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ZIPPORAH FILMS AND MTUCKMAN MEDIA TO HIT THE 'GYM'

Posted Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 - Comments Off on ZIPPORAH FILMS AND MTUCKMAN MEDIA TO HIT THE 'GYM'
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Announcing Frederick Wiseman’s Newest Film, BOXING GYM
New York, NY (June 1, 2010) – Following the success of the national release of “La Danse—The Paris Opera Ballet” (which played in nearly 150 theaters and has grossed over $600,000), Zipporah Films announced today that it will once again work with Michael Tuckman and mTuckman media to release Frederick Wiseman’s latest documentary, BOXING GYM. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival as part of the Directors Fortnight on May 20th and will open in New York City at the IFC Center on October 22nd before rolling out to theaters across the country.
The subject of the film is an Austin, TX institution, Lord’s Gym, which was founded twenty years ago by Richard Lord, a former professional boxer. A wide variety of people of all ages, races, ethnicities and social classes train at the gym: men, women, children, doctors, lawyers, judges, business men and women, immigrants, professional boxers and people who want to become professional boxers alongside amateurs who love the sport and teenagers who are trying to develop strength and assertiveness. The gym is an example of the American “melting pot” where people meet, talk, and train.


BOXING GYM was produced by KO Films, Inc. in association with the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and with the support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, and LEF Moving Image Fund. Sara Kiener’s Film Presence will once again handle marketing and outreach on the film as it did for “La Danse.”
BOXING GYM is the 38th film in a career that has spanned five decades. Mr. Wiseman is a longtime boxing fan. “As soon as I walked into Lord’s Gym, I knew I wanted to make a movie there. The variety of people working out, the friendly atmosphere, and the old posters on the wall added up to a terrific location for a film.” The French newspaper Libération, reviewing the film from Cannes, writes: “People of all stripes, of both sexes, and of every motivation, go [to the gym] like we go to the therapist. They do it to learn to defend themselves, to arm themselves against life, to forget the idiots at work who get on their nerves, to speak for an hour with their bodies, to let go, to forget… Wiseman’s camera—sly, on the lookout, attentive—gives a reading of something that is so cinematographic (no superfluous intervention, no voiceover to shed light on the plot) that his film finishes by making one think of the great photographers: the American speed of a Garry Winogrand, or the instant appetite of a Cartier Bresson. What Wiseman seizes on is the pure present, the things that only happen once.” Rob Nelson in Variety writes, “for those in Wiseman’s corner, ‘Boxing Gym’ goes the distance.”
Critic Philip Lopate has called Frederick Wiseman “the greatest American filmmaker of the last 30 years.” Zipporah Films, Inc. is the distributor of Wiseman’s films. For over forty years, he has created an exceptional body of work consisting of thirty-six full length films devoted primarily to exploring contemporary life as it is expressed in institutions common to all societies (schools, hospitals, the military, police, prisons, courts, public housing, theater, ballet, and many other topics).

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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?

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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

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~ David Simon