By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Bookish Bedfellows, Guerilla Gold: Focus Features in the News
When you are hot, you are hot, I suppose, and nobody knows this better right now than the folks over at Focus Features. Variety tunes readers into no fewer than three Focus tidbits this morning, starting with the revelation that Universal’s specialty boutique is no longer just in bed with Random House, but actually fucking the publisher. In the first sweaty throes consummating the pair’s late-2005 deal, Focus has settled on two politically themed books for development in 2006: Yasmina Khadra’s suicide-bomber mystery The Attack and Bob Drogin’s US intelligence indictment Curveball.
And then there is the sweet PR newsflash that Focus distribution cap’n Jack Foley is in line to receive the Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens’ humanitarian award at the group’s annual get-together June 14. No word yet if this is connected at all to the provenance of those Brokeback Mountain shirts whose auction has drawn $20,000 in pledges so far to the charity’s LA wing–not that that matters, I guess. Congrats to Jack!
Speaking of Brokeback Mountain, the Carpetbagger may have had it right this morning when he mentioned that Universal’s flagship Munich could be drilling a hole in Focus’s Oscar dinghy: Check out the smashing new Brokeback promos littering L.A., for example. Spielberg gets the full-page Times ads, and Ang Lee gets a Depression-era canvassing job right out of The Bicycle Thief.
But hey–that is quintessential Focus spunk, right there. Co-presidents David Linde and James Schamus did not get where they are for nothing, although they might have been wise to parlay the proceeds from their film’s shirts into renting out a biplane to drag their huge FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION… banner over Hollywood for a day or two at the end of the month. That thing has been sitting in Schamus’s office since Thanksgiving, for Christ’s sake.