Totally and tragically unconventional, Peggy Guggenheim moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century collecting not only not only art, but artists. Her sexual life was -- and still today is -- more discussed than the art itself which she collected, not for her own consumption but for the world to enjoy.
Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.
In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.
Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.
Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)
Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.
"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."
Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .
Let's try to cover new territory here.
First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?
Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.
Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?
Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.
Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?
Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .
Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?
Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.
World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.
Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?
Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.
Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.
The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.
Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?
Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.
It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.
So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.
Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.
There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.
And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.
The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.
Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?
Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.
Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.
Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.
Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.
She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.
Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.
Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.
The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.
A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.
Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?
Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...
She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.
She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.
Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?
Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.
Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?
Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.
We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.
It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.
Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?
Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.
Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.
Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?
Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.
About the Filmmakers
Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.
David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.
David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".
Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.
He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.
He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.
John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).
Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.
Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.
Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".
Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".
Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?
Credits
Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)
Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)
Josh Braun (executive producer)
Bob Benton (executive producer)
John Northrup (co-producer)
Bernadine Colish (editor)
Jed Parker (editor)
Peter Trilling (director of photography)
Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)
Music by J. Ralph
Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph
Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White
Running time: 97 minutes
U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe
International sales by Hanway...
Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.
In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.
Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.
Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)
Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.
"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."
Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .
Let's try to cover new territory here.
First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?
Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.
Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?
Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.
Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?
Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .
Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?
Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.
World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.
Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?
Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.
Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.
The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.
Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?
Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.
It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.
So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.
Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.
There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.
And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.
The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.
Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?
Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.
Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.
Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.
Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.
She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.
Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.
Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.
The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.
A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.
Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?
Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...
She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.
She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.
Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?
Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.
Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?
Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.
We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.
It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.
Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?
Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.
Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.
Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?
Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.
About the Filmmakers
Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.
David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.
David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".
Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.
He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.
He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.
John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).
Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.
Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.
Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".
Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".
Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?
Credits
Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)
Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)
Josh Braun (executive producer)
Bob Benton (executive producer)
John Northrup (co-producer)
Bernadine Colish (editor)
Jed Parker (editor)
Peter Trilling (director of photography)
Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)
Music by J. Ralph
Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph
Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White
Running time: 97 minutes
U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe
International sales by Hanway...
- 11/18/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Tom Morello has played to millions of people in countless venues around the world, and yet a May 19 booking at a movie theater in Kansas City, Mo., could be more meaningful to him than any other.
On that night, the lead guitarist of the band Rage Against the Machine will host “Tribute to Tomas Young.” Morello and Young became close friends long before the Internet came to know Young as the gravely wounded veteran who authored a viral open letter to former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War.
Morello and Young met in 2007 when Young was making a documentary, "Body of War" and wanted to use a song by The Nightwatchman -- the name of Morello's solo act. The film documents Young's attempt to reintegrate into the United States after being shot in the leg and through the...
On that night, the lead guitarist of the band Rage Against the Machine will host “Tribute to Tomas Young.” Morello and Young became close friends long before the Internet came to know Young as the gravely wounded veteran who authored a viral open letter to former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War.
Morello and Young met in 2007 when Young was making a documentary, "Body of War" and wanted to use a song by The Nightwatchman -- the name of Morello's solo act. The film documents Young's attempt to reintegrate into the United States after being shot in the leg and through the...
- 5/15/2013
- by The Huffington Post
- Huffington Post
Chicago – Being the daughter of comedian Danny Thomas, Marlo Thomas certainly was appropriate in naming her latest book, “Growing Up Laughing: My Story and the Story of Funny.” She and her husband Phil Donahue recently were in Chicago to promote the memoir.
Marlo Thomas broke out apart from her famous father, becoming a TV star with her sitcom “That Girl” from 1966 to 1971. She has continued to work as an actress since then, but has also focused on writing, activism (for children and feminist issues) and directing her late father’s prominent charity, the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Growing Up Laughing is her fifth book.
That Girl: Marlo Thomas at Borders Oakbrook, October 26th, 2010
Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com.
Phil Donahue was a broadcaster that began in the late 1950s, and eventually started a talk show in 1967 called “The Phil Donahue Show.
Marlo Thomas broke out apart from her famous father, becoming a TV star with her sitcom “That Girl” from 1966 to 1971. She has continued to work as an actress since then, but has also focused on writing, activism (for children and feminist issues) and directing her late father’s prominent charity, the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Growing Up Laughing is her fifth book.
That Girl: Marlo Thomas at Borders Oakbrook, October 26th, 2010
Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com.
Phil Donahue was a broadcaster that began in the late 1950s, and eventually started a talk show in 1967 called “The Phil Donahue Show.
- 4/26/2011
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Christmas gives plenty of people a number of reasons to celebrate, but Eddie Vedder has one extra thing to raise a glass to today, as it is his birthday. The Pearl Jam frontman is now 46 years old, and though he has been an integral component of the rock world for most of two decades, in many respects it seems like he's just getting warmed up.
(Click here for a look at Eddie Vedder's career in photos!)
Of course, Vedder is best known as the singer for Pearl Jam, the band he joined following the end of about-to-break Seattle band Mother Love Bone. Vedder was something of an outsider in the beginning, as he was living in San Diego and not really considering a music career (he was content to surf). But a friend sent him a tape of some demos put together by guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament,...
(Click here for a look at Eddie Vedder's career in photos!)
Of course, Vedder is best known as the singer for Pearl Jam, the band he joined following the end of about-to-break Seattle band Mother Love Bone. Vedder was something of an outsider in the beginning, as he was living in San Diego and not really considering a music career (he was content to surf). But a friend sent him a tape of some demos put together by guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament,...
