By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

PRODUCTION BEGINS ON TODD SOLONDZ’S ‘WIENER-DOG’

Posted Wednesday, June 24th, 2015 - Comments Off on PRODUCTION BEGINS ON TODD SOLONDZ’S ‘WIENER-DOG’
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Principal photography has begun on Todd Solondz’s WIENER-DOG, Annapurna Pictures announced today. Solondz wrote and directs the film, which stars Julie Delpy, Greta Gerwig, Kieran Culkin, Danny DeVito, Brie Larson, Ellen Burstyn, Zosia Mamet and Tracy Letts. Megan Ellison is producing through her Annapurna Pictures alongside Christine Vachon of Killer Films. David Distenfeld is the executive overseeing the project for Annapurna Pictures and David Hinojosa is the executive overseeing for Killer Films.

The film tells several stories featuring people who find their life inspired or changed by one particular dachshund, who seems to be spreading comfort and joy. It will feature characters from Solondz’s 1995 cult hit WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE.

Filming will take place in New York City.

 ABOUT ANNAPURNA PICTURES

AAnnapurna Pictures is a film production and finance company founded with the goal of boldly creating sophisticated, high-quality and ambitious films that appeal to a variety of audiences. Under Megan Ellison’s guidance, Annapurna has provided the industry with a critical boost of intelligent, adult dramas in recent years. Annapurna’s most recent project, Bennett Miller’s FOXCATCHER starring Channing Tatum, Steve Carell and Mark Ruffalo, was released last year by Sony Pictures Classics. The film earned five Academy Award nominations and three Golden Globe nominations including one for Best Motion Picture, Drama. Annapurna is currently in post-production on Ana Lily Amirpour’s THE BAD BATCH, David O. Russell’s JOY, Richard Linklater’s THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, and Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon’s animated SAUSAGE PARTY written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir, and are currently preparing for production on Mike Mills’ 20TH CENTURY WOMEN and Alexander Payne’s DOWNSIZING. Annapurna will also reteam with Bigelow on a film based on the nonfiction book The True American. Annapurna’s projects from 2013 alone earned 17 Academy Award nominations, and made Ellison the first woman to earn two Best Picture nominations in the same year. Those projects included David O. Russell’s AMERICAN HUSTLE, Spike Jonze’s HER, and Wong Kar Wai’s THE GRANDMASTER. Annapurna’s past releases include Harmony Korine’s SPRING BREAKERS, Kathryn Bigelow’s Academy Award nominated ZERO DARK THIRTY, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s multiple Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated THE MASTER.

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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