Updated with full trailer, 9:40 Am: Showtime has acquired The One and Only Dick Gregory, a feature-length documentary about the comedian and activist who specialized in cultural disruption. The pic about the late icon will air, appropriately, on the Fourth of July — following its June 19 world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Watch the first full trailer above. Below is a clip above that focuses on his anti-Vietnam War stance and the angry response from J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI.
Featuring interviews with Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Kevin Hart — who serves as an EP on the film — Wanda Sykes, W. Kamau Bell and others, the docu unpacks Gregory’s career as a stand-up comic, activist, pop-culture icon and thought leader who affected the lives of millions through constant disruption and awareness. He inspired a generation through on-the-ground activism, an untiring desire to help and his influential comedy. Featuring archival...
Watch the first full trailer above. Below is a clip above that focuses on his anti-Vietnam War stance and the angry response from J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI.
Featuring interviews with Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Kevin Hart — who serves as an EP on the film — Wanda Sykes, W. Kamau Bell and others, the docu unpacks Gregory’s career as a stand-up comic, activist, pop-culture icon and thought leader who affected the lives of millions through constant disruption and awareness. He inspired a generation through on-the-ground activism, an untiring desire to help and his influential comedy. Featuring archival...
- 6/24/2021
- by Erik Pedersen
- Deadline Film + TV
Showtime Documentary Films has acquired the rights to “The One and Only Dick Gregory,” the directorial debut from producer Andre Gaines.
The documentary, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 19 and debuting on Showtime on July 4, explores the career of Dick Gregory, the legendary comedian and activist who was at the forefront of the fight for civil rights.
Gaines and his team amassed more than 300 hours of archival footage of Gregory, whose own voice bookends the documentary. Work on it began prior to his death in 2017 of heart failure, and it will show his early career as a comedian as well as the impact of his work as a self-described “agitator.” “The One and Only Dick Gregory” features interviews with Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Kevin Hart, Wanda Sykes, W. Kamau Bell and more, along with original music from Black Thought.
Gregory, who died of heart failure in 2017, was a constant disruptor,...
The documentary, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 19 and debuting on Showtime on July 4, explores the career of Dick Gregory, the legendary comedian and activist who was at the forefront of the fight for civil rights.
Gaines and his team amassed more than 300 hours of archival footage of Gregory, whose own voice bookends the documentary. Work on it began prior to his death in 2017 of heart failure, and it will show his early career as a comedian as well as the impact of his work as a self-described “agitator.” “The One and Only Dick Gregory” features interviews with Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Kevin Hart, Wanda Sykes, W. Kamau Bell and more, along with original music from Black Thought.
Gregory, who died of heart failure in 2017, was a constant disruptor,...
- 6/9/2021
- by Ethan Shanfeld
- Variety Film + TV
In the spring of 2014, Netflix announced the addition of four new titles to its ever-growing roster of original documentaries. For one of them, Print the Legend, Netflix just released the trailer, which hints at more scandal than you would assume possible with the word printer. Print the Legend will dig deep into the world of 3D printing and the companies involved in it. Makerbot Industries and its founders Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach Hoeken Smith seem to be the focus of the documentary, with eventual attention given to the company’s rivals as they arose over the years. Some key themes brought up in the trailer which are likely to be revealed in greater detail in the documentary are the ground-breaking aspects of 3D printing (like being able to make human organ implants, which could revolutionize the medical community), as well as its dangerous consequences (like users printing off...
- 9/12/2014
- by Bree Brouwer
- Tubefilter.com
Exclusive: The 3D printing movement behind the computerized creation of everything from human organs to weapons is the subject of Netflix original documentary Print The Legend, which Netflix will release in theaters and via streaming this month. Co-directors Luiz Lopez and J. Clay Tweel and producer Seth Gordon (King of Kong, Horrible Bosses, The Identity Thief) nabbed a SXSW Special Jury Recognition Award for Editing & Storytelling this year for Print The Legend, which examines the visionaries spearheading the 21st century manufacturing movement, from start-ups like MakerBot and Formlabs to industry big leaguers Stratasys and 3D Systems. It also profiles controversial figures like Cody Wilson, the tech anarchist who was named “one of the most dangerous people in the world” when he released plans for 3D printing guns online last year.
Print The Legend is produced by Steven Klein and Chad Troutwine. Executive producers are Walter Kortschak and Mary Rohlich, and Andrew Kortschak is co-producer.
Print The Legend is produced by Steven Klein and Chad Troutwine. Executive producers are Walter Kortschak and Mary Rohlich, and Andrew Kortschak is co-producer.
