on the fringes of every business tend to be open-collared hucksters; grifting wasn’t invented on a Cannes yacht or in a booth at the American Film Market. But for decades, embellishment, obfuscation, and outright lies have found an inviting home in entertainment in general and indie film in particular.

Everyone’s got stories. I once performed a legitimate spit-take as Relativity Media’s Ryan Kavanaugh explained the proprietary “formula” he had developed to guarantee movie profitability. (Third-act spoiler: It didn’t work.) And I can’t count the number of times I’ve been cornered at a party by a socialite or an accounting firm cast-off pitching their relationship with so-and-so, who just got Gerry Butler to commit to a three-picture “franchise.” At THR, we used to joke about how few announcements we covered at festivals turned into actual movies. For those with real power, swatting away these flies must be a constant struggle. There’s just something about the murky finances and adjacency to glamour of independent film that attracts the world’s worst people.