Paramount wanted $20,000 for 119 seconds of 'Paper Moon,' " Ms. Sams said. "The studios are so afraid of exploitation that they set boundaries no one will cross. Even after the prices were cut, we were $150,000 in the hole."

Unwilling to pay those fees, IFC's general manager, Evan Shapiro, helped Ms. Sams pursue another, more aggressive, tack, which may point the way for documentarians who want to tap movie iconography without paying studio prices. Its strategy involved some negotiating hardball, backed up by a willingness to fall back on the tricky legal doctrine known as fair use.