- 9/11/2014
- by Jen Yamato
- Deadline
Decried by some economists as having more to do with sociology than economics, Freakonomics, the book written by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, quickly became a resident of The New York Times Best Seller list and fell comfortably in the vein of those popular academia books (like anything by Malcolm Gladwell) that drew examples from current events and statistics to show that examining causal relationships sometimes leads to unexpected places. The book was a cultural phenomenon of sorts as it offered unconventional ways of explaining some things we take for granted. Can good grades be incentivized? What really caused the global drop in crime rates? Can a name shape someone’s destiny? How do you know if someone is cheating at sumo wrestling? Now, as an amusing and entertaining film, these questions are covered in mini-documentaries pasted together with segues hosted by the book’s authors.
Okay, so maybe some...
Okay, so maybe some...
- 1/27/2011
- by Lex Walker
- JustPressPlay.net
Film producer Chad Troutwine had little trouble procuring some of the biggest names in the documentary field for his latest project, “Freakonomics.” Just do the math. The film version of the international best seller by Stephen Dubmer and Steven Levitt crunched numbers in a way they hadn‘t been crunched before. “Freakonomics,” out Oct. 8, exclusively in Denver at the Starz FilmCenter, is told in four separate, provocative parts. “I thought of it as an omnibus project from the beginning,” says Troutwine, who previously produced the anthology film ...
- 10/8/2010
- by Christian Toto, Denver Film Community Examiner
- Examiner Movies Channel
Director Seth Gordon's newest movie takes him away from the realm of high scores and barrel-throwing giant apes to the lofty heights of the New York Times bestseller list. Opening this weekend, "Freakonomics" brings the left-field data crunching of the literary best-seller by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner to the silver screen.
Produced by Chad Troutwine Films and distributed by Magnolia Pictures, the movie takes four case studies from the book and turns them into vignettes directed by an all-star team of documentary filmmakers. Morgan Spurlock ("Super Size Me") gives hilarious voice to the "Freaknomics" thesis on the consequences of certain baby names, while Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing ("Jesus Camp") take on the book's infamous cash-for-grades chapter. Eugene Jarecki ("Why We Fight") illustrates Levitt and Dubner's controversial conclusions about abortion and crime in the mid-1990s and Alex Gibney ("Enron:The Smartest Guys in the Room") adapts the harrowing...
Produced by Chad Troutwine Films and distributed by Magnolia Pictures, the movie takes four case studies from the book and turns them into vignettes directed by an all-star team of documentary filmmakers. Morgan Spurlock ("Super Size Me") gives hilarious voice to the "Freaknomics" thesis on the consequences of certain baby names, while Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing ("Jesus Camp") take on the book's infamous cash-for-grades chapter. Eugene Jarecki ("Why We Fight") illustrates Levitt and Dubner's controversial conclusions about abortion and crime in the mid-1990s and Alex Gibney ("Enron:The Smartest Guys in the Room") adapts the harrowing...
- 9/30/2010
- by Evan Narcisse
- ifc.com
Freakonomics
Starring Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Directed by Alex Gibney, Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing, Seth Gordon, Eugene Jarecki, and Morgan Spurlock
Rated PG-13
Freakonomics is a documentary style adaptation of the best selling book by Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Named the “most blogged about book” of 2005 and 2006 by the New York Times, Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything applies data analysis to a range of common beliefs and statistics about our world to yield surprising results about seemingly causal relationships and human behavior. Sounds pretty interesting, right? Not so much.
Producer Chad Troutwine enlisted a team of A-list documentary filmmakers to direct five different segments of this film in vignettes focusing on real estate, parenting, cheating, crime, and bribery. This, in and of itself, is an interesting choice. Each segment had it’s own tone and style in addition to its content,...
Starring Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Directed by Alex Gibney, Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing, Seth Gordon, Eugene Jarecki, and Morgan Spurlock
Rated PG-13
Freakonomics is a documentary style adaptation of the best selling book by Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Named the “most blogged about book” of 2005 and 2006 by the New York Times, Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything applies data analysis to a range of common beliefs and statistics about our world to yield surprising results about seemingly causal relationships and human behavior. Sounds pretty interesting, right? Not so much.
Producer Chad Troutwine enlisted a team of A-list documentary filmmakers to direct five different segments of this film in vignettes focusing on real estate, parenting, cheating, crime, and bribery. This, in and of itself, is an interesting choice. Each segment had it’s own tone and style in addition to its content,...
- 9/29/2010
- by Olivia Briggs
- GetTheBigPicture.net
You may have heard of Panera Bread opening up a store in Clayton, Mo. that gave customers the freedom to pay what they want for a meal. The idea was spawned when authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Leavitt opened a bagel shop with the same business model as a study for their book, Freakonomics, and now that the book is getting the big screen treatment, the authors are keeping the same idea alive. It was announced today that in ten cities around the country Magnolia Pictures will be screening Freakonomics for audiences who will be able to choose their own ticket prices. Seems like a losing bet, but that might not be the case. Producer Chad Troutwine has this to say about the experiment: .The pay-what-you-want screening represents a fun and engaging way to illustrate the underlying premise of Freakonomics.the application of economics and incentives-based thinking to everyday situations...
