Old MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, September 15th, 2006 - Comments Off on Start the 'Insanity': Long-Suffering Film Conquers VOD, Then Switzerland, Then the World (Maybe)
Be Sociable, Share!

Start the 'Insanity': Long-Suffering Film Conquers VOD, Then Switzerland, Then the World (Maybe)


Last time I checked in on the progress of Robert Margolis and Frank Matter’s The Definition of Insanity, the struggling-actor tragicomedy had won the Virginia Film Festival audience and jury awards, earned its first New York screening in Battery Park City and was continuing its ongoing quest for distribution. Earlier this week, The Reeler heard about this last piece of the torturous indie puzzle settling in at last. Or at least kind of.
“It’s a video-on-demand deal,” Margolis told me of the recent pact that puts Insanity on TV for 90 days starting today (check with your cable provider for details). “It’s through a company called Lightyear Entertainment, and they have a deal with Warner Home Video. So it’s basically through Warner. It’s going out to most of the major cable networks nationwide–so Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, all that stuff. We’re hoping this will generate more interest in terms of DVD; we’ve had a couple of offers, but we’re looking for something a little higher-access.
“The film has had sort of an unusual life in that it keeps rising from the dead and generating these waves of interest,” he continued. “So we’re still pretty confident, though it’s not pursuing the traditional release path. And we still have a few possibilities in New York for limited theatrical. What we’re trying to do is sort of our own guerilla version of multi-platforming.”
The approach has netted a mid-October release in co-director Matter’s native Switzerland (!), and Margolis added that negotiations continue with a few international sales agents considering taking Insanity on. Meanwhile, he has a pair of new projects in the works, including a “Squid and the Whale meets The Graduate, in some weird way” comedy set in the Catskills and a film about “a guy trying to heal from trauma, but it involves this strange, sadomasochistic relationship as it’s filtered through this sort of post-9/11 New York consciousness.”
Ah, of course, I totally relate. Anyway, cheers to Margolis and Matter for keeping the pressure on, and if you have yet to check out Insanity from my last exhortations, let this third urging be the charm. And now that you do not even have to leave the house, your weather and location excuses (Battery Park City was a tall order, I admit) do not quite wash. Make it happen, gang.

Be Sociable, Share!

Comments Off on Start the 'Insanity': Long-Suffering Film Conquers VOD, Then Switzerland, Then the World (Maybe)

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon