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OSCILLOSCOPE GETS REAL WITH DIRECTOR MATTEO GARRONE; ACQUIRES CANNES COMPETITION ENTRY “REALITY”

Posted Saturday, May 26th, 2012 - Comments Off on OSCILLOSCOPE GETS REAL WITH DIRECTOR MATTEO GARRONE; ACQUIRES CANNES COMPETITION ENTRY “REALITY”
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

New York, New York (May 26, 2012)— Oscilloscope Laboratories announced today that it has acquired U.S. rights to Matteo Garrone’s Cannes competition film REALITY, his first feature since 2008’s critically acclaimed and award-winning GOMORRAH. Oscilloscope will take the film to further festivals this fall with a theatrical, DVD, and digital release to follow early next year.

REALITY is a darkly comic look at Luciano, a charming and affable fishmonger whose unexpected and sudden obsession with being a contestant on the reality show “Big Brother” leads him down a rabbit hole of skewed perceptions and paranoia.  So overcome by his dream of being on reality TV, Luciano’s own reality begins to spiral out of control, making for one of the most compelling tragicomic character studies since Scorsese’s THE KING OF COMEDY.

Of the acquisition, filmmaker Matteo Garrone said “I’m extremely gratified by the strong response Oscilloscope had to the film and their ideas for making it successful in the US.  I look forward to working with David and Dan as they move the company forward.”

O-Scope’s David Laub said, “REALITY is an exceptional, one-of-a-kind film that had us hooked from its amazing opening shot. It is a complex, provocative, and deeply compelling look at our media-obsessed culture, executed by one of the most interesting and talented filmmakers working today. Garrone pays homage to classical filmmakers such as Fellini and Scorsese while crafting a fresh and very relevant contemporary story. This is exactly the kind of film Adam Yauch wanted to champion, and we are extremely proud to have it join the Oscilloscope family.”

The film was produced by Garrone and Domenico Procacci, producer of GOMORRAH, with Jean Labadie of Le Pacte as co-producer.  The deal was negotiated by Dan Berger and David Laub of Oscilloscope with Janine Gold of Fandango Portobello assisted by Garrone’s US representatives, Bart Walker of Cinetic Media and Jeff Berg of ICM.

Reality is an Italian-French co-production: Archimede-Fandango, Le Pacte-Garance Capital production with RAI Cinema.

About Oscilloscope Laboratories:

Oscilloscope Laboratories is a film production and theatrical distribution entity launched in 2008 by Adam Yauch of Beastie Boys. Yauch modeled the company after the indie record labels he grew up around, choosing films and then releasing them with the same artistic integrity with which they were made.  The company, which is an extension of Yauch’s recording studio of the same name, has an in-house DVD distribution and production arm, and its paper packaging is reminiscent of the heyday of LP record jackets. All of the company’s plastic-free DVD packaging is printed on FSC Certified 80% post-consumer waste paper and produced in a carbon-neutral hydroelectric plant.  Previous and current releases include Lynne Ramsay’s Golden Globe® Nominated WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, and Ezra Miller; Marshall Curry’s Oscar-nominated documentary IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT; Oren Moverman’s Oscar-nominated THE MESSENGER starring Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton; Kelly Reichardt’s MEEK’S CUTOFF starring Michelle Williams; Evan Glodell’s Sundance hit BELLFLOWER; Kelly Reichardt’s WENDY & LUCY starring Michelle Williams; Anders Østergaard’s Oscar-nominated documentary BURMA VJ; Kurt Keunne’s acclaimed documentary DEAR ZACHARY; Bradley Rust Gray’s THE EXPLODING GIRL starring Zoe Kazan; and Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s Oscar-nominated documentary THE GARDEN.  Upcoming films include Todd Louiso’s HELLO I MUST BE GOING, Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s lcdsoundsystem documentary SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS, Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson’s SAMSARA, Andrea Arnold’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Matt Ross’s 28 HOTEL ROOMS, and Ryan O’Nan’s BROOKLYN BROTHERS BEAT THE BEST.

 

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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