- 9/16/2010
- cinemablend.com
Do you find it strange that non-fiction books aren't adapted very often into documentaries? Recently, we've seen a few such films that worked really well as translated, including Man on Wire and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Compared to fiction, however, non-fiction best-sellers are not as regularly turned into feature films. We could think the reason is that documentaries are best when they follow a story in real time, as the events occur. But not all do this, and certainly neither of those docs based on books mentioned do so. Yet they're still quality works.
Freakonomics, which is based on the hugely popular book by economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner, offers some reason for why and how a non-fiction literary work should not be adapted. It is a mixed bag, though, in that it oftentimes is successful, mainly when it is more inspired by the...
Freakonomics, which is based on the hugely popular book by economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner, offers some reason for why and how a non-fiction literary work should not be adapted. It is a mixed bag, though, in that it oftentimes is successful, mainly when it is more inspired by the...
- 6/24/2010
- by Christopher Campbell
- Cinematical
The all-star directorial team behind Freakonomics stopped by the SoHo Apple Store in NYC Friday to talk with indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez about the making of this new anthology documentary, which had it's world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this weekend. Joined by author Stephen Dubner, whose same-named best-seller is the basis of the film, the six acclaimed documentarians and three producers also got into a discussion of the general state of non-fiction filmmaking in the first decade of the 21st century. This non-promotional part of the discussion caught my interest most, primarily because there could be no documentary "dream team" without the rise in popularity and esteem for documentary cinema that's occurred over the past ten years.
Without this surge, how else would Alex Gibney, Morgan Spurlock, Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady, Eugene Jarecki and Seth Gordon all be renowned enough to be specifically sought after by producer Chad Troutwine...
Without this surge, how else would Alex Gibney, Morgan Spurlock, Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady, Eugene Jarecki and Seth Gordon all be renowned enough to be specifically sought after by producer Chad Troutwine...
- 5/2/2010
- by Christopher Campbell
- Cinematical
Magnolia Pictures has picked up North American rights to "Freakonomics," a documentary based on the bestseller by Steven Levitt and Stephen J, Dubner. Plans are to release it theatrically in the fall. "Freakonomics" examines a series of case studies that mix the methods of economic study with pop culture and human behavior. The film is directed by a team including Alex Gibney, Morgan Spurlock, Rachel Grady, Heidi Ewing, Eugene Jarecki and Seth Gordon. Chad Troutwine with Chris Romano and Dan O'Meara of the Green Film Company produce the film.
- 4/5/2010
- Upcoming-Movies.com
Jeff Reichert, who left his post as senior vp at Magnolia Pictures in October, is directing the documentary "Gerrymandering," an examination of political redistricting that is being executive produced by Bill Mundell, a leader in the redistricting reform movement.
The film is one of three docs being backed by New York-based Green Film Co., founded last year by indie producers Dan O'Meara and Chris Romano to make films covering a range of social issues. In addition to "Gerrymandering," Green is financing the untitled documentary about Barack Obama, directed by Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, that will air on HBO. It also has partnered with Chad Troutwine to produce "Freakonomics," a doc based on the Steven Levitt/Stephen Dubner best-seller that is being directed by several different filmmakers, including Morgan Spurlock and Alex Gibney.
Reichert became interested in the topic during the Texas congressional redistricting of 2003, which was appealed to the...
The film is one of three docs being backed by New York-based Green Film Co., founded last year by indie producers Dan O'Meara and Chris Romano to make films covering a range of social issues. In addition to "Gerrymandering," Green is financing the untitled documentary about Barack Obama, directed by Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, that will air on HBO. It also has partnered with Chad Troutwine to produce "Freakonomics," a doc based on the Steven Levitt/Stephen Dubner best-seller that is being directed by several different filmmakers, including Morgan Spurlock and Alex Gibney.
Reichert became interested in the topic during the Texas congressional redistricting of 2003, which was appealed to the...
- 12/16/2008
- by By Gregg Kilday
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
- #16. Freakonomics Director: Morgan Spurlock, Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, Alex Gibney, Laura Poitras, Eugene Jarecki, and Jehane NoujaimProducers: Seth Gordon and Chad Troutwine Distributor: Currently Seeking Distribution The Gist: Written by Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, "Freakonomics" has sold more than 3 million copies by using economic theories to analyze issues ranging from whether Adam Vinatieri could realistically be called football's most clutch field goal kicker to more serious claims that teachers and sumo wrestlers cheat, that swimming pools are more dangerous to children than guns and that the drop in crime can be attributed to Roe v. Wade. Fact: Producer Chad Troutwine was an ex-producer on another collective: Paris, je t'aime. See It: Quirky content matched by a slew of favorite contemporary docu filmmakers means this is a very digestible must-see. In the mean time read the NYTimes blog by Levitt. Release Date/Status?: This is a collective
- 2/1/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
Being in Paris is to be inside a work of art, and it is no surprise that in the charming collection of vignettes that make up Paris je t'aime, the art is love. This is a Paris where Oscar Wilde can reappear beside his grave at Pere Lachaise to give squabbling lovers a sense of humor. A vampire may pounce on an unsuspecting backpacker in the Madeleine. A cowboy on horseback can bring a grieving mother back to her family. A paramedic may fall in love with her bleeding patient.