- 12/23/2010
- by Kyle Anderson
- MTV Newsroom
By Lisa Horowitz
The Documentary Channel has reached an exclusive multiyear deal with the Film Sales Co. for a package of 11 documentary films.
Financial terms were not disclosed for the deal, announced Tuesday by the Documentary Channel president-ceo James Ackerman and the Film Sales Co. president Andrew Herwitz.
The Documentary Channel will air documentaries from the Film Sales Co.'s library including Academy Award nominee “Iraq in Fragments” and film festival notables "Body of War," "Jump!," "Paper Clips," "Beyond Conviction&qu...
The Documentary Channel has reached an exclusive multiyear deal with the Film Sales Co. for a package of 11 documentary films.
Financial terms were not disclosed for the deal, announced Tuesday by the Documentary Channel president-ceo James Ackerman and the Film Sales Co. president Andrew Herwitz.
The Documentary Channel will air documentaries from the Film Sales Co.'s library including Academy Award nominee “Iraq in Fragments” and film festival notables "Body of War," "Jump!," "Paper Clips," "Beyond Conviction&qu...
- 2/16/2010
- by Lisa Horowitz
- The Wrap
By Neil Pedley
Prom queens and street kings hold court this week at the multiplexes while the college professors of "Smart People" and "The Visitor" preside at the art houses.
"Body of War"
Talk show legend Phil Donahue hands over the mic to Iraqi war veteran Tomas Young in this hard-hitting documentary that contrasts Young's struggle to re-enter civilian life as a paraplegic and anti-war activist with archival footage of an overeager U.S. Congress and what the filmmakers view as their hasty decision to greenlight the invasion. Although the film, co-directed by Donahue and Ellen Spiro, was named best documentary of 2007 by the National Board of Review, "Body of War" has earned equal attention for its soundtrack led by two tracks from Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, with all proceeds going to the non-profit organization Iraq Veterans Against The War. (Check out our interview with Spiro and Donahue.)
Opens in New York.
Prom queens and street kings hold court this week at the multiplexes while the college professors of "Smart People" and "The Visitor" preside at the art houses.
"Body of War"
Talk show legend Phil Donahue hands over the mic to Iraqi war veteran Tomas Young in this hard-hitting documentary that contrasts Young's struggle to re-enter civilian life as a paraplegic and anti-war activist with archival footage of an overeager U.S. Congress and what the filmmakers view as their hasty decision to greenlight the invasion. Although the film, co-directed by Donahue and Ellen Spiro, was named best documentary of 2007 by the National Board of Review, "Body of War" has earned equal attention for its soundtrack led by two tracks from Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, with all proceeds going to the non-profit organization Iraq Veterans Against The War. (Check out our interview with Spiro and Donahue.)
Opens in New York.
- 4/7/2008
- by Neil Pedley
- ifc.com
Rocker Eddie Vedder was forced to pull out of a special screening of the anti-war documentary he has partly scored at the South by Southwest festival in Texas on Thursday to nurse a sick relative back to health.
Vedder, who recorded new material for and curated the soundtrack to Body Of War, was expected to join other musical activists like Billy Bragg and Tom Morello at the screening.
When he didn't show, fans were told the rocker was caring for an ailing relative and unable to make the premiere of the film and concert.
Instead, Bragg, Morello, Serj Tankian and Ben Harper performed brief sets after the screening of the hard-hitting film, about paralysed Iraq war veteran Tomas Young.
Morello ended the rousing anti-establishment concert by performing Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land with Bragg and Tankian.
Vedder, who recorded new material for and curated the soundtrack to Body Of War, was expected to join other musical activists like Billy Bragg and Tom Morello at the screening.
When he didn't show, fans were told the rocker was caring for an ailing relative and unable to make the premiere of the film and concert.
Instead, Bragg, Morello, Serj Tankian and Ben Harper performed brief sets after the screening of the hard-hitting film, about paralysed Iraq war veteran Tomas Young.
Morello ended the rousing anti-establishment concert by performing Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land with Bragg and Tankian.
- 3/14/2008
- WENN
The PGA on Monday announced producers attached to previously announced nominees in feature film and TV categories.
The names had been withheld pending completion of the the PGA's accreditation process.
The accrediting review and a related appeal process is aimed at determining which producers "performed a majority of the producing functions from development through production and post production," officials said.
Winners will be announced at the 19th annual PGA awards, set for Feb. 2 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
A complete list of nominees follows:
The Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures:
The Diving Bell and the Butterly (Miramax)
Kathleen Kennedy, Jon Kilik
Juno (Fox Searchlight)
Lianne Halfon, Mason Novick, Russell Smith
Michael Clayton (Warner Bros.)
