Declare Your Independents: Volume 14
GITS development assistant Wendy Cohen here, and welcome to the return of Declare Your Independents, our series highlighting the latest developments in the world of independent film, after a month-long hiatus!
This week…
Watch the 2013 Hollywood Reporter screenwriters roundtable
Oscar Predictions for Best Foreign Language Film
Nikki Finke, Founder of Deadline Hollywood Finally Fired
Don’t Mourn Blockbuster
INDIE SPOTLIGHT: MOVIES TO SEE IN THEATERS THIS WEEK
OPENING FRIDAY (11/8)
Alex Gibney surveys the rise and fall of acclaimed and then disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong in his documentary The Armstrong Lie. The director presents the complicated history of the controversial figure, including his troubled father-free childhood, his battle back from testicular cancer, his seven consecutive Tour de France championships, the creation of his Live Strong charity, and his subsequent admission to a blood doping regimen that allowed him to stay at the top of the physically demanding sport for so long. Gibney sits down with numerous reporters who tried for years to expose Armstrong’s continuous fibs, and also interviews those who were inside Armstrong’s inner circle. The film picks up in 2013 and presents a riveting, insider’s view of the unraveling of one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of sports. As Lance Armstrong himself says: “I didn’t live a lot of lies, but I lived one big one.”
Watch THR’s interview with writer/director Alex Gibney here.
In 1938, young orphan Liesel (Sophie Nélisse) arrives at the home of her new foster parents, Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson). When Hans, a kindly housepainter, learns that Liesel cannot read, he teaches the child the wonders of the written language. Liesel grows to love books, even rescuing one from a Nazi bonfire. Though Liesel’s new family barely scrape by, their situation becomes even more precarious when they secretly shelter a Jewish boy whose father once saved Hans’ life.
Watch NY Times’ “Anatomy of a Scene” with director Brian Percival here.
Kate (June Diane Raphael) and Chloe (Casey Wilson) are two childhood best friends who met when they placed dead last in their hometown beauty pageant. Now they are all grown up and living in New York City, where Chloe works as a “girl in a box” at a nightclub and Kate is a CEO….of her own one-woman egg donor “corporation”. Lost in delusion, they believe they are living large until an invitation to their hometown pageant arrives and their past comes back to haunt them. Join