Love in all its weird and wonderful forms is the subject of 18 short films made by an assortment of international directors who bring individual vision to a collective love letter to the French capital. Most of the directors have written their own pieces, and they range from whimsical to romantic, to dramatic and tragic.
With many familiar faces including Juliette Binoche, Fanny Ardant, Natalie Portman, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Bob Hoskins and Gena Rowlands, the film is necessarily uneven but has an overall winning charm and can expect a warm reception in art houses around the world.
Buscemi and Coen brothers completists will not want to miss their hilarious tale of an American tourist on the Metro stop at the Tuileries learning firsthand how accurate his guidebook is. Forget The Da Vinci Code -- anyone who sees this film will never look at Mona Lisa's smile again without thinking of the matchless Buscemi.
An offbeat sense of humor is established from the opening story, subtitled Montmartre, in which a frustrated young man (writer-director Bruno Podalydes) struggles to find a parking spot only to spend the time parked complaining aloud about why he can't find a girlfriend.
Then a lovely young woman (Florence Muller) faints beside his car. It's Paris.
Writer-director Gurinder Chadha spends a few minutes showing how a young man (Cyril Descours) can learn more from a modest hijab-wearing young woman (Leila Bekhti) than from his leering buddies.
Isabel Coixet manages to find great humor in a story of a failed love affair given new life after one of the lovers (Miranda Richardson) is diagnosed with terminal leukemia, while Oliver Schmitz's new paramedic (Aissa Maiga) learns how fleeting love can be while treating a stab victim (Seydou Boro).
Several sequences begin with misdirection so that Nolte's May-December romance turns out to be not that at all, while Hoskins and Ardant's strip club encounter involves more than a little planned artifice. Tom Tykwer's tale of an actress (Portman) trying to break off her affair with a blind linguist (Melchior Besion) also holds a surprise. Sylvain Chomet's item involving mimes is pleasingly self-mocking, and Alexander Payne's narrative of a Denver matron (Margo Martindale) visiting the city to improve her halting French begins in sarcasm and ends in sympathy.
Binoche grieves for her dead son in Nobuhiro Suwa's parable about a cowboy (Willem Defoe) who rides the midnight streets of Paris to ease her pain. Director Barbet Schroeder has fun along with Li Xin in a wacky musical fantasy by Christopher Doyle. Wes Craven naturally gravitates to a graveyard for his oddball contribution involving Wilde.
The cinematography is varied and wonderful. Pierre Adenot's music fits the bill, and there's a great waltz at the end with English adaptation by Oscar-winning lyricist Will Jennings.
PARIS JE T'AIME
Victoires International in association with Arrival Cinema
Credits:
Directors: Bruno Podalydes
Gurinder Chadha, Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas, Christopher Doyle, Isabel Coixet, Nobuhiro Suwa, Sylvain Chomet, Alfonso Cuaron, Olivier Assayas, Oliver Schmitz, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Wes Craven, Tom Tykwer, Frederic Auburtin & Gerard Depardieu, Alexander Payne
Producers: Claudie Ossard & Emmanuel Benbihy
Co-producer: Burkhard Von Schenk
Executive producers: Chris Bolzli, Gilles Caussade, Sam Englebardt, Ara Katz, Chad Troutwine, Frank Moss, Rafi Chaudry
Original idea: Tristan Carne
Concept: Emmanuel Benbihy
Production designer: Bettina von den Steinen
Editing supervisors: Simon Jacquet, Frederic Auburtin
Original music: Pierre Adenot
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 120 minutes...
Love in all its weird and wonderful forms is the subject of 18 short films made by an assortment of international directors who bring individual vision to a collective love letter to the French capital. Most of the directors have written their own pieces, and they range from whimsical to romantic, to dramatic and tragic.
With many familiar faces including Juliette Binoche, Fanny Ardant, Natalie Portman, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Bob Hoskins and Gena Rowlands, the film is necessarily uneven but has an overall winning charm and can expect a warm reception in art houses around the world.
Buscemi and Coen brothers completists will not want to miss their hilarious tale of an American tourist on the Metro stop at the Tuileries learning firsthand how accurate his guidebook is. Forget The Da Vinci Code -- anyone who sees this film will never look at Mona Lisa's smile again without thinking of the matchless Buscemi.
An offbeat sense of humor is established from the opening story, subtitled Montmartre, in which a frustrated young man (writer-director Bruno Podalydes) struggles to find a parking spot only to spend the time parked complaining aloud about why he can't find a girlfriend.
Then a lovely young woman (Florence Muller) faints beside his car. It's Paris.