Jennifer Fox, Kerry Orent, Sydney Pollack
No Country for Old Men (Miramax/Paramount Vantage)
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Scott Rudin
There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage/Miramax)
Joanne Sellar, Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Lupi
The Producers Guild of America Producer of the Year Award in Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures
Bee Movie (DreamWorks Animation)
Jerry Seinfeld, Christina Steinberg
Ratatouille (Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar Animation)
Brad Lewis
The Simpsons Movie (20th Century Fox)
James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Richard Sakai, Mike Scully
The Producers Guild of America Producer of the Year Award in Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures
Body of War (Phil Donahue Productions/Mobilus Media)
Phil Donahue, Ellen Spiro
Hear and Now (HBO)
Irene Taylor Brodsky
Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (The Weinstein Company)
Jim Brown, Michael Cohl, William Eigen
Sicko (The Weinstein Company)
Michael Moore, Meghan O'Hara
White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (HBO)
Steven Okazaki
The David L. Wolper Producer of the Year Award in Long-Form Television
The Bronx is Burning (ESPN)
Joe Davola, Gordon Greisman, Bill Johnson, Mike Tollin
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (HBO)
Clara George, Tom Thayer, Dick Wolf
High School Musical 2 (Disney Channel)
Bill Borden, Barry Rosenbush
Jane Eyre (PBS/BBC)
Phillippa Giles, Diederick Santer
The Starter Wife (USA Network)
Jon Avnet, Josann McGibbon, Marsha Oglesby, Sara Parriott
The Danny Thomas Producer of the Year Award In Episodic Television - Comedy
Entourage (HBO)
Doug Ellin, Stephen Levinson, Julian Farino, Wayne Carmona, Rob Weiss, Denis Biggs, Lori Jo Nemhauser
Extras (HBO)
Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Charles Hanson
The Office (NBC)
Greg Daniels, Kent Zbornak, Marci Klein, Jerry Kupfer, Lorne Michaels, Jeff Richmond
30 Rock (NBC)
Robert Carlock, Tina Fey
Ugly Betty (ABC)
Salma Hayek, James Hayman, Silvio Horta, James Parriott, Marco Pennette, Ben Silverman, Jose Tamez, Teri Weinberg, Alice West
The Norman Felton Producer of the Year Award in Episodic Television - Drama
Dexter (Showtime)
Michael Cuesta, Sara Colleton, John Goldwyn, Robert Lloyd Lewis, Clyde Phillips
Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Shonda Rhimes, Betsy Beers, Mark Gordon, Peter Horton, Rob Corn
Heroes (NBC)
Allan Arkush, Greg Beeman, Jim Chory, Dennis Hammer Gerrit van der Meer, Tim Kring
House (Fox)
David Shore, Katie Jacobs, Daniel Sackheim
Lost (ABC)
Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Jack Bender, Liz Sarnoff, Drew Goddard
The Sopranos (HBO)
David Chase, Brad Grey, Ilene S.
The names had been withheld pending completion of the the PGA's accreditation process.
The accrediting review and a related appeal process is aimed at determining which producers "performed a majority of the producing functions from development through production and post production," officials said.
Winners will be announced at the 19th annual PGA awards, set for Feb. 2 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
A complete list of nominees follows:
The Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures:
The Diving Bell and the Butterly (Miramax)
Kathleen Kennedy, Jon Kilik
Juno (Fox Searchlight)
Lianne Halfon, Mason Novick, Russell Smith
Michael Clayton (Warner Bros.)
Jennifer Fox, Kerry Orent, Sydney Pollack
No Country for Old Men (Miramax/Paramount Vantage)
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Scott Rudin
There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage/Miramax)
Joanne Sellar, Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Lupi
The Producers Guild of America Producer of the Year Award in Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures
Bee Movie (DreamWorks Animation)
Jerry Seinfeld, Christina Steinberg
Ratatouille (Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar Animation)
Brad Lewis
The Simpsons Movie (20th Century Fox)
James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Richard Sakai, Mike Scully
The Producers Guild of America Producer of the Year Award in Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures
Body of War (Phil Donahue Productions/Mobilus Media)
Phil Donahue, Ellen Spiro
Hear and Now (HBO)
Irene Taylor Brodsky
Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (The Weinstein Company)
Jim Brown, Michael Cohl, William Eigen
Sicko (The Weinstein Company)
Michael Moore, Meghan O'Hara
White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (HBO)
Steven Okazaki
The David L. Wolper Producer of the Year Award in Long-Form Television
The Bronx is Burning (ESPN)
Joe Davola, Gordon Greisman, Bill Johnson, Mike Tollin
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (HBO)
Clara George, Tom Thayer, Dick Wolf
High School Musical 2 (Disney Channel)
Bill Borden, Barry Rosenbush
Jane Eyre (PBS/BBC)
Phillippa Giles, Diederick Santer
The Starter Wife (USA Network)
Jon Avnet, Josann McGibbon, Marsha Oglesby, Sara Parriott
The Danny Thomas Producer of the Year Award In Episodic Television - Comedy
Entourage (HBO)
Doug Ellin, Stephen Levinson, Julian Farino, Wayne Carmona, Rob Weiss, Denis Biggs, Lori Jo Nemhauser
Extras (HBO)
Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Charles Hanson
The Office (NBC)
Greg Daniels, Kent Zbornak, Marci Klein, Jerry Kupfer, Lorne Michaels, Jeff Richmond
30 Rock (NBC)
Robert Carlock, Tina Fey
Ugly Betty (ABC)
Salma Hayek, James Hayman, Silvio Horta, James Parriott, Marco Pennette, Ben Silverman, Jose Tamez, Teri Weinberg, Alice West
The Norman Felton Producer of the Year Award in Episodic Television - Drama
Dexter (Showtime)
Michael Cuesta, Sara Colleton, John Goldwyn, Robert Lloyd Lewis, Clyde Phillips
Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Shonda Rhimes, Betsy Beers, Mark Gordon, Peter Horton, Rob Corn
Heroes (NBC)
Allan Arkush, Greg Beeman, Jim Chory, Dennis Hammer Gerrit van der Meer, Tim Kring
House (Fox)
David Shore, Katie Jacobs, Daniel Sackheim
Lost (ABC)
Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Jack Bender, Liz Sarnoff, Drew Goddard
The Sopranos (HBO)
David Chase, Brad Grey, Ilene S.
