An invitation-only crowd at the Hamptons International Film Festival got schooled on”The Secrets of Schamus” — that’s Focus Features CEO James Schamus — by his former producing partner Ted Hope on Friday night. Schamus, whose career includes screenwriting credits for The Ice Storm and an Oscar nomination as producer of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain , was the recipient of the festival’s Industry Toast at East Hampton Point. For A Good Time Call actress Ari Graynor emceed the event, which included toasts by Sony Pictures Classics Co-President Michael Barker and producer Christine Vachon and videotaped remarks from actor Gary Oldman , who got his first Oscar nomination starring in Focus Features’ 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. “He is a collaborator: an artist with his head in artists’ clouds and a business man with his business feet firmly in the box office,” Oldman said of Schamus before getting big laughs by poking gentle fun at the Focus exec’s mystique as a professorial indie-film rainmaker. (He’s not just a studio executive, he’s a Professor of Professional Practice in Columbia University’s School of the Arts.) “Did you know that he has won trophies for merely thinking?” said Oldman, adding: “He’s the only man ever to ace a Rorschach Test….Whenever he goes for a swim, dolphins appear….If he were to mail a letter without postage, it would get there.” Hope, who was honored with the festival’s Industry Toast in 2006, followed with a wry — and lengthy — recollection of his years spent working with Schamus at their seminal indie production company Good Machine. Under the guise of revealing the business “Secrets of Schamus” — which included “manufacture desire” and “make them want to pick up your phone call” — he amused the crowd with tales of how his bespectacled, bow-tie-wearing partner repeatedly managed to outshine him. “I’ve been a little competitive with James,” Hope said. “It’s hard to keep up with all those accolades.” The newly minted executive director of the San Francisco Film Society recalled how when they were bringing Nicole Holofcener’s Walking and Talking to the Sundance Film Festival in 1996, Schamus convinced him to put the $17,000 cost of a private plane flight on his credit card after their eleventh-hour commercial flight to Utah was grounded. According to Hope, when they learned that the private plane could not accomodate all of their fellow travelers, Schamus stayed behind, leaving his partner to pull an all-nighter in Sundance in order to sell the film to then-Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein. The morning after the sale, Hope said, “I pick up the paper and see that James Schamus had sold the film to Harvey Weinstein.” Hope concluded his remarks by telling the crowd that when he got his business cards from the San Francisco Film Society, they read: “former partner of James Schamus.” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
“This is the end/hold your breath and count to ten…” Adele ‘s moody retro James Bond theme song has hit the web in full! How does it measure up to its predecessors? (Best theme in many Bonds, no?) Listen to the U.K. crooner sing “Skyfall” and chime in with your thoughts after the jump. I can’t quite tell how the lyrics have anything to do with the plot of Skyfall , but it’s a nice return to form. Adele’s certainly one of the strongest Bond theme singers in 007 history. Where does “Skyfall” rank among the best and worst Bond songs of all time ? [via the official 007 Twitter ]
Look, I’m sure this Jai Courtney dude from Spartacus playing John McClane’s beefy son/action heir is great and all, but there’s just one reason to watch any Die Hard movie, and his name is Bruce MF’ing Willis . So check out the first trailer for A Good Day To Die Hard even though it takes a full 30 seconds of overly edited shots of warehouses and ambiguously visible bad men with guns to get to Bruno’s familiar smirk and the explosion-y goodness that follows. A Good Day To Die Hard catches up with Willis’s McClane as he and his estranged son (Courtney) fight terrorists in Russia, or something. John Moore of Behind Enemy Lines and Max Payne fame directs from a script by Skip Woods, of Swordfish and Hitman fame, so we’ll see how this one goes. The film hits theaters February 4, 2013. [via Yahoo ]
Onetime Bond girl Carey Lowell and Bond villain Robert Davi — respectively, Pam Bouvier and Franz Sanchez from Licence to Kill — were among the celebrities who came out to celebrate the 50th anniversary of James Bond at the EPIX and Vanity Fair -hosted premiere of Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 on Wednesday night in New York. Mr. Big was also there — not Yaphet Kotto from Live and Let Die , but rather Chris Noth from another die-hard franchise, Sex and the City . “In the history of cinema, there is no experience like a Bond film,” Davi declared at the Museum of Modern Art, where the documentary screened. The film’s director Stevan Riley explained that his motivation for making Everything or Nothing was his interest in answering the question: “How did Bond last these 50 years? No other film series has managed to do that. Not continuously, for sure.” (TV viewers can learn the answers Riley uncovered when the documentary premieres on EPIX on Friday, which has been dubbed Global James Bond Day in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the theatrical premiere of the first Bond film, Dr. No , in 1962.) Movieline had its own secret agenda for being there of course, and through the evening, which continued at the very Upper East Side Metropolitan Club, I asked guests a series of Bond-related questions. Here are their answers. What wisdom or life lessons have you picked up from the James Bond movies? Chris Noth , actor (pictured left): ” Always be careful when you go to sleep that there’s not a tarantula under your pillow.” Carey Lowell , actress, former Bond girl: “Always put your shoulders back and carry a gun on your thigh.” Chace Crawford , actor: “I learned how to carry the Walther PPK with a silencer on it. You always have to have a silencer, apparently. [Laughs] No, I learned how to make a martini. I can make a Vesper Martini and a dirty martini very well.” Robert Buckley , actor: “You always look infinitely better in a suit. People will think you’re much more interesting and charming when you have an accent. And, if you’re going to walk out of the ocean in slow motion, do it in short shorts.” Fern Mallis, fashion and design consultant: “Absolutely everyone is replaceable. Even James Bond.” Kate Upton , model and actress: [Laughs] “What life lessons?” Gloria Reuben , actress and singer: “How to ski down a hill while looking fantastic.” Theophilus London , rapper: “Just be super smooth, be quiet and you’ll get all the babes.” Cameron Winklevoss , entrepreneur: “If you have an accent, a fast car and a great suit, you can do just about anything.” Carlos Campos , fashion designer: “Never give up!” Nary Manivong , fashion designer: “There’s always a mission.” Chace Crawford Who’s your favorite Bond girl? Chris Noth: “Ursula Andress, because she’s gorgeous ! She came out of the water like a mermaid.” Chace Crawford: “There are so many good ones! Octopussy . It was the first one I saw. And [the girl in] Goldfinger . Damn . I did like Eva Green, too.” Robert Buckley: “Halle Berry. I suddenly stopped caring about the nuclear weapon and just cared about what she was doing in that movie. I lost focus. I was like, James who ? That is a Bond girl.” Jeffrey Wright , actor: “Ursula Andress is tough to beat. Grace Jones is sort of an unorthodox Bond girl. She wasn’t exactly a Bond girl, more of a villainess. Eva Green I thought was stunning and breathed a new type of life into it and a new type of intelligence into it. But, I’m not going to restrict myself in that regard. I’ll enjoy them all.” Carey Lowell Who’s your favorite Bond villain? Robert Davi , actor and former Bond villain: “I’m considered one of the top five Bond villains. I think there are 22 films. That’s pretty damn good.” Stevan Riley , director of Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 : “Everyone loves Goldfinger and [Ernst Stavro] Blofeld’s character Donald Pleasance. You know, I really like Mads Mikkelsen’s portrayal of Le Chiffre in Casino Royale .” Carey Lowell: ” The villains kind of come and go. I just remember James Bond. And Daniel Craig is a very good Bond. Sexy and skilled, shall we say.” Shaken, Stirred… or Heineken? Robert Davi: “Jack Daniels. Two fingers of Jack, ice cubes, the rest water.” Jeffrey Wright: “Preferably not a shaken or stirred Heineken . You can’t beat a nice Bond Vesper Martini. Hilary Saltzman , daughter of Bond film producer Harry Saltzman: “Shaken, stirred.” Nell Alk is an arts and entertainment writer and reporter based in New York City. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Manhattan Magazine, Z!NK Magazine and on InterviewMagazine.com, PaperMag.com and RollingStone.com, among others. Learn more about her here. Follow Nell Alk on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
If President Obama didn’t exactly dominate Mitt Romney during their debate on Wednesday night, he got a nice subliminal boost courtesy of Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis. Following the political wrestling match, Disney ran an extended TV spot for Lincoln that finally justified all of the early Oscar talk the film has generated and and not-so-subtly established Lincoln and Obama as kindred spirits. After a series of emotionally charged scenes that depict Lincoln, played by Day-Lewis, grappling with Civil War (depicted in Saving Private Ryan -style brutality) and the politically unpopular idea of abolishing slavery, the clip closes with the two-time Oscar winner declaring, “I am the President of the United States of America…clothed in immense power!” That rousing movie moment called to mind a slightly less riveting one: President Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in early September in which he said, “Times have changed, and so have I. I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President.” The line got plenty of media pick-up and, as the New Yorker reported , evoked a scene from the Aaron Sorkin-scripted 1995 film The American President . In the movie, Michael Douglas, who plays besieged president Andrew Shepherd, addresses attacks from a political challenger by saying: “If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up. This is a time for serious people….My name is Andrew Shepherd, and I am the President. Sorkin’s line is cool, but the one delivered by Day-Lewis, which was written by Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner carries more force. And I much prefer the idea — purely of my own imagining — that Obama had advance intelligence about the highly anticipated Lincoln movie and script and was able to use it to his political advantage. How’s that for a Left-wing Hollywood conspiracy theory? Take a look at the spot below and tell me what you think. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
It’s been rumored for years, but it looks like Warner Bros. is finally going to convert the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz to 3-D. Thank James Cameron and the Titanic 3-D rerelease that brought in cruise ship-loads of money. Temper that knee-jerk reaction for just a moment and consider: Could Wizard of Oz 3-D actually be a great thing for cinema? The Judy Garland musical about a Kansas farmgirl whisked away to a magical land was a game-changer in its own day, heralding the leap from black and white to color in one breathtaking cultural moment of Technicolor bliss. WB made the announcement today at a press event celebrating their 90th Anniversary; expect Dorothy to skip along the Yellow Brick Road and into your cerebral cortex in 2013. And while Wizard ‘s legacy has lived on in subsequent decades, trickling down tributaries of pop cultural influence as far reaching as the Muppets, to Japanese Lolita cosplay to a live-action prequel by the guy who made Evil Dead , there’s something wonderfully pure about the idea of an entirely new generation of youngsters getting an intro to Dorothy Gale’s fantastical Oz adventure on the big screen. Mimicking that transformative cinematic revelation from B&W to color could also be a big moment for the 3-D industry; imagine the black and white doldrums of Dorothy’s ho-hum homestead not only exploding in color, but in glorious three dimensional color once she awakens in Oz. It could blow kids’ minds, plus it opens the door to the next natural step: The Wizard of Oz 4-D . Opium highs and the odor or Munchkin sweat — the pinnacle of added-value cinema. [via Collider ]
Indie auteur Joe Swanberg has established himself as the reigning poster child of mumblecore, for better or worse , but as the most surprising filmmaker contributing to the Sundance hit horror anthology V/H/S (in theaters Friday) he begins branching out of his comfort zone with a newfound energy; his entry, The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger , was filmed using Skype — and a script! — and is also one of the more memorable and inventive shorts in the midnight crowd-pleasing omnibus. Between his V/H/S segments (he also acts in Ti West ‘s road trip gone horribly wrong) and the forthcoming Drinking Buddies , which blends his improvisational style and mainstream stars Anna Kendrick and Olivia Wilde, Swanberg says he sees 2012 as a turning point in his creative evolution. “I feel like I’m ready to be a filmmaker,” he declared to Movieline. Read on for more with Swanberg on how he and West accomplished a lot with very little for V/H/S , why acting in Adam Wingard’s Your Next reinvigorated him as a director, and how his Drinking Buddies stars took to the Swanberg method. You’re involved in two of the segments that most scared me, so well done. How did you first get recruited for V/H/S as a director and as an actor in Ti West’s short? I might venture to say that you out of the entire slate of filmmakers are not so much, or at all, thought of as a horror filmmaker. I would agree! One of the cool things about V/H/S is I think it’s one of the first times it’s actually visible how interconnected the independent film world is, and how easily it crosses genres. I think there was a