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DADA FILMS / REQUIRED VIEWING ACQUIRE OLYMPIC ROWING FILM “BACKWARDS” FOR U.S. THEATRICAL RELEASE

Posted Monday, July 9th, 2012 - Comments Off on DADA FILMS / REQUIRED VIEWING ACQUIRE OLYMPIC ROWING FILM “BACKWARDS” FOR U.S. THEATRICAL RELEASE
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Starring Sarah Megan Thomas and James Van Der Beek,

Film Will Be Released Nationally in September 2012

New York, NY – July 9, 2012 – Gotham and Beverly Hills veteran Independent Film Distributors MJ Peckos’ and Steven Raphael’s DADA FILMS/required viewing announced today that they have acquired BACKWARDS for U.S. theatrical distribution. The film will open on September 21, 2012 Theatrically and Day and Date/ V.O.D. in NY/LA/Philadelphia with a 10-market platform release to follow on September 28 and October 5. BACKWARDS is represented domestically by Andrew Herwitz at Film Sales Company. Written, Produced and Starring Sarah Megan Thomas, BACKWARDS also stars James Van Der Beek (“Don’t Trust The B in Apt 23”, “Dawson’s Creek”) and is directed by Ben Hickernell (“Lebanon, PA”). BACKWARDS follows the story of an Olympic rower hopeful who, after years of training and sacrifice, learns that the life she really wants might not be the one she has always worked towards. The film also stars Margaret Colin (“Gossip Girl”) and Glenn Morshower (“24,” “Transformers”) and introduces Alexandra Metz and Meredith Apfelbaum, as two high school rowers.

“BACKWARDS is a family friendly film about the choices we make in life on the path to success, however ‘success’ is defined personally. While I was never an athlete of Olympic caliber, BACKWARDS is a personal story for me, having been an intense athlete and rower in my teens and early twenties. My motivation was to create an inspirational film which shows that there are lots of ways to win, even if we don’t always achieve our immediate goal.”

Sarah Megan Thomas Star/writer/producer

“We are excited to work with Sarah in helping bring her vision to as wide an audience as possible. The film is entertaining, inspiring and we chose to release the film in the fall to coincide with the recent Summer Olympic games.”

MJ Peckos/ DADA FILMS and Steven Raphael/ required viewing

Abigail Brooks (Thomas) has spent her lifetime trying to win an Olympic rowing medal, sacrificing friendship, love, and a “normal life” along the way. When she is named an alternate on the Olympic team she quits in haste.  Discouraged, Abi moves back home with her widowed, workaholic mother (Margaret Colin). Tension builds as Abi’s mother urges her to “move on” from the rowing life that Abi’s father, a coach, introduced her to. Unable to do so, but needing an immediate job, Abi seizes an open crew coach position at her alma mater, Union High. There, the head of athletics is her old boyfriend, Geoff (James Van Der Beek).   Abi trains her high school rowers in an obsessive fashion, taking two girls, Hannah (Alexandra Metz) and Susan (Meredith Apfelbaum), under her wing.  After the girls lose an important regional race, Abi reinvents herself as a coach, and, in the process, learns to have fun again both on the water and off. “Backwards” is an intimate look at the personal sacrifices and complex choices facing competitive Olympic hopefuls. It is also a film about dreams — young adults pursuing their dreams… and finding that sometimes a missed opportunity can become an introduction to an entire new life.

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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