- 1/21/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
- Congratulations are in order to a company that some thought would just be a footnote in the Weinstein family history. Miramax films have made some smart moves...and movies in 2007 and three films that they helped make are in contention for its top feature film award. An interesting footnote pointed out by Variety is that the PGA has diverged with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences -- which has 464 members in its producers branch -- in the last three years. The PGA selected “Little Miss Sunshine” last year while the Oscar went to “The Departed”; in 2006, the PGA chose “Brokeback Mountain” and the Acad went with “Crash”; in 2005, “The Aviator” won at the PGA while “Million Dollar Baby” took the Oscar. Winners will be awarded on Feb. 2. And the nominees are: Producer Of The Year Award In Theatrical Motion Pictures"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (Miramax
- 1/14/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
Hot on the heels of the Golden Globe awards, the Producers Guild of America has announed its five contenders for its Best Picture award: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood. Four of the five films also previously received Directors Guild nominations (Juno was passed over for Into the Wild by the DGA), and all films received multiple Golden Globe nods. The last of the major guild awards, the PGA honors effectively put the kibosh on such hopeful Oscar contenders as Atonement, Charlie Wilson's War and Sweeney Todd, which received no love from the Directors Guild, the Screen Actors Guild or the Writers Guild. While the nominations from the guild aren't exact precursors for the Academy Awards, a majority of guild members are also Academy voters. Bee Movie, Ratatouille, and The Simpsons Movie were nominated for the PGA's animated film award, while Body of War, Hear and Now, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, Sicko, and White Light/Black Rain are in competition for the documentary award.
- 1/14/2008
- WENN
NEW YORK -- Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men came out on top of the National Board of Review Awards on Wednesday as the Miramax Films/Paramount Vantage co-production picked up best picture, best ensemble cast and best adapted screenplay honors.
George Clooney and Julie Christie took home best actor and actress prizes. Clooney's Michael Clayton from Warner Bros. and Christie's Away From Her from Lionsgate landed on NBR's Top Ten Films and Top Independent Films lists, respectively. Michael Douglas received a career achievement award.
Tim Burton took home the best director prize for the DreamWorks/Warner Bros. musical Sweeney Todd. Diablo Cody (Juno) and Nancy Oliver Lars and the Real Girl tied for best original screenplay. All three films made the NBR top 10 films list.
Miramax also scored big with a best foreign film win for Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and best directorial debut and best supporting actress wins for Ben Affleck and Amy Ryan, respectively, for Gone Baby Gone. The director's brother Casey Affleck won best supporting actor for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
The Iraq War expose Body of War took home best documentary, Ratatouille took home best animated feature, and both The Great Debaters and Persepolis won the Bvlgari Award for NBR Freedom of Expression.
George Clooney and Julie Christie took home best actor and actress prizes. Clooney's Michael Clayton from Warner Bros. and Christie's Away From Her from Lionsgate landed on NBR's Top Ten Films and Top Independent Films lists, respectively. Michael Douglas received a career achievement award.
Tim Burton took home the best director prize for the DreamWorks/Warner Bros. musical Sweeney Todd. Diablo Cody (Juno) and Nancy Oliver Lars and the Real Girl tied for best original screenplay. All three films made the NBR top 10 films list.
Miramax also scored big with a best foreign film win for Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and best directorial debut and best supporting actress wins for Ben Affleck and Amy Ryan, respectively, for Gone Baby Gone. The director's brother Casey Affleck won best supporting actor for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
The Iraq War expose Body of War took home best documentary, Ratatouille took home best animated feature, and both The Great Debaters and Persepolis won the Bvlgari Award for NBR Freedom of Expression.
- 12/6/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In a year with no one film as a specific front-runner of the awards season, the National Board of Review has given a leg up to the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men, honoring it as Best Picture, as well as with the group's ensemble cast award and adapted screenplay honor. In a reflection of the lack of heavyweight pictures and performances favored for potential Academy Award nominations, the National Board spread around its awards to a number of movies and actors. Tim Burton was named Best Director for Sweeney Todd, while former Oscar winners George Clooney (Michael Clayton) and Julie Christie (Away From Her) were honored as Best Actor and Actress; the supporting awards went to two highly acclaimed performances: Casey Affleck for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone (which also starred Affleck). The Diving Bell and the Butterfly won the Foreign Film Award, with Body of War and Ratatouille named the best documentary and animated films, respectively. A group of film aficionados and academics, the National Board is not a critics' group per se, but has gained its fame by handing out the first honors of the awards season. Winners named by critics' groups in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles will follow in the next week, with the Golden Globe nominations being announced on Thursday, December 13. Other awards include: Breakthrough Performance by an Actor - Emile Hirsch, Into The Wild; Breakthrough Performance by an Actress - Ellen Page, Juno; Best Directorial Debut - Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone; Best Original Screenplay (tie): Diablo Cody, Juno and Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl. In addition to its Best Picture award, the National Board of Review also names the top ten films of the year, in alphabetical order: The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bucket List, Into The Wild, Juno, The Kite Runner, Lars And The Real Girl, Michael Clayton, and Sweeney Todd. --Mark Englehart, IMDb staff...