Writer-director Gurinder Chadha spends a few minutes showing how a young man (Cyril Descours) can learn more from a modest hijab-wearing young woman (Leila Bekhti) than from his leering buddies.
Isabel Coixet manages to find great humor in a story of a failed love affair given new life after one of the lovers (Miranda Richardson) is diagnosed with terminal leukemia, while Oliver Schmitz's new paramedic (Aissa Maiga) learns how fleeting love can be while treating a stab victim (Seydou Boro).
Several sequences begin with misdirection so that Nolte's May-December romance turns out to be not that at all, while Hoskins and Ardant's strip club encounter involves more than a little planned artifice. Tom Tykwer's tale of an actress (Portman) trying to break off her affair with a blind linguist (Melchior Besion) also holds a surprise. Sylvain Chomet's item involving mimes is pleasingly self-mocking, and Alexander Payne's narrative of a Denver matron (Margo Martindale) visiting the city to improve her halting French begins in sarcasm and ends in sympathy.
Binoche grieves for her dead son in Nobuhiro Suwa's parable about a cowboy (Willem Defoe) who rides the midnight streets of Paris to ease her pain. Director Barbet Schroeder has fun along with Li Xin in a wacky musical fantasy by Christopher Doyle. Wes Craven naturally gravitates to a graveyard for his oddball contribution involving Wilde.
The cinematography is varied and wonderful. Pierre Adenot's music fits the bill, and there's a great waltz at the end with English adaptation by Oscar-winning lyricist Will Jennings.
PARIS JE T'AIME
Victoires International in association with Arrival Cinema
Credits:
Directors: Bruno Podalydes
Gurinder Chadha, Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas, Christopher Doyle, Isabel Coixet, Nobuhiro Suwa, Sylvain Chomet, Alfonso Cuaron, Olivier Assayas, Oliver Schmitz, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Wes Craven, Tom Tykwer, Frederic Auburtin & Gerard Depardieu, Alexander Payne
Producers: Claudie Ossard & Emmanuel Benbihy
Co-producer: Burkhard Von Schenk
Executive producers: Chris Bolzli, Gilles Caussade, Sam Englebardt, Ara Katz, Chad Troutwine, Frank Moss, Rafi Chaudry
Original idea: Tristan Carne
Concept: Emmanuel Benbihy
Production designer: Bettina von den Steinen
Editing supervisors: Simon Jacquet, Frederic Auburtin
Original music: Pierre Adenot
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 120 minutes...
- 5/18/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Screened
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- "I Love Your Work" is a movie directed and co-written by an actor, Adam Goldberg, that features many of his actor buddies. So what's it all about? It's about how awful it is to be an actor or, worse, a movie star and how an acting career can damage one's fragile psyche. Before you can even accuse the moviemaker and his pals of naval gazing, a "narcissism expert" appears on a TV talk show and turns to the movie's protagonist to lecture him about listening to other people and getting over his egocentricity. Of course, he doesn't listen to her.
However much this movie may speak to the current generation of actors, it has little to say to moviegoers. Goldberg's direction is all flash and no substance, and his story and characters offer little reason for viewers to empathize with such self-pitying characters. Because Goldberg borrows -- or believes he is borrowing -- from the stylistic flourishes of filmmakers ranging from David Lynch and John Cassavetes to Martin Scorsese and the French New Wave, the movie may stimulate cineastes who look for "references" in movies rather than originality. Otherwise, "I Love Your Work" will have little life off the festival circuit.
Giovanni Ribisi plays Gray Evans, a movie star whose life and marriage to fellow movie star Mia (Franka Potente) is falling apart. As Mia accurately points out to Gray: "You hate the business. You hate the rags. And you hate being a celebrity." No one bothers to ask why Gray pursues a career guaranteed to bring him so much grief.
Goldberg and co-writer Adrian Butchart try to establish layers of reality in order to play peekaboo with the narrative structure. So there is a movie being made within the movie. Gray's obsessions and fantasies may or may not be real. And he suffers many mental mix-ups wherein his wife turns into his ex-lover Shana (Christina Ricci) and Shana gets confused with Jane (Marisa Coughlan), the young girlfriend of one of Gray's fans, John (Joshua Jackson). But since no level of reality is given any substance or plausibility, the movie feels void of narrative purpose.
Gray, who exists on a diet of booze and tobacco, apparently goes to a premiere nearly every night. Yet every time a photographer's flash goes off, his face has the startled, horrified look of a deer caught in the headlights of an on-rushing car. Gray sees stalkers everywhere, to the amusement of his security expert (Jared Harris), who pads his bank account nicely by following up on every obsession. And every time Elvis Costello leaves a message on the answering machine for Mia, Gray goes into a jealous rage.
