Turner Classic Movies celebrates film mavericks with the documentary “Edge of Outside” (7 p.m., TCM). This marks a bit of a departure for TCM, a movie channel best known for championing Oscar winners and studio giants. “Outside” includes interviews with contemporary directors, actors and critics, among them Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Arthur Penn, Gena Rowlands and John Sayles.

They discuss and praise such outsiders as Orson Welles, John Cassavetes, Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, Sam Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick. We’re also shown archival interviews with each of these directors and learn how they worked within and outside of the Hollywood system, how they fought for control of their films and struggled to raise money. Welles tells an interviewer that he has squandered his life, spending 2 percent of his time making movies and 98 percent raising the funds to complete them.

Peter Bogdanovich observes that none of Welles’ movies made a profit, not even “Citizen Kane.” Scorsese talks of other pressures. When one of his movies made $60 million, he felt proud. But a studio chief told him that they weren’t interested in making “only” $60 million any more.

Some of the interviews seem slightly self-serving. It’s difficult to watch Ed Burns mention himself in the same breath as Woody Allen. Lee says he sees Welles as a cautionary tale. “I don’t want to be making wine commercials when I’m old,” cracks Lee, apparently forgetting that he made Nike commercials when he was young.

And while it’s fine to celebrate visionaries, nobody discusses some of the downside of the director-as-God orthodoxy that has come out of the independent movement. Welles was a genius. Most of us are not. Both Lee and Sayles have demanded and won final cut on all of their pictures. Could that be why so many of their movies are simply too long? And could so much emphasis on singular vision explain why many Sundance entries are audience-proof cliches marked by dreary self-importance? TCM will celebrate rule-breaking filmmakers every Wednesday night in July. Tonight includes three films by Cassavetes: “Faces” (8:15 p.m.), “A Woman Under the Influence” (11:45 p.m.) and “A Child is Waiting” (2:30 a.m.).

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ Singers compete to become part of a prefabricated pop band on “Rock Star: Supernova” (7 p.m., CBS).

¢ Regis Philbin hosts two episodes of “America’s Got Talent” (7 p.m., NBC).

¢ The top 14 perform on “So You Think You Can Dance” (7 p.m., Fox)

¢ Poppy Montgomery stars in the over-the-top 2005 true crime story “Murder in the Hamptons” (8 p.m., Lifetime).

¢ A swamp fire hides murder evidence on “CSI: Miami” (8:30 p.m., CBS).

¢ The 2005 “American Masters” (9 p.m., PBS, check local listings) documentary “No Direction Home” follows Bob Dylan during his most creative period, between leaving the folk scene and his motorcycle accident in 1966.

¢ Destruction of a religious relic results in murder on “Law & Order” (9 p.m., NBC).

¢ One night after the fireworks, “Naked Science” (9 p.m., National Geographic) looks at the evolution of explosive force, from the earliest gunpowder to hydrogen bombs.