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Posted Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 - Comments Off on [PR] Inaugurating Sundance Film Festival USA
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[PR] Inaugurating Sundance Film Festival USA

SUNDANCE INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES FILMS SELECTED TO SCREEN AS PART OF INAUGURAL SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL USA
Eight Filmmakers Dispatched from Park City to Bring their Films to Eight Cities
PARK CITY, UTAH – Sundance Institute today announced eight films from the 2010 Sundance Film Festival scheduled to screen in eight different cities nationwide on the night of Thursday, January 28, 2010. The screenings are part of the inaugural Sundance Film Festival USA, a ground-breaking initiative designed to highlight the ability of art, specifically film, to introduce new concepts, challenge ideals and spur debate. The Sundance Film Festival opens January 21 and runs through January 31, 2010.sundanceusa-4444.jpgCourtesy of Official Airline Sponsor Southwest Airlines, filmmakers will be dispatched from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City to cities across America, where they will introduce and screen their original films and engage in Q&As with local audiences. In addition to premiering their work at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, most of these artists have a previous connection to the non-profit Sundance Institute, whether as advisors to the Institute’s directors’ or screenwriters’ labs, or as participants in past Festivals. In each city an introduction video featuring Robert Redford and highlights from the Festival will precede the screenings. Tickets for the January 28 screenings are available through each individual theater’s box office.
Films screening as part of Sundance Film Festival USA are:
Cyrus — Ann Arbor, MI — Michigan Theater www.michtheater.org
Directors and screenwriters: Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass –A recently divorced guy meets a new lady. Then he meets her son who is, well…interesting. Cast: John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill, Catherine Keener. World Premiere
The Company Men — Brookline, MA — Coolidge Corner Theatre www.coolidge.org
Director and screenwriter John Wells will screen his drama — filmed on location in North Boston — about three company men attempting to survive a round of corporate downsizing while trying to fend off its effects on their families and their identities. Cast: Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Rosemarie DeWitt. World Premiere
Daddy Longlegs — Brooklyn, NY — BAM www.bam.org
Directors, screenwriters, brothers and Native New Yorkers Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie will bring to New York their latest film–A swan song to excuses and responsibilities, to fatherhood and self-created experiences, and to what it’s like to be truly torn between being a child and being an adult. Cast: Ronald Bronstein, Sage Ranaldo, Frey Ranaldo. North American Premiere
Jack Goes Boating — Chicago, IL — Music Box Theatre www.musicboxtheatre.com
Director: Philip Seymour Hoffman; Screenwriter: Bob Glaudini, both well know to Chicago film and theatre lovers. – A limo driver’s blind date sparks a tale of love, betrayal, friendship, and grace centered around two working-class New York City couples. Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Ryan, John Ortiz, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Tom McCarthy.
Teenage Paparazzo — Los Angeles, CA — Downtown Independent www.downtownindependent.com
Where better than Los Angeles to explore the effects of celebrity on culture? Director Adrian Grenier’s documentary does exactly that. A 13-year-old paparazzi boy snaps a photo of Grenier, leading the actor/director to explore the effects of celebrity on culture.
The Runaways — Madison, WI — Sundance Cinemas Madison www.sundancecinemas.com
Director and screenwriter: Floria Sigismondi–In 1970s LA, a tough teenager named Joan Jett connects with an eccentric producer to form an all-girl band that would launch her career and make rock history. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Scout Taylor-Compton, Michael Shannon, Alia Shawkat, Tatum O’Neal.
The Extra Man — Nashville, TN — The Belcourt Theatre www.belcourt.org
Directors: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini; Screenwriters: Robert Pulcini, Jonathan Ames and Shari Springer Berman — A down-and-out playwright who escorts wealthy widows in Manhattan’s Upper East Side takes a young aspiring writer under his wing. Cast: Kevin Kline, Paul Dano, John C. Reilly, and Katie Holmes.
Howl — San Francisco, CA — Sundance Kabuki Cinemas www.sundancecinemas.com
Directors and screenwriters Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, both local San Franciscans, will be on hand to screen their nonfiction drama about the young Allen Ginsberg finding his voice, the creation of his groundbreaking poem HOWL, and the landmark obscenity trial that followed. Cast: James Franco, David Strathairn, Jon Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels.


Festival Sponsors
The 2010 Sundance Film Festival sponsors to date include: Presenting Sponsors–Entertainment Weekly, HP, Honda and Sundance Channel; Leadership Sponsors–American Express, Bing™, DIRECTV, G-Technology by Hitachi, Southwest Airlines and YouTube™; Sustaining Sponsors– Blockbuster Inc., FilterForGood®, a partnership between Brita® and Nalgene®, L’Oréal Paris, Sony Electronics Inc., Stella Artois®, Timberland and Utah Film Commission. Their support will defray costs associated with the 10-day Festival and the nonprofit Sundance Institute’s year-round programs for independent film and theatre artists. In return, sponsorship of the preeminent Festival provides these organizations with global exposure, a platform for brand impressions and unique access to Festival attendees: The 2009 Sundance Film Festival, attended by over 40,000 visitors, generated an overall economic impact of a record $92.1 million and generated over $18 million in media exposure.
About Sundance Institute
Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance Institute is a not-for-profit organization that fosters the development of original storytelling in film and theatre. Internationally recognized for its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, film composers, playwrights and theatre artists, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Angels in America, Spring Awakening, Boys Don’t Cry and Born into Brothels.

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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