Meanwhile, Gray and Mia live a strange movie-star existence as they inhabit a cool, sterile loft above an aging movie theater. The only real twist to this film comes when the movie star essentially stalks his own fan. Gray's spying on John and Jane allows him to fantasize about what a "normal" life would be like. Yet he gleams no wisdom from his intrusion into their lives. Instead, his continual delusions and flawed memories offer Goldberg the opportunity to wallow in an impressionistic style, courtesy of cinematographer Mark Putnam's crisp, gloomy lighting, designer Erin Smith's antiseptic decors and editors Zack Bell and John Valerio's jumble of images culled from Gray's confused mind.
Goldberg's actors work hard, but the overwrought melodrama betrays their efforts. Ribisi, who has never looked less like a movie star, is too weird and affected from the opening scene to pull you into his character's turmoil and troubles. Potente, who does look like a movie star, comes off with dignity at least as a women struggling to cope with a failing marriage. Jackson, Coughlan and Ricci, all playing quasi-figments of Gray's imagination, can do little more than pose and react.
I LOVE YOUR WORK
Fireworks presents a Muse production in association with Cyan Pictures, Departure Entertainment, Miracle Mile Films, Rice/Walter Prods. in association with In Association With Prods.
Credits:
Director: Adam Goldberg
Screenwriters: Adam Goldberg, Adrian Butchart
Producers: Chris Hanley, David Hillary, Tim Peternel, Joshua Newman, Adam Goldberg
Executive producers: Daniel Diamond, Jay Firestone, Damon Martin, Chad Troutwine, Boro Vukadinovic
Director of photography: Mark Putnam
Production designer: Erin Smith
Music: Adam Goldberg, Stephen Drozd
Costume designer: Dawn Weisberg
Editors: Zack Bell, John Valerio
Cast:
Gray: Giovanni Ribisi
Mia: Franka Potente
Shana: Christina Ricci
John: Joshua Jackson
Jane: Marisa Coughlan
Yehud: Jared Harris
Stalker: Jason Lee
Running time -- 111 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- "I Love Your Work" is a movie directed and co-written by an actor, Adam Goldberg, that features many of his actor buddies. So what's it all about? It's about how awful it is to be an actor or, worse, a movie star and how an acting career can damage one's fragile psyche. Before you can even accuse the moviemaker and his pals of naval gazing, a "narcissism expert" appears on a TV talk show and turns to the movie's protagonist to lecture him about listening to other people and getting over his egocentricity. Of course, he doesn't listen to her.
However much this movie may speak to the current generation of actors, it has little to say to moviegoers. Goldberg's direction is all flash and no substance, and his story and characters offer little reason for viewers to empathize with such self-pitying characters. Because Goldberg borrows -- or believes he is borrowing -- from the stylistic flourishes of filmmakers ranging from David Lynch and John Cassavetes to Martin Scorsese and the French New Wave, the movie may stimulate cineastes who look for "references" in movies rather than originality. Otherwise, "I Love Your Work" will have little life off the festival circuit.
Giovanni Ribisi plays Gray Evans, a movie star whose life and marriage to fellow movie star Mia (Franka Potente) is falling apart. As Mia accurately points out to Gray: "You hate the business. You hate the rags. And you hate being a celebrity." No one bothers to ask why Gray pursues a career guaranteed to bring him so much grief.
Goldberg and co-writer Adrian Butchart try to establish layers of reality in order to play peekaboo with the narrative structure. So there is a movie being made within the movie. Gray's obsessions and fantasies may or may not be real. And he suffers many mental mix-ups wherein his wife turns into his ex-lover Shana (Christina Ricci) and Shana gets confused with Jane (Marisa Coughlan), the young girlfriend of one of Gray's fans, John (Joshua Jackson). But since no level of reality is given any substance or plausibility, the movie feels void of narrative purpose.
Gray, who exists on a diet of booze and tobacco, apparently goes to a premiere nearly every night. Yet every time a photographer's flash goes off, his face has the startled, horrified look of a deer caught in the headlights of an on-rushing car. Gray sees stalkers everywhere, to the amusement of his security expert (Jared Harris), who pads his bank account nicely by following up on every obsession. And every time Elvis Costello leaves a message on the answering machine for Mia, Gray goes into a jealous rage.
Meanwhile, Gray and Mia live a strange movie-star existence as they inhabit a cool, sterile loft above an aging movie theater. The only real twist to this film comes when the movie star essentially stalks his own fan. Gray's spying on John and Jane allows him to fantasize about what a "normal" life would be like. Yet he gleams no wisdom from his intrusion into their lives. Instead, his continual delusions and flawed memories offer Goldberg the opportunity to wallow in an impressionistic style, courtesy of cinematographer Mark Putnam's crisp, gloomy lighting, designer Erin Smith's antiseptic decors and editors Zack Bell and John Valerio's jumble of images culled from Gray's confused mind.
