Indie producer Raphael D. Silver died March 4 in Salt Lake City, Utah, two days after a skiing accident in Deer Valley. He was 83. The real estate developer lived in New York City and East Hampton. The production company Silverfilm, which he ran with his wife of 57 years, director Joan Micklin Silver, produced her 1975 debut film “Hester Street” and others including her 1988 “Crossing Delancey, which earned Amy Irving a Golden Globe nomination, and Boston-area film "Between the Lines," starring Jeff Goldblum and John Heard. Silver directed two micro-budget films, 1978's "On the Yard," starring Heard," and "A Walk on the Moon" in 1987. Silver pioneered the entrepreneurial model of filmmaking that continues to this day, according to Ira Deutchman, the chairman of Columbia University’s film program. Silver was a director of the Independent Film Project. Early on, Silver participated in Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute and was also on the board of the Big Apple Circus.
- 4/6/2013
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
Producer Bill Benenson has acquired film rights to Christopher Wilson's Dancing With the Devil: The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue. First published in 2000, the book asserts that the Duchess of Windsor had a sexual affair in the '50s with Donahue, a gay society figure who traveled in the same social circles as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. In association with Norman and Ted Tulchin's Maidstone Prods., Benenson, whose credits include 1990's Mr. Johnson and 1987's A Walk on the Moon, plans to develop a screenplay based on the book while also mounting a theatrical production. In January, the Tulchin brothers acquired London's Playhouse Theatre, which they plan to reopen next month with a production of Checkhov's Three Sisters, starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Kate Burton. Benenson's announcement sets up a conflict with another project devoted to the same subject. Last month, British producer Harry Alan Towers announced a film called The Bahama Triangle, which would also examine the relationship between the Windsors and Donahue. Towers himself said he has written a script for that project. But Wilson insists that his book unearthed the sexual affair, and his attorneys have asked that Towers turn over his screenplay to them by today. "Should Mr. Towers refuse our request, as seems likely, we may be entitled to assume that he has used my book as the basis for his film, or a significant part of his film," Wilson said.
- 3/14/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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