perception for a long time of mumblecore being this very inclusive little group of [Andrew] Bujalski or Aaron Katz and the Duplasses and I or something, and that the horror world did its own thing and the documentary world did its own thing. But all of us have been friends for a really long time and we just make different kinds of movies. I think Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard went to bat for me as a director for V/H/S , and it helped that [producer] Roxanne Benjamin had seen some of my other films. But I acted in Ti [West]’s first, so that was my first involvement in the project. He shot his in May and I didn’t shoot mine until August, so it was a while where I feel like Adam and Simon were lobbying for me to get the chance to do one of these. Simon wrote your segment, which makes your V/H/S segment the first time you’ve directed something you haven’t written yourself. Not only is it the first time that I’ve directed something I haven’t written, it’s also the first time that I’ve directed something that was scripted. My own films are all improvised. So it was really fun for me to play with somebody else’s material. And Simon wrote it knowing that I was going to direct it and I think he expected that I would just throw the script away once we started, but I actually really loved his script and thought it was a good first chance to go ahead and do that. Your segment uses a Skype chat as its set up for tension; we watch as Emily (Helen Rodgers, pictured with Swanberg above) experiences something strange as she chats online with her boyfriend. How did you fake it, or did you? For V/H/S we actually just used Skype, we didn’t fake it. I did a bunch of research into the best way to fake it and I realized the best way was not to fake it. We were going to build this crazy, elaborate rig with multiple cameras that were connected to each other, and the more I looked at it and researched screen capture stuff I realized we could do high definition screen capturing and actually record live Skype conversations. So it’s a film made without a camera – laptops were our cameras. But you used lighting rigs and such? Adam Wingard DPed my segment and I wouldn’t describe it as a typical lighting set-up but it was modified for our purposes. Adam was usually moving with Helen – the other funny thing is because it’s a real Skype conversation, Helen was the camera operator, essentially. She not only had to act, she was in charge of what was seen and what wasn’t seen. So we had to do pretty elaborate choreography about where and when to turn the computer, when to set it on the bed, all these sorts of things, and Adam was usually following her off-camera with lights. The computer gives off a decent glow so we had some light motivated by the computer but we also had back-up lights, and the cool effect of that is, because it’s a real Skype conversation, one of the reasons we decided it had to be real Skype was that every time it gets bright on Helen’s screen you actually see that reflected on Daniel’s screen. If it wasn’t a real Skype conversation it’d be really difficult to get those lighting rigs set up right, but it’s fun to watch and it adds to the realism because when Helen turns on a light on, Daniel’s room brightens as well. It felt almost like directing dance. And we ended up editing after the fact but most of the takes are long, unbroken, four or five minute takes involving starting in the bedroom and going out to the living room, or weaving around the kitchen, so we had to light and choreograph these long 360 set-ups. That’s pretty fantastic a feat to pull off. In Ti’s segment you acted and also operated the camera, home video-style. It’s cool to see performers having to innovate and actually work with the technology, whether in laptop or camcorder form. One of the cool things about this project was the chance to do that. I’ve used Skype before in Young American Bodies , the webseries I do – we recorded a few scenes in that which were like Skype conversations – but outside of that it becomes really gimmicky if you were to do a whole feature film based around Skype or iChat. That becomes the thing. And one of the great opportunities of VHS is I feel like all the directors were liberated to play around with ideas that might not hold up for a feature running time but that work as shorts. The Skype thing was really fun when I realized that people only have to watch it for 20 minutes, and not for an hour and a half. Well, now Paranormal Activity 4 is running with the Skype thing. I’m not saying they copied you, but yours did come first… [Laughs] I know those guys, and I doubt that they’ve seen V/H/S . It’s unlikely that it influenced them. I don’t know when they shot that movie… In Ti’s segment, what did you actually shoot on and how