- 12/6/2007
- WENN
In a year with no one film as a specific front-runner of the awards season, the National Board of Review has given a leg up to the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men, honoring it as Best Picture, as well as with the group's ensemble cast award and adapted screenplay honor. In a reflection of the lack of heavyweight pictures and performances favored for potential Academy Award nominations, the National Board spread around its awards to a number of movies and actors. Tim Burton was named Best Director for Sweeney Todd, while former Oscar winners George Clooney (Michael Clayton) and Julie Christie (Away From Her) were honored as Best Actor and Actress; the supporting awards went to two highly acclaimed performances: Casey Affleck for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone (which also starred Affleck). The Diving Bell and the Butterfly won the Foreign Film Award, with Body of War and Ratatouille named the best documentary and animated films, respectively. A group of film aficionados and academics, the National Board is not a critics' group per se, but has gained its fame by handing out the first honors of the awards season. Winners named by critics' groups in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles will follow in the next week, with the Golden Globe nominations being announced on Thursday, December 13. Other awards include: Breakthrough Performance by an Actor - Emile Hirsch, Into The Wild; Breakthrough Performance by an Actress - Ellen Page, Juno; Best Directorial Debut - Ben Affleck, Gone Baby Gone; Best Original Screenplay (tie): Diablo Cody, Juno and Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl. In addition to its Best Picture award, the National Board of Review also names the top ten films of the year, in alphabetical order: The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Bucket List, Into The Wild, Juno, The Kite Runner, Lars And The Real Girl, Michael Clayton, and Sweeney Todd. --Mark Englehart, IMDb staff...
- 12/5/2007
- WENN
NEW YORK -- The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Monday unveiled the 15 films on its 2007 documentary feature Oscar shortlist.
Four ThinkFilm releases made the cut, a record for the company and one of the biggest lineups ever for any distributor. They are Tony Kaye's abortion epic Lake of Fire, Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's World War II expose Nanking, Alex Gibney's Iraq War study Taxi to the Dark Side and Sean Fine and Andrea Nix's look at a Ugandan musical competition War/Dance.
The biggest boxoffice hit among the bunch by far is Michael Moore's health-care expose Sicko, from the Weinstein Co., but other high-profile releases were left off the list. Jonathan Demme's Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains and Amir Bar-Lev's child prodigy study My Kid Could Paint That from Sony Pictures Classics were expected to make the cut but didn't. Other notable absentees were Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg's look at Darfur, The Devil Came on Horseback; Picturehouse's gamers study The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters; and ThinkFilm's space-themed In the Shadow of the Moon.
Aside from Taxi, other films covering the Iraq War that made the list included Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro's Body of War, Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight and Richard Robbins' Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.
Features about other wars made the cut, too, including Steven Okazaki's White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham's World War II art study The Rape of Europa.
Virtually all films on the list were topical, including Tricia Regan's look at special-needs children, Autism: The Musical...
Four ThinkFilm releases made the cut, a record for the company and one of the biggest lineups ever for any distributor. They are Tony Kaye's abortion epic Lake of Fire, Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's World War II expose Nanking, Alex Gibney's Iraq War study Taxi to the Dark Side and Sean Fine and Andrea Nix's look at a Ugandan musical competition War/Dance.
The biggest boxoffice hit among the bunch by far is Michael Moore's health-care expose Sicko, from the Weinstein Co., but other high-profile releases were left off the list. Jonathan Demme's Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains and Amir Bar-Lev's child prodigy study My Kid Could Paint That from Sony Pictures Classics were expected to make the cut but didn't. Other notable absentees were Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg's look at Darfur, The Devil Came on Horseback; Picturehouse's gamers study The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters; and ThinkFilm's space-themed In the Shadow of the Moon.
Aside from Taxi, other films covering the Iraq War that made the list included Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro's Body of War, Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight and Richard Robbins' Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.
Features about other wars made the cut, too, including Steven Okazaki's White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham's World War II art study The Rape of Europa.
Virtually all films on the list were topical, including Tricia Regan's look at special-needs children, Autism: The Musical...
- 11/20/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Toronto International Film Festival
TORONTO -- A matter-of-fact but pointedly critical commentary on the Iraq War, Body of War focuses on how soldiers got sent to Iraq and the shape in which they're coming back, leaving the rest to the nightly news. A crowded marketplace makes boxoffice unpredictable, but identification with a single protagonist gives "War" something to set it apart from other antiwar documentaries. It also was tapped by Toronto as the second runner-up behind Eastern Promises and first runner-up Juno as the audience award winner.
Like men of another generation who enlisted after Pearl Harbor, Tomas Young joined the Army on Sept. 13, 2001, after seeing President Bush stand in front of Ground Zero rubble and promise to hunt down those who attacked us. He expected to go to Afghanistan in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, but eventually found himself shipped off to Iraq. For about five days -- after which his unarmored vehicle was attacked, and an AK-47 round pierced his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed.
We meet Tomas shortly before his marriage to Brie, a determined woman who we see searching online for ways to help control Tomas' unpredictable bowels. Brie and Tomas' mother, Cathy, help him with large and small things during the film -- at one point, the camera watches uncomfortably while Cathy puts a catheter in her son's penis so he can empty his bladder.
Tomas' paralysis affects him in ways viewers might not expect. His body can't regulate its temperature, so he has to wear a vest filled with ice packs when going to Crawford, Texas, to appear at one of Cindy Sheehan's rallies. He gets light-headed easily, so he takes dramatic pauses while addressing a church gathering in Brooklyn. Despite the discomfort, he's determined to travel the country arguing against a war he now sees as illegitimate.
In between scenes of this campaign, filmmakers Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue cut back to October 2003, when the White House made its case for invading Iraq. We hear the president make assertions we now know to be incorrect, and, damningly, we hear his talking points parroted by one senator after another while Congress debates giving him the authority to use military force. Republicans are most ardent in beating these tidbits of misinformation into the public's mind, but "War" makes a point of catching prominent figures like Hillary Clinton doing exactly the same thing. John Kerry, for his part, reports that Saddam Hussein likely will have a nuclear weapon within a year.
