By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

HYDE PARK PICKS UP INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS FOR RICHARD LINKLATER’S ‘BERNIE’

Posted Thursday, April 21st, 2011 - Comments Off on HYDE PARK PICKS UP INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS FOR RICHARD LINKLATER’S ‘BERNIE’
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Mandalay Vision and Wind Dancer Films’ Project Stars Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, and Shirley MacLaine

Los Angeles, CA (April 21, 2011) – Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park International has come aboard to handle international rights on Richard Linklater’s BERNIE starring Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, and Shirley MacLaine. BERNIE was written by Linklater and Skip Hollandsworth, and produced by Linklater, Ginger Sledge, Wind Dancer Films’ Matt Williams, David McFadzean, Judd Payne, Dete Meserve, Mandalay Vision’s Celine Rattray, and Martin Shafer and Liz Glotzer. Dick Pope is the Director of Photography.

HPI’s president Mimi Steinbauer will be spearheading the international sales on behalf of the project which is currently in post-production.

BERNIE is a dark comedy about a relationship in a small East Texas town between a fussy, but beloved assistant funeral home director (Black) and the town’s domineering grande dame (MacLaine). The film is based on “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas,” an article published in Texas Monthly magazine in 1998. The article chronicles the life of Bernie Tiede, who transformed the town of Carthage with his generosity and who then, to the disbelief of Carthage residents, was arrested for a serious crime.

Amritraj said, “Richard is an incredibly talented filmmaker with a track record that speaks for itself. We look forward to working with Mandalay and Wind Dancer as we bring the picture to the international marketplace.”

Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park International has become one of the most important foreign sales companies in the world and is a permanent fixture at Cannes, Berlin, and the American Film Market. The company is focused on representing commercial fare as well as award-winning films that serve the global marketplace.

The company’s sales slate includes GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE 3D in partnership with Sony and starring Nic Cage; the spy thriller THE DOUBLE; the international best-seller ECHLEON from Andy McNab; Robert Rodriguez’ MACHETE; as well as indie favorites such as The Weinstein Company’s award-winning BLUE VALENTINE and the Paul Rudd comedy OUR IDIOT BROTHER; and Occupant Films’ PEEP WORLD starring Sarah Silverman, Rainn Wilson, and Michael C. Hall.

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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