difficult was it to be mindful of your performance and operating the camera at the same time? I forget the model of the camera we used but it was a little handheld portable – Ti did a bunch of research on cameras. We needed one with a light, because some of the real scary things about Ti’s are when the light switches on in the hotel room from the camera. As an actor it was a fun challenge to have to be mindful of that stuff, and it’s helpful in a way because one of the difficult things about acting especially when the goal is naturalism or realism is to not overthink it. You have to just be in a situation and react. So having the camera and having something to do with my hands that was occupying my brain I think made it easier for me performance wise to react to Sophia [Takal] and be in those scenes. It’s a much different experience than having a crew and a camera pointed at my face feeling like, ‘Okay, here’s the big moment – now act natural,’ with 30 people watching and we only get to do it two times so get it right. Both you and Ti seemed to pull off these segments using so few resources. These must be two of the most affordable short films ever made. Yeah, especially going to Sundance with V/H/S was really crazy – Ti’s and my segments were not the most effects-heavy of the bunch. The Radio Silence one at the end has a lot of really amazing visual effects, and David Bruckner’s, they built that monster creature and Glenn McQuaid’s has that video killer. Ours have pretty much practical effects. But all of them were really affordable. Even the super effects-heavy ones were made on moderate budgets, so it was great to go to Sundance and have the movie feel big despite the fact that it’s a low budget movie. In your career so far you’ve made so many films in such a short time – you’re one of the busiest filmmakers around, especially since you’re not only directing movies, you’re also acting in other people’s films. How do you feel like 2012 Joe Swanberg is most changed from 2005 Joe Swanberg? Starting with going to Sundance with V/H/S , I’m having the time of my life in 2012. It’s been the best, most fun year of my life as a filmmaker and it’s because I feel like I’m doing so much outside of what I’m typically known for. All the movies that I made in 2010 and 2011 when I was hyper-productive, that was sort of my last big push almost as a student; I was making a lot of work in an effort to keep getting better as a filmmaker and keep pushing myself to try things I hadn’t done before. Now I feel like with V/H/S and Drinking Buddies , which I just finished and stars Olivia Wilde and Anna Kendrick and Jake Johnson and Ron Livingston – it’s a much bigger production than I’ve done before – I feel like I’m ready to… be a filmmaker. I’m embracing being a director and what that means. Obviously I’ll be practicing and learning my whole life, but I feel like the kind of workmanlike attitude I’ve had the last couple of years is paying off now in the sense that I’m getting to put that practice into bigger productions that are being seen by more people. Do you feel like this evolution is marked in your process, or your creative choices? It’s in both, actually. A big turning point for me came when I was acting in You’re Next , Adam and Simon’s movie. Getting to be on the set of not a big budget movie, but one much bigger than the ones I make, and seeing Adam, who I’ve worked with really closely on $10,000 movies directing a much bigger movie with a full-sized crew and 20 actors and all these elaborate action sequences, I realized I’m interested in challenging and pushing myself. I don’t just want to shoot conversations in apartments. It would behoove me as a filmmaker, I realized, to know how to do that other stuff. Even if I never make an action movie it would be useful as a director to know how to shoot an action sequence. So I came away from that acting experience feeling energized as a director, to try new things. And V/H/S was the first thing I did. After that I went with an attitude of, like, cool – here’s an opportunity for me to do something I’ve never done before and to really mess it up. Not take the easy route. Figure out how to do this camera work and figure out how to do special effects and really make something that’s going to push me out of my comfort zone. And did that extend to Drinking Buddies ? The same was true with Drinking Buddies , which was still improvised but improvised on a much bigger level, with a full crew that I had to learn to work with. I basically took the process that I normally use with three actors and two crew and do it with 20 actors and a 40-person crew. I’m looking for those challenges now. I’m looking to broaden my spectrum a bit. Drinking Buddies is your biggest movie to date, and it features mainstream