By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

SLEEPWALK WITH ME Scores at IFC CENTER, Breaking an Overall First-time Filmmaker Screen Average Record and the House Record

Posted Sunday, August 26th, 2012 - Comments Off on SLEEPWALK WITH ME Scores at IFC CENTER, Breaking an Overall First-time Filmmaker Screen Average Record and the House Record
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

August 26, 2012 – NY – Mike Birbiglia’s SLEEPWALK WITH ME scored a superb opening this weekend with $65,000 at NY’s IFC Center breaking the house record by a large margin and  driving a stellar overall weekend for the theater – one of its biggest weekends ever.  The SLEEPWALK WITH ME gross  is also the highest per-screen debut for an American nonanimated film from a first-time filmmaker.  SLEEPWALK WITH ME ranks as the third highest screen average of 2012 following MOONRISE KINGDOM and TO ROME WITH LOVE. This IFC Films release from the creators of THIS AMERICAN LIFE  is based on comedian Mike Birbiglia’s one-man show.  Birbiglia directed, wrote and stars in the film which tells the autobiographical story of a burgeoning stand-up comedian’s struggles with the stress of a stalled career, a stale relationship, and the wild spurts of severe sleepwalking he is desperate to ignore.  SLEEPWALK WITH ME  was written and produced by THIS AMERICAN LIFE’s Ira Glass and had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year where it won the Audience Award in the Next Section.  It also screened at the SXSW Film Festival and was the opening night of BAMCinemaFest.

Notes Jonathan Sehring of IFC Films: “We are all thrilled for Mike and Ira. We worked closely with them on the marketing of the film, targeting their respective fan bases, aggressively building word-of-mouth in advance of the opening and eventizing the film at the Center. We are also well set up  in the regional markets around the country.”

Mike Birbiglia says: “At every step of this process, when we wrapped, when we finished editing, when we went to Sundance, Ira would turn to me and ask ‘what’s gonna happen?’  It’s amazing to see that this is what’s finally happening.”

Joss Whedon, the director of the year’s highest-grossing film, THE AVENGERS, posted a video earlier in the month stating he was concerned that SLEEPWALK WITH ME was creeping up on THE AVENGERS’ dwindling screen count and called for a boycott of the independent release.

Continues Glass: “As a joke, Avengers director Joss Whedon recently declared war on our film, so we’re surprised to see that our per screen average is so much higher than The Avenger’s $47,698 per screen.  We look forward to beating his worldwide gross of $1.5 billion in the coming weeks.”

SLEEPWALK WITH ME expands to the top 20 markets on 8/31 and will continue to platform across the country over the coming weeks.

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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