Goldberg's actors work hard, but the overwrought melodrama betrays their efforts. Ribisi, who has never looked less like a movie star, is too weird and affected from the opening scene to pull you into his character's turmoil and troubles. Potente, who does look like a movie star, comes off with dignity at least as a women struggling to cope with a failing marriage. Jackson, Coughlan and Ricci, all playing quasi-figments of Gray's imagination, can do little more than pose and react.
I LOVE YOUR WORK
Fireworks presents a Muse production in association with Cyan Pictures, Departure Entertainment, Miracle Mile Films, Rice/Walter Prods. in association with In Association With Prods.
Credits:
Director: Adam Goldberg
Screenwriters: Adam Goldberg, Adrian Butchart
Producers: Chris Hanley, David Hillary, Tim Peternel, Joshua Newman, Adam Goldberg
Executive producers: Daniel Diamond, Jay Firestone, Damon Martin, Chad Troutwine, Boro Vukadinovic
Director of photography: Mark Putnam
Production designer: Erin Smith
Music: Adam Goldberg, Stephen Drozd
Costume designer: Dawn Weisberg
Editors: Zack Bell, John Valerio
Cast:
Gray: Giovanni Ribisi
Mia: Franka Potente
Shana: Christina Ricci
John: Joshua Jackson
Jane: Marisa Coughlan
Yehud: Jared Harris
Stalker: Jason Lee
Running time -- 111 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Screened
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- "I Love Your Work" is a movie directed and co-written by an actor, Adam Goldberg, that features many of his actor buddies. So what's it all about? It's about how awful it is to be an actor or, worse, a movie star and how an acting career can damage one's fragile psyche. Before you can even accuse the moviemaker and his pals of naval gazing, a "narcissism expert" appears on a TV talk show and turns to the movie's protagonist to lecture him about listening to other people and getting over his egocentricity. Of course, he doesn't listen to her.
However much this movie may speak to the current generation of actors, it has little to say to moviegoers. Goldberg's direction is all flash and no substance, and his story and characters offer little reason for viewers to empathize with such self-pitying characters. Because Goldberg borrows -- or believes he is borrowing -- from the stylistic flourishes of filmmakers ranging from David Lynch and John Cassavetes to Martin Scorsese and the French New Wave, the movie may stimulate cineastes who look for "references" in movies rather than originality. Otherwise, "I Love Your Work" will have little life off the festival circuit.
Giovanni Ribisi plays Gray Evans, a movie star whose life and marriage to fellow movie star Mia (Franka Potente) is falling apart. As Mia accurately points out to Gray: "You hate the business. You hate the rags. And you hate being a celebrity." No one bothers to ask why Gray pursues a career guaranteed to bring him so much grief.
Goldberg and co-writer Adrian Butchart try to establish layers of reality in order to play peekaboo with the narrative structure. So there is a movie being made within the movie. Gray's obsessions and fantasies may or may not be real. And he suffers many mental mix-ups wherein his wife turns into his ex-lover Shana (Christina Ricci) and Shana gets confused with Jane (Marisa Coughlan), the young girlfriend of one of Gray's fans, John (Joshua Jackson). But since no level of reality is given any substance or plausibility, the movie feels void of narrative purpose.
Gray, who exists on a diet of booze and tobacco, apparently goes to a premiere nearly every night. Yet every time a photographer's flash goes off, his face has the startled, horrified look of a deer caught in the headlights of an on-rushing car. Gray sees stalkers everywhere, to the amusement of his security expert (Jared Harris), who pads his bank account nicely by following up on every obsession. And every time Elvis Costello leaves a message on the answering machine for Mia, Gray goes into a jealous rage.
Meanwhile, Gray and Mia live a strange movie-star existence as they inhabit a cool, sterile loft above an aging movie theater. The only real twist to this film comes when the movie star essentially stalks his own fan. Gray's spying on John and Jane allows him to fantasize about what a "normal" life would be like. Yet he gleams no wisdom from his intrusion into their lives. Instead, his continual delusions and flawed memories offer Goldberg the opportunity to wallow in an impressionistic style, courtesy of cinematographer Mark Putnam's crisp, gloomy lighting, designer Erin Smith's antiseptic decors and editors Zack Bell and John Valerio's jumble of images culled from Gray's confused mind.
Goldberg's actors work hard, but the overwrought melodrama betrays their efforts. Ribisi, who has never looked less like a movie star, is too weird and affected from the opening scene to pull you into his character's turmoil and troubles. Potente, who does look like a movie star, comes off with dignity at least as a women struggling to cope with a failing marriage. Jackson, Coughlan and Ricci, all playing quasi-figments of Gray's imagination, can do little more than pose and react.
I LOVE YOUR WORK
Fireworks presents a Muse production in association with Cyan Pictures, Departure Entertainment, Miracle Mile Films, Rice/Walter Prods. in association with In Association With Prods.