actors – how did they adjust to your process? You’ve practically established your own indie subgenre working in a specific style and with regular collaborators. When you were casting did you find that many mainstream actors fell into step with your sensibilities? I went into the casting with the same attitude that I’ve used to cast all of my movies with my friends, which is, who are these people? Are they easy to talk to? Do they have interesting lives and things they’re interested in outside of acting that we can use in the movie? Are they fun to be around? It really was almost the identical process, and the result was I ended up with more people who I love and who gave amazing performances and who are totally ready to show up and figure it out every day. It’s possible they were intimidated by the situation but they never let on. They were really excited to collaborate with me and create these characters. I’m deep into editing right now, and the performances are amazing. Everybody’s going to look at these actors in a new way because of this movie – they’re all really alive in an exciting way. So it’s given me confidence to keep doing this and to feel like I can work with bigger name actors, and that the process isn’t antithetical to the kind of work I’ve been doing in the past or that they’ve been doing. What did you learn about Anna and Jake and Olivia that you then integrated into their characters? All of them, the way that I like to work is that everybody is kind of playing a version of themselves. I write characters and create a very simple set-up, and with the actors I flesh it out. There’s not one specific thing I could point to other than to say when you watch this movie you’ll be watching a really interesting hybrid of my ideas that I came into the movie with and their personalities that they brought to it. There’s a lot of acting happening, and there’s a lot of real stories being told. As is always the goal, I feel like I came out of the film feeling these people were my friends and not just actors I hired for a movie. We all learned a lot about each other during the shoot because that’s how the process works. The more everybody shares, the better the movie is and also the easier it is to create these relationships that don’t actually exist in real life. Side note: I noticed that when you announced your cast for Drinking Buddies you earned a mention on Perez Hilton. Was that the moment when you realized you’d made it in Hollywood? I actually wasn’t aware of that! One of the things about making movies that people started to watch and write about is that they also write mean things a lot of the time. [Laughs] I’ve been pretty disconnected for the past couple of years from any of the press stuff surrounding the movies, so I typically hear about it via friends. I certainly never go looking for it anymore. But now I know! V/H/S is in select theaters Friday. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The Grease duo who melted hearts as love-torn high school couple Danny and Sandy in the 1978 smash big screen musical are joining forces again on a holiday album. This Christmas: John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John is due out November 13th, almost 35 years after their classic brought the two together, setting a new standard for teen romance pics at the time. A chance text from Newton-John to Travolta one Christmas prompted Travolta to come up with the idea for a Christmas collection. Newton-John noted that their Grease hit “You’re the One That I Want” had just become the best-selling duet in pop music history. “From the moment we decided to do this, magic happened,” Travolta said as quoted on Amazon . “Everyone we contacted agreed to do it.” Continuing Travolta said, “My desire was to make This Christmas an intimate album, not something too ostentatious or showy. I wanted people to be able to play it around the house or in the car during the holidays, and make us part of your celebration. Gathering around house listening to Christmas music has always been an important part of that time of the year to my family.” They’ve also solicited the vocals from some fellow celebs to add extra pipe-wattage to the album. Barbra Streisand, Kenny G, Cliff Richard, Tony Bennett and James Taylor are among those whose famous voices can be heard on various tracks. “It just fell into place,” added Newton-John, a four-time Grammy Award-winner, who has five number-one singles under her belt and 100 million albums in sales worldwide. “With our busy schedules, I don’t know how we got it done. John and I have always connected. That’s never gone away. When we’re together, we have a good laugh and feel bonded to one another. We’ve been through some amazing experiences together.” And the potential cash cow that the album may generate will head to their respective charities. Travolta’s charity named after his late son Jett will go to fight children’s disabilities, including autism and seizures, while Newton-John’s will go toward the search for a cure for cancer and helping victims of the disease. And here’s the Track List: 1. Baby It’s Cold Outside 2. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree (featuring Kenny G) 3. I’ll Be Home for Christmas (featuring Barbra Streisand) 4. This Christmas (featuring Chick Corea) 5. Silent Night 6. The Christmas Waltz 7. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (featuring Cliff Richard) 8. Winter Wonderland (featuring Tony Bennett and The Count Basie Orchestra) 9. White Christmas 10. I Think You Might Like It 11. The Christmas Song 12. Deck the Halls (featuring James Taylor) 13. Auld Lang Syne/Christmas Time Is Here (Medley) [Source: Yahoo , Amazon ]
Poor thangs! Vince Young ain’t the only one… Via ESPN : According to a 2009 Sports Illustrated article, 60 percent of NBA players are broke within five years of retirement. For 78 percent of NFL players, it takes only three years. Sucked into bad investments, stalked by freeloaders, saddled with medical problems, and naturally prone to showing off, many pro athletes get shocked by harsh economic realities after years of living the high life. Drawing surprisingly vulnerable confessions from retired stars like Keith McCants, Bernie Kosar and Andre Rison, as well as Marvin Miller, the former executive director of the MLB Players Association, this fascinating documentary digs into the psychology of men whose competitive nature can carry them to victory on the field and ruin off it. Director Billy Corben (The U, C0caine Cowboys, Limelight) paints a complex picture of the many forces that drain athletes’ bank accounts, placing some of the blame on the culture at large while still holding these giants accountable for their own hubris. A story of the dark side of success, “Broke,” is an allegory for the financial woes haunting economies and individuals all over the world. We’re glad that somebody decided to address the issue on film because it seems like every other day we are reporting about another one of these dummies spending up all their money on dumb isht. We can’t wait to see this one. Will you be watching? “Broke” airs tonight Oct. 2 at 8pm EST on ESPN
Also in Monday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs is more Elijah Wood news. He is teaming up for a production company focusing on genre product. Matt Reeves is picked to direct a major Fox project and more casting news in today’s edition. Elijah Wood Joins The Late Bloomer Wood will play the lead in the new comedy. Directed by Randall Einhorn, the film is based on the 2001 book Man Made: A Memoir of My Body by Ken Baker. The film will be based on the true story about a 30 year-old man who hadn’t totally undergone puberty, but then went through it in several short overwhelming weeks after the medical condition was removed. AJ Bowen & Barbara Crampton Join Grow Up, Tony Phillips The pair join previously attached cast members Tony Vespe, Devin Bonnée (both of My Sucky Teen Romance ), and Jamie Landau (son of Jon Landau, in his feature film acting debut) in the independently-produced comedy about a Halloween-loving teenager who doesn’t think childhood passions should have an expiration date. Grow Up, Tony Phillips is the fourth feature film from young director Emily Hagins, who drew an international spotlight when she set out to make her first feature, the zombie film Pathogen, at only 11 years old. Around the ‘net… Elijah Wood Sets Up Indie Company with Genre Focus Elijah Wood is partnering with Daniel Noah and Josh C. Waller for The Woodshed, an indie company that will create mostly genre pics. “I’ve been a fan of horror and genre cinema in general since I was a child and have become increasingly passionate about the idea of there being a space in which horror films that take their subject matter and characters seriously could be produced,” said Wood. Deadline reports . Matt Reeves To Direct Dawn of the Planet of the Apes The Cloverfield director will direct the 20th Century Fox sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes . He had been atop a list of directors to replace Rupert Wyatt who departed the project, Deadline reports . Beasts of the Southern Wild Actors are Ineligible for SAG Awards The actors in the Fox Searchlight Sundance Film Festival award-winner has been ruled ineligible for the Screen Actors Guild Awards because it was not made under the terms of SAG Low Budget Feature Agreement, which mandates that professional actors be employed. The move is considered a hurdle to its Oscar chances because SAG Awards often mirror the Academy’s selections, THR reports .
