It was a four-car pile-up with only two survivors. It was Four Rooms, an omnibus film by the hottest Sundance kids in town, the self-proclaimed “Class of ‘92” consisting of Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell. The directors of Reservoir Dogs, El Mariachi, Gas, Food, Lodging and In the Soup decided to join forces before Pulp Fiction went through the stratosphere, but the project didn’t materialize until afterwards. The premise was simplicity itself: each segment of the film took place in a different room in the same hotel, with Tim Roth’s befuddled bellhop as the only common link.

Tarantino’s runaway ego was on full display in his room, “The Man from Hollywood,” yet he would emerge from the wreckage virtually unscathed, along with Rodriguez, whose slapstick contribution “The Misbehavers” was generally regarded as the movie’s highlight. Despite revolving around a coven of topless witches played by Alicia Witt, Ione Skye, Valeria Golino and Madonna, Anders’ “The Missing Ingredient” managed to be both silly and dull – a description that equally applies to Rockwell’s “The Wrong Man,” featuring his then-wife Jennifer Beals gagged and tied to a chair.

Despite its critical and commercial failure, it’s probably unfair to blame Four Rooms for derailing the careers of Anders and Rockwell; both continued to work, at least for a while. Anders made a pair of rock and roll movies, Grace of My Heart and Sugar Town, both of which have their defenders but neither of which made much impact. Most of her work over the past decade has been in episodic TV, from Sex and the City to Cold Case. The exception is Things Behind the Sun, a dark drama about rape that played the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and earned some of the best reviews of Anders’ career, but never secured a theatrical release, premiering instead on Showtime. “I absolutely loved the experience with the distribution on this movie,” Anders said in a recent interview with Moviemaker. “It was a very tough decision to make to go to cable instead of going theatrical. I had a theatrical offer from some great people who really loved the movie, but I tell you I had such a much better experience. I loved that millions of people saw my movie! There's no downside, as far as I can tell.”

Rockwell made a quasi-sequel to In the Soup, spinning off two characters for 1998’s Louis and Frank, a movie that has left very little evidence of its existence. It played a few festivals and apparently had a run in France, but that’s about it. The offbeat 13 Moons, starring Steve Buscemi as Bananas the Clown, fared little better in 2002, securing a limited release but not much critical support.

These careers can be revived, however, and another anthology movie may be the answer. We suggest Anders and Rockwell team up to make an old-fashioned drive-in double feature, complete with fake trailers and plenty of gratuitous sex and violence. How could it miss?