By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

IFC FILMS TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO STEPHEN ELLIOTT’S CHERRY

Posted Thursday, March 22nd, 2012 - Comments Off on IFC FILMS TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO STEPHEN ELLIOTT’S CHERRY
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New York, NY (March 22, 2012) – IFC Films announced today that the company is acquiring North American rights to acclaimed author Stephen Elliott’s directorial debut CHERRY. The film stars Ashley Hinshaw, Dev Patel, Heather Graham, and James Franco. Produced by Jordan Kessler and Elizabeth Destro, in association with Enderby Entertainment, Elana Krausz, Gordon Bijelonic/Datari Turner Films, and Kink.com, CHERRY premiered earlier this year at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival. It will have its North American premiere on April 24 at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

CHERRY is about Angelina (Hinshaw), an 18-year-old girl on the verge of finishing high school. One morning her boyfriend (Jonny Weston) suggests she take naked pictures for money. She balks at first but then does the photo shoot, using the money to run-off with her best friend (Patel) to San Francisco. In San Francisco, while cocktailing in a strip club, Angelina meets Frances (Franco) a well-off lawyer who offers to introduce her to a different kind of world, a place full of expensive dresses and fancy parties. At the same time Angelina, using the moniker Cherry, has begun exploring the San Francisco porn industry under the direction of Margaret (Graham) a former performer turned adult film director.

CHERRY was shot in the San Francisco Armory, home of Kink.com. At 250,000 square feet, the armory is the largest adult film studio in the world. Elliott is a former sex worker and the author of seven books including The Adderall Diaries. The movie was written by Elliott and Lorelei Lee, a porn performer who is also a writer and lecturer at New York University.

CHERRY challenges assumptions about porn, sexuality, and success, and faces the difficult question of where you need to be in order to find yourself.

“I’m thrilled to be working with IFC,” Elliott said. “This is an independent movie that looks at the adult industry in a way it’s never beenlooked at before. We needed a company that wasn’t afraid and really understood independent cinema. Nobody fits that bill better than IFC.”

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films and Jeff Deutchman, Director of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with ICM on behalf of the filmmakers. ICM represents Hinshaw, Taylor, Weston and Gordon Bijelonic/Datari Turner Films.

IFC Films is a sister division to IFC Midnight and Sundance Selects, and is owned andoperated by AMC Networks Inc.

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About IFC FILMS

Established in 2000 and based in New York City, IFC Films is a leading U.S. distributor of quality talent-driven independent film.  Its unique distribution modelmakes independent films available to a national audience by releasing them in theaters as well as on cable’s Video On Demand (VOD) platform, reaching nearly 50 million homes. Some of the company’s successes over the years have included My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Touching the Void, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Gomorrah, Che, Summer Hours, Antichrist, In the Loop, Antichrist, Wordplay,Cairo Time, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Tiny Furniture and Carlos.  Over the years, IFC Films has worked with established and breakout auteurs, including Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Miranda July, Lars Von Trier, Gaspar Noe, Todd Solondz, Cristian Mungiu, Susanne Bier, Olivier Assayas, Jim McKay, Larry Fessenden, Gregg Araki, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, as well as more recent breakouts such as Andrea Arnold, MiaHansen Love, Corneliu Porombiou, Joe Swanberg, Barry Jenkins, Lena Dunham, Aaron Katz, Daryl Wein and Abdellatif Kechiche. IFC Films is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks Inc.

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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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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.

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“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