By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Sundance Director of Programmer Trevor Groth Joins 30WEST

Posted Monday, January 29th, 2018 - Comments Off on Sundance Director of Programmer Trevor Groth Joins 30WEST
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[pr] 30WEST HIRES SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL PROGRAMMING CHIEF TREVOR GROTH

LOS ANGELES (January 29, 2018) – 30WEST has hired the Director of Programming of the Sundance Film Festival, Trevor Groth, who will join the company in February. Groth first joined the programming staff of the Sundance Film Festival in 1993, was named Senior Programmer in 2003 and Director in 2009. While at Sundance, Groth has helped champion acclaimed titles such as Whiplash, Fruitvale Station, Hard Eight, Pi, Memento and Napoleon Dynamite. Under his direction as head programmer for the Festival’s Short Film Section, Groth was among the first to showcase the shorts of now prominent filmmakers such as Spike Jonze, Cary Fukunaga, Taika Waititi and Sarah Polley.

30WEST said: “For over twenty years Trevor has been one of the film community’s most consistent champions of original creative voices, all while exhibiting a fearless commitment to pushing the boundaries of film creation and distribution.  We could not be more thrilled that he has chosen to join us.”

Trevor Groth continued: “It’s been a wild and exhilarating ride being in the driver’s seat of a festival that has launched many of our generation’s greatest independent films and filmmakers.  I look forward to continuing that dynamic journey with a company equally committed to discovering what’s next.”

Groth worked for the Sundance Institute’s filmmaker labs and development program while still a student in film school at the University of Utah. Since 2002, Groth has also served as Artistic Director for The CineVegas Film Festival and been a guest curator for the Australian Film Institute, and a juror at festivals including Cannes Critics’ Week, SXSW, Morelia and more. He has also served as a consultant on a number of film productions and was instrumental in the creation of Sundance Film Festival London, Sundance Film Festival Hong Kong and Sundance NEXT Fest.

Last week at Sundance, 30WEST purchased the fast rising film studio, NEON.  The two companies previously partnered to co-finance marketing and distribution of the acclaimed feature I, Tonya.  30WEST also partnered with Bleecker Street to buy the U.S. rights to Wash Westmoreland’s Colettestarring Keira Knightley and arranged the partnership between NEON and AGBO Films to buyAssassination Nation, directed by Sam Levinson.

 

30WEST is currently in production on two feature films, Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer, starring Nicole Kidman, and Peter Hedges’ Ben Is Back, starring Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges. This spring 30WEST will release the film Beast with Roadside Attractions, which premiered to acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival and most recently enjoyed its US premiere at Sundance.

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With offices in Los Angeles and New York, 30WEST provides capital and strategic guidance to high caliber creative projects and forward-thinking companies operating throughout popular culture. Its media practice works with filmmakers to guide every stage of creative packaging, providing direct capital investment for production, sales, distribution and licensing in order to maximize production quality and audience reach. 30WEST was founded in 2017 by Dan Friedkin and Micah Green.

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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

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~ David Simon