Credits:
Director: Adam Goldberg
Screenwriters: Adam Goldberg, Adrian Butchart
Producers: Chris Hanley, David Hillary, Tim Peternel, Joshua Newman, Adam Goldberg
Executive producers: Daniel Diamond, Jay Firestone, Damon Martin, Chad Troutwine, Boro Vukadinovic
Director of photography: Mark Putnam
Production designer: Erin Smith
Music: Adam Goldberg, Stephen Drozd
Costume designer: Dawn Weisberg
Editors: Zack Bell, John Valerio
Cast:
Gray: Giovanni Ribisi
Mia: Franka Potente
Shana: Christina Ricci
John: Joshua Jackson
Jane: Marisa Coughlan
Yehud: Jared Harris
Stalker: Jason Lee
Running time -- 111 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- "I Love Your Work" is a movie directed and co-written by an actor, Adam Goldberg, that features many of his actor buddies. So what's it all about? It's about how awful it is to be an actor or, worse, a movie star and how an acting career can damage one's fragile psyche. Before you can even accuse the moviemaker and his pals of naval gazing, a "narcissism expert" appears on a TV talk show and turns to the movie's protagonist to lecture him about listening to other people and getting over his egocentricity. Of course, he doesn't listen to her.
However much this movie may speak to the current generation of actors, it has little to say to moviegoers. Goldberg's direction is all flash and no substance, and his story and characters offer little reason for viewers to empathize with such self-pitying characters. Because Goldberg borrows -- or believes he is borrowing -- from the stylistic flourishes of filmmakers ranging from David Lynch and John Cassavetes to Martin Scorsese and the French New Wave, the movie may stimulate cineastes who look for "references" in movies rather than originality. Otherwise, "I Love Your Work" will have little life off the festival circuit.
Giovanni Ribisi plays Gray Evans, a movie star whose life and marriage to fellow movie star Mia (Franka Potente) is falling apart. As Mia accurately points out to Gray: "You hate the business. You hate the rags. And you hate being a celebrity." No one bothers to ask why Gray pursues a career guaranteed to bring him so much grief.
Goldberg and co-writer Adrian Butchart try to establish layers of reality in order to play peekaboo with the narrative structure. So there is a movie being made within the movie. Gray's obsessions and fantasies may or may not be real. And he suffers many mental mix-ups wherein his wife turns into his ex-lover Shana (Christina Ricci) and Shana gets confused with Jane (Marisa Coughlan), the young girlfriend of one of Gray's fans, John (Joshua Jackson). But since no level of reality is given any substance or plausibility, the movie feels void of narrative purpose.
Gray, who exists on a diet of booze and tobacco, apparently goes to a premiere nearly every night. Yet every time a photographer's flash goes off, his face has the startled, horrified look of a deer caught in the headlights of an on-rushing car. Gray sees stalkers everywhere, to the amusement of his security expert (Jared Harris), who pads his bank account nicely by following up on every obsession. And every time Elvis Costello leaves a message on the answering machine for Mia, Gray goes into a jealous rage.
Meanwhile, Gray and Mia live a strange movie-star existence as they inhabit a cool, sterile loft above an aging movie theater. The only real twist to this film comes when the movie star essentially stalks his own fan. Gray's spying on John and Jane allows him to fantasize about what a "normal" life would be like. Yet he gleams no wisdom from his intrusion into their lives. Instead, his continual delusions and flawed memories offer Goldberg the opportunity to wallow in an impressionistic style, courtesy of cinematographer Mark Putnam's crisp, gloomy lighting, designer Erin Smith's antiseptic decors and editors Zack Bell and John Valerio's jumble of images culled from Gray's confused mind.
Goldberg's actors work hard, but the overwrought melodrama betrays their efforts. Ribisi, who has never looked less like a movie star, is too weird and affected from the opening scene to pull you into his character's turmoil and troubles. Potente, who does look like a movie star, comes off with dignity at least as a women struggling to cope with a failing marriage. Jackson, Coughlan and Ricci, all playing quasi-figments of Gray's imagination, can do little more than pose and react.
I LOVE YOUR WORK
Fireworks presents a Muse production in association with Cyan Pictures, Departure Entertainment, Miracle Mile Films, Rice/Walter Prods. in association with In Association With Prods.
Credits:
Director: Adam Goldberg
Screenwriters: Adam Goldberg, Adrian Butchart
Producers: Chris Hanley, David Hillary, Tim Peternel, Joshua Newman, Adam Goldberg
Executive producers: Daniel Diamond, Jay Firestone, Damon Martin, Chad Troutwine, Boro Vukadinovic
Director of photography: Mark Putnam
Production designer: Erin Smith
Music: Adam Goldberg, Stephen Drozd
Costume designer: Dawn Weisberg
Editors: Zack Bell, John Valerio
Cast:
Gray: Giovanni Ribisi
Mia: Franka Potente
Shana: Christina Ricci
John: Joshua Jackson
Jane: Marisa Coughlan
Yehud: Jared Harris
Stalker: Jason Lee
Running time -- 111 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/12/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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