From the opening scenes and through to the end, the film returns to the roll call that followed this debate, mercilessly listing every senator who voted for the measure. It also returns to footage of Sen. Robert Byrd, aged but fiery, as he begs his colleagues not to give in to the power grab. Byrd has taken his share of ribbing on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart for his over-the-top oratorical style, but he comes off as a hero here, standing up for an unpopular principle and foreseeing what effects a "yea" vote would have.
The back-and-forth feels disjointed at points, but as we spend time with Tomas -- who feels he's not getting adequate care from Army doctors -- we understand. Yes, the filmmakers want to draw attention to the plight of those who come home disabled from Iraq. But they also want to move beyond the easy excoriation of President Bush and remind us, indelibly, of each legislator who gave him the keys to the car.
This movie wants to help make things better. But it also -- fervently, and for a purpose -- holds a grudge.
BODY OF WAR
Phil Donahue Enterprises/Mobilus Media
Credits:
Directors-producers: Ellen Spiro, Phil Donahue
Executive producer: Phil Donahue
Director of photography: Ellen Spiro
Music: Eddie Vedder, Jeff Layton
Co-producer: Karen Bernstein
Editor: Bernadine Colish
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
TORONTO -- A matter-of-fact but pointedly critical commentary on the Iraq War, Body of War focuses on how soldiers got sent to Iraq and the shape in which they're coming back, leaving the rest to the nightly news. A crowded marketplace makes boxoffice unpredictable, but identification with a single protagonist gives "War" something to set it apart from other antiwar documentaries. It also was tapped by Toronto as the second runner-up behind Eastern Promises and first runner-up Juno as the audience award winner.
Like men of another generation who enlisted after Pearl Harbor, Tomas Young joined the Army on Sept. 13, 2001, after seeing President Bush stand in front of Ground Zero rubble and promise to hunt down those who attacked us. He expected to go to Afghanistan in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, but eventually found himself shipped off to Iraq. For about five days -- after which his unarmored vehicle was attacked, and an AK-47 round pierced his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed.
We meet Tomas shortly before his marriage to Brie, a determined woman who we see searching online for ways to help control Tomas' unpredictable bowels. Brie and Tomas' mother, Cathy, help him with large and small things during the film -- at one point, the camera watches uncomfortably while Cathy puts a catheter in her son's penis so he can empty his bladder.
Tomas' paralysis affects him in ways viewers might not expect. His body can't regulate its temperature, so he has to wear a vest filled with ice packs when going to Crawford, Texas, to appear at one of Cindy Sheehan's rallies. He gets light-headed easily, so he takes dramatic pauses while addressing a church gathering in Brooklyn. Despite the discomfort, he's determined to travel the country arguing against a war he now sees as illegitimate.
In between scenes of this campaign, filmmakers Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue cut back to October 2003, when the White House made its case for invading Iraq. We hear the president make assertions we now know to be incorrect, and, damningly, we hear his talking points parroted by one senator after another while Congress debates giving him the authority to use military force. Republicans are most ardent in beating these tidbits of misinformation into the public's mind, but "War" makes a point of catching prominent figures like Hillary Clinton doing exactly the same thing. John Kerry, for his part, reports that Saddam Hussein likely will have a nuclear weapon within a year.
From the opening scenes and through to the end, the film returns to the roll call that followed this debate, mercilessly listing every senator who voted for the measure. It also returns to footage of Sen. Robert Byrd, aged but fiery, as he begs his colleagues not to give in to the power grab. Byrd has taken his share of ribbing on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart for his over-the-top oratorical style, but he comes off as a hero here, standing up for an unpopular principle and foreseeing what effects a "yea" vote would have.
The back-and-forth feels disjointed at points, but as we spend time with Tomas -- who feels he's not getting adequate care from Army doctors -- we understand. Yes, the filmmakers want to draw attention to the plight of those who come home disabled from Iraq. But they also want to move beyond the easy excoriation of President Bush and remind us, indelibly, of each legislator who gave him the keys to the car.
This movie wants to help make things better. But it also -- fervently, and for a purpose -- holds a grudge.
BODY OF WAR
Phil Donahue Enterprises/Mobilus Media
Credits:
Directors-producers: Ellen Spiro, Phil Donahue
Executive producer: Phil Donahue
Director of photography: Ellen Spiro
Music: Eddie Vedder, Jeff Layton
Co-producer: Karen Bernstein
Editor: Bernadine Colish
Running time -- 88 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/19/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Related story: Three at fest headed to IFC
Related story: Christie's digital gets screen billing
TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday unveiled its most American-friendly lineup in years, capped off with new titles from Renny Harlin, Paul Schrader and Robin Swicord.
Toronto boasts no official competition. But the Hollywood contingent booked for the twice-nightly gala screenings at Roy Thomson Hall looks set to turn the high-profile venue into an industry shindig.
Among the six new gala titles are Harlin's "Cleaner", a Sony Pictures Entertainment thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson as a cop-turned-crime scene cleaner; the Richard Attenborough-directed love story "Closing the Ring", starring Shirley MacLaine, Mischa Barton and Neve Campbell; and Schrader's "The Walker", a ThinkFilm release starring Woody Harrelson and Lauren Bacall that comes to Toronto by way of Berlin, Cannes and Sydney.
