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“SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! AN AUDIO MISADVENTURE” MOVES INTO TRIBECA

Posted Thursday, June 9th, 2011 - Comments Off on “SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! AN AUDIO MISADVENTURE” MOVES INTO TRIBECA
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Feature Documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the International Documentary Competition

“Alternately hilarious and discomfiting, and finally rather poignant.”- VARIETY

New York, NY – June 9, 2011 – Tribeca Film announced today that it has acquired select US distribution rights, including VOD, theatrical, digital, DVD and festival, to Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure from Closer Productions, written and directed by Matthew Bate and produced by Bate and Sophie Hyde. Shut Up Little Man! will be released nationwide on VOD August 25, 2011, and theatrically the same day (expanding on September 9), by Tribeca Film, a comprehensive distribution label operated by Tribeca Enterprises. The documentary premiered in competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and has played in New Directors/New Films and the True/False Film Festival.

Tribeca Film, supported by Founding Partner American Express, brings films to consumers across a range of platforms, including nationwide VOD, theatrical, DVD, pay-TV and digital.

In 1987, Eddie and Mitch, two young punks from the Midwest, moved into a low-rent tenament apartment in the Lower Haight district of San Francisco. Through paper-thin walls, they were informally introduced to their middle-aged alcoholic neighbors, the most unlikely of roommates—Raymond Huffman, a raging homophobe, and Peter Haskett, a flamboyant gay man. Night after night, the boys were treated to a seemingly endless stream of vodka-fueled altercations between the two and for 18 months, they hung a microphone from their kitchen window to chronicle the bizarre and violent relationship between their insane neighbors. Oftentimes nonsensical and always vitriolic, the diatribes of Peter and Ray were an audio goldmine just begging to be recorded and passed around on the underground tape market. Their tapes went on to inspire a cult following, spawning sell-out CD’s, comic artworks by Dan Clowes (Ghostworld), stage-plays, music from the likes of Devo and a Hollywood feeding Frenzy.

“We are delighted to be releasing the film with Tribeca Film,” said director Matthew Bate. “It’s a great underground American story and we are particularly thrilled to see it in the hands of people who will love and nurture its life in cinemas and on the small screen.”

“Shut Up Little Man! is a darkly comic documentary examining the blurred boundaries between art and exploitation,” said Geoffrey Gilmore, Chief Creative Officer of Tribeca Enterprises. “The film depicts how counter-cultural phenomena spread in the pre-digital age, and we are looking forward to sharing it with audiences.”

Shut Up Little Man! is executive produced by Stephen Cleary and Julie Ryan and co-produced by Julie Byrne and Bryan Mason. The music is composed by Jonny Elk Walsh, animation is by Raynor Pettge, with cinematography and editing by Bryan Mason. Shut Up Little Man! is the first film to be released from the South Australian Film Corporation’s FILMLAB program with investment by the Adelaide Film Festival.

The US distribution deal was negotiated by Nick Savva, Director of Acquisitions for Tribeca Film with Josh Braun and David Koh of Submarine Entertainment and Orly Ravid of The Film Collaborative on behalf of the producers and director.

About Tribeca Film:
Tribeca Film is a comprehensive distribution label dedicated to acquiring and marketing independent films across multiple platforms, including theatrical, video-on-demand, digital, home video and television. It is an initiative from Tribeca Enterprises designed to provide new platforms for how film can be experienced, while supporting filmmakers and introducing audiences to films they might not otherwise see. American Express continues its support of Tribeca and the independent film community by serving as the Founding Partner of Tribeca Film.
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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