By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Eleanor Coppola Wraps Fiction Feature Debut At A Spry 79

Posted Friday, September 11th, 2015 - Comments Off on Eleanor Coppola Wraps Fiction Feature Debut At A Spry 79
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AMERICAN ZOETROPE’S AND LIFETIME FILMS’ BONJOUR ANNE,

STARRING ACADEMY AWARD® NOMINEE DIANE LANE

AND ARNAUD VIARD, WRAPS PRODUCTION

Oscar® Nominee and Golden Globe® and Emmy® Winner Alec Baldwin Also Appears in Drama Written and Directed by Eleanor Coppola

LOS ANGELES, CA (September 11, 2015) – American Zoetrope’s and Lifetime Films’ upcoming feature film Bonjour Anne, starring Academy Award® and Golden Globe® Award nominee Diane Lane (Unfaithful, Under the Tuscan Sun) and Arnaud Viard (Que du bonheur), and featuring Oscar® nominee and Golden Globe and Emmy® Award winner Alec Baldwin (Still Alice, 30 Rock), has wrapped production in Southern France.  Bonjour Anne is targeted toward a festival premiere and theatrical release in 2016.

Marking Emmy winner Eleanor Coppola’s (Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse) scripted directorial debut, the drama follows a woman (Lane) at a crossroads in her life — in a long marriage with a driven successful, inattentive movie producer (Baldwin) — who suddenly finds herself taking an unexpected car trip from Cannes to Paris with her husband’s business associate (Viard).  What should be an uneventful seven hour drive, becomes a two day carefree journey replete with diversions involving picturesque sites, fine food and wine, humor, wisdom and romance — reawakening Anne’s senses and a new lust for life.

“American Zoetrope is a true pioneer in cinema; and when the opportunity to work with Eleanor Coppola on this wonderful story presented itself, it was a no brainer,” said Molly Thompson, Senior Vice President, A+E Studios.  “Bonjour Anne nicely ties into our strategy to further expand Lifetime Films’ portfolio with quality motion pictures that perform well on the festival circuit and theatrically.”

Shot entirely in France, Bonjour Anne reunites Lane and American Zoetrope.  She starred in the company’s motion pictures The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Jack and The Cotton Club.

Coppola, who also wrote the original screenplay, is producing Bonjour Anne with longtime collaborator Fred Roos (The Godfather: Part II, Apocalypse Now).  It is being produced by American Zoetrope and Lifetime Films in association with A+E Studios, and also financed by Corner Piece Capital.  Bonjour Anne is executive produced by Molly Thompson of A+E Studios and Lisa Hamilton Daly, Rob Sharenow and Tanya Lopez for Lifetime Films.  Elzévir Films provided production services.

ICM Partners will represent the North American rights through Bart Walker, while Protagonist Pictures is handling international territories.

Tohokushinsha Film Corporation will continue its longstanding relationship with American Zoetrope and invest in the film, acquiring distribution rights in Japan and certain other Asian territories.  The legal duties on the film are handled by Hirsch Wallerstein Hayum Matlof + Fishman, LLP, longtime collaborator with American Zoetrope.

ABOUT LIFETIME FILMS

A division of A+E Studios, Lifetime Films is dedicated to developing, producing and acquiring female-focused independent movies.  Recent Lifetime Films include Lila and Eve, starring Viola Davis and Jennifer Lopez, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015; and The Last of Robin Hood, featuring Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon and Dakota Fanning, which premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.  Lifetime Television®, LMN®, Lifetime Real Women® and Lifetime Digital™ are part of Lifetime Entertainment Services, LLC, a subsidiary of A+E Networks.  A+E Networks is a joint venture of the Disney-ABC Television Group and Hearst Corporation.

ABOUT AMERICAN ZOETROPE

American Zoetrope is a privately run film company, founded in 1969 by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.  The company has produced not only the films of Coppola (including The Godfather Parts II & III, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Bram Stoker’s Dracula) but also George Lucas’s pre-Star Wars films (American Graffiti, THX 1138), as well as many others by directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Carroll Ballard, Akira Kurosawa, Wim Wenders, Sofia Coppola, Godfrey Reggio, and Walter Salles.  Many of the most important directors, writers, and actors of today began their careers with American Zoetrope.  Four films produced by American Zoetrope are included in the American Film Institute’s top 100 films, and American Zoetrope-produced films have received sixteen Academy Awards® and seventy nominations.

Throughout its forty-six year history American Zoetrope has also been a pioneer in film technology, introducing such innovations as previsualization, use of ethernet as a means of film departments communicating, word processing for screenplays, re-introduction of video assist, development of 5.1 stereo sound, early use of electronic editing, and experimentation with high-definition video.

As a producer and technological pioneer, American Zoetrope has created a body of work that has helped to shape contemporary American cinema.

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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