Also joining the Roy Thomson Hall party are two Sony Pictures Classics releases: Kenneth Branagh's Michael Caine-Jude Law starrer "Sleuth", which first bowed in Venice, and Swicord's "The Jane Austen Book Club", starring Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman and Maria Bello. Also booked for a gala is French director Alain Corneau's "Le Deuxieme Souffle", starring Daniel Auteuil and Monica Bellucci.
Those titles join such earlier Roy Thomson Hall entries as Julie Taymor's "Across the Universe", Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream", Tony Gilroy's "Michael Clayton", Gavin Hood's "Rendition", Terry George's "Reservation Road" and Aristomenis Tsirbas' "Terra".
Toronto, which in recent years has stepped up efforts to make its festival more Hollywood friendly, also has included 28 U.S.-produced films in its 50-strong Special Presentations sidebar.
The latest Special Presentations titles include the Michael Moore documentary "Captain Mike Across America", Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," Melisa Wallack and Bernie Goldmann's "Bill", Gillian Armstrong's "Death Defying Acts" and Jason Reitman's "Juno", the follow-up to "Thank You for Smoking", which was a Toronto festival breakout hit two years ago.
Also joining today are the latest works from Jonathan Demme, Alison Eastwood, Brian De Palma, Thomas McCarthy and Anand Tucker.
Toronto will unspool 352 films between Sept. 6 and 15 -- 261 features and 91 shorts. The lineup includes 101 world premieres and 108 North American premieres, many of which will bow in Venice before jumping the pond to Toronto. In addition, 71 of the films are directorial debuts.
The festival lineup promises a strong French contingent, including a dozen titles arriving in Toronto with U.S. distribution deals in hand.
High-profile French titles looking for U.S. distribution include Amos Gitai's "Disengagement", Claude Chabrol's "La Fille Coupee En Deux", which will bow in Venice, and Eric Rohmer's "Les Amours D'Astreet et De Celadon," another North American premiere by way of Venice.
John Kochman, executive director of Unifrance USA, said the strong French presence in Toronto is due primarily to festival co-directors Piers Handling and Noah Cowan remaining "unreconstructed Francophiles" eager to program French titles in their event.
Other new titles announced Wednesday include Wayne Wang's "The Princess of Nebraska" and "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," both portraits of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. Wang will bring the two indie titles films to the festival's Masters program.
Toronto added eight more documentaries to its Real to Reel section, including films by Paul Crowder and Murray Lerner, Olga Konskaya and Andrea Nekrasov, Julian Schnabel, Ran Tal, Philippe Kholy and Grant Gee.
In addition, the previously announced "Body of War", co-directed by Ellen Spiro and talk show legend Phil Donahue, will see its premiere accompanied by a live performance by Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who wrote original songs for the Iraq documentary.
The festival has its usual complement of films about war and political protest that, according to festival co-director Noah Cowan, reflect a "seriousness of purpose and a real sense of drive to tell political stories."
"In many ways, the body of films recalls the American independent movie of the 1970s," he added.
American auteur films including Alan Ball's "Nothing Is Private", a drama about sexual politics and bigotry set against the backdrop of the 1991 Gulf War, De Palma's war drama "Redacted" and Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" reflect anti-war "provocation," Cowan said.
Toronto's lineup also includes a surprising number of crime-themed dramas, including Alexi Tan's "Blood Brothers", a drama about three friends taking on a life of big-city crime; Comeau's fugitive drama "Le Deuxieme Souffle"; Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," a thriller about a botched robbery; Brad Furman's "The Take", about the aftermath of an armored car heist; and Ira Sachs' "Married Life", a drama about a husband who kills his wife to spare her the shame of divorce.
Cowan said that the crime-themed movies this year recall the '70s-era vigilante movies that coincided with Vietnam.
"When the U.S. is faced with wars that are frustrating in their inability to be totally understood, that comes out in their films," Toronto's top programr said.
"Just as the 1970s, there's films that reflect paranoia about government and police corruption and which come from a frustration and rage about what's happening in the world," he added.
Other Toronto highlights announced Wednesday include talks by President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, an update on Bill Maher and Larry Charles' anti-religion documentary and a briefing on the ongoing crisis in Darfur courtesy of International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Don Cheadle.
Toronto is set to open Sept. 6 with Jeremy Podeswa's "Fugitive Pieces" and close 10 days later with another Canadian film, Paolo Barzman's "Emotional Arithmetic".
A complete list of titles screening at Toronto follows:
Galas:
"Across the Universe", Julie Taymor, U.S.
"L'Age Des Tenebres", Denys Arcand, Canada
"Blood Brothers", Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong
"Caramel", Nadine Labaki, Lebanon/France
"Cassandra's Dream", Woody Allen, Britain
"Cleaner", Renny Harlin, U.S.
Related story: Christie's digital gets screen billing
TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday unveiled its most American-friendly lineup in years, capped off with new titles from Renny Harlin, Paul Schrader and Robin Swicord.
Toronto boasts no official competition. But the Hollywood contingent booked for the twice-nightly gala screenings at Roy Thomson Hall looks set to turn the high-profile venue into an industry shindig.
Among the six new gala titles are Harlin's "Cleaner", a Sony Pictures Entertainment thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson as a cop-turned-crime scene cleaner; the Richard Attenborough-directed love story "Closing the Ring", starring Shirley MacLaine, Mischa Barton and Neve Campbell; and Schrader's "The Walker", a ThinkFilm release starring Woody Harrelson and Lauren Bacall that comes to Toronto by way of Berlin, Cannes and Sydney.
Also joining the Roy Thomson Hall party are two Sony Pictures Classics releases: Kenneth Branagh's Michael Caine-Jude Law starrer "Sleuth", which first bowed in Venice, and Swicord's "The Jane Austen Book Club", starring Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman and Maria Bello. Also booked for a gala is French director Alain Corneau's "Le Deuxieme Souffle", starring Daniel Auteuil and Monica Bellucci.
Those titles join such earlier Roy Thomson Hall entries as Julie Taymor's "Across the Universe", Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream", Tony Gilroy's "Michael Clayton", Gavin Hood's "Rendition", Terry George's "Reservation Road" and Aristomenis Tsirbas' "Terra".
Toronto, which in recent years has stepped up efforts to make its festival more Hollywood friendly, also has included 28 U.S.-produced films in its 50-strong Special Presentations sidebar.
The latest Special Presentations titles include the Michael Moore documentary "Captain Mike Across America", Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," Melisa Wallack and Bernie Goldmann's "Bill", Gillian Armstrong's "Death Defying Acts" and Jason Reitman's "Juno", the follow-up to "Thank You for Smoking", which was a Toronto festival breakout hit two years ago.
Also joining today are the latest works from Jonathan Demme, Alison Eastwood, Brian De Palma, Thomas McCarthy and Anand Tucker.
Toronto will unspool 352 films between Sept. 6 and 15 -- 261 features and 91 shorts. The lineup includes 101 world premieres and 108 North American premieres, many of which will bow in Venice before jumping the pond to Toronto. In addition, 71 of the films are directorial debuts.
The festival lineup promises a strong French contingent, including a dozen titles arriving in Toronto with U.S. distribution deals in hand.
High-profile French titles looking for U.S. distribution include Amos Gitai's "Disengagement", Claude Chabrol's "La Fille Coupee En Deux", which will bow in Venice, and Eric Rohmer's "Les Amours D'Astreet et De Celadon," another North American premiere by way of Venice.
John Kochman, executive director of Unifrance USA, said the strong French presence in Toronto is due primarily to festival co-directors Piers Handling and Noah Cowan remaining "unreconstructed Francophiles" eager to program French titles in their event.
Other new titles announced Wednesday include Wayne Wang's "The Princess of Nebraska" and "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," both portraits of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. Wang will bring the two indie titles films to the festival's Masters program.
Toronto added eight more documentaries to its Real to Reel section, including films by Paul Crowder and Murray Lerner, Olga Konskaya and Andrea Nekrasov, Julian Schnabel, Ran Tal, Philippe Kholy and Grant Gee.
In addition, the previously announced "Body of War", co-directed by Ellen Spiro and talk show legend Phil Donahue, will see its premiere accompanied by a live performance by Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who wrote original songs for the Iraq documentary.
The festival has its usual complement of films about war and political protest that, according to festival co-director Noah Cowan, reflect a "seriousness of purpose and a real sense of drive to tell political stories."
"In many ways, the body of films recalls the American independent movie of the 1970s," he added.
American auteur films including Alan Ball's "Nothing Is Private", a drama about sexual politics and bigotry set against the backdrop of the 1991 Gulf War, De Palma's war drama "Redacted" and Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" reflect anti-war "provocation," Cowan said.
Toronto's lineup also includes a surprising number of crime-themed dramas, including Alexi Tan's "Blood Brothers", a drama about three friends taking on a life of big-city crime; Comeau's fugitive drama "Le Deuxieme Souffle"; Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," a thriller about a botched robbery; Brad Furman's "The Take", about the aftermath of an armored car heist; and Ira Sachs' "Married Life", a drama about a husband who kills his wife to spare her the shame of divorce.
Cowan said that the crime-themed movies this year recall the '70s-era vigilante movies that coincided with Vietnam.
"When the U.S. is faced with wars that are frustrating in their inability to be totally understood, that comes out in their films," Toronto's top programr said.
"Just as the 1970s, there's films that reflect paranoia about government and police corruption and which come from a frustration and rage about what's happening in the world," he added.
Other Toronto highlights announced Wednesday include talks by President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, an update on Bill Maher and Larry Charles' anti-religion documentary and a briefing on the ongoing crisis in Darfur courtesy of International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Don Cheadle.
Toronto is set to open Sept. 6 with Jeremy Podeswa's "Fugitive Pieces" and close 10 days later with another Canadian film, Paolo Barzman's "Emotional Arithmetic".
A complete list of titles screening at Toronto follows:
Galas:
"Across the Universe", Julie Taymor, U.S.
"L'Age Des Tenebres", Denys Arcand, Canada
"Blood Brothers", Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong
"Caramel", Nadine Labaki, Lebanon/France
"Cassandra's Dream", Woody Allen, Britain
"Cleaner", Renny Harlin, U.S.
- 8/23/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
- I’m not sure what the previous years have churned out, but this year’s Real to Reel (Tiff's doc section) packs a wallop: either the film’s selected happen to have a muscle name among doc filmmakers attached or the docu subject will raise more than one eyebrow. Among the mix we have Phil Donahue’s Body of War – a doc that is coming to the fest with ample buzz, we have film critic Todd McCarthy’s documentary of a Cannes fest icon Pierre Rissient who makes the term 'cinephile' sound like a disease, and after a successful crossover into feature films, Kevin Macdonald looks into the mind of Gestapo commander Klaus Barbie, a.k.a the Butcher of Lyon. Here is the complete list:algerie, Histoires A Ne Pas Dire Jean-Pierre Lledo, AlgeriaFour Algerians of Muslim origin revisit the last years of their country's War of Independence, searching
- 7/31/2007
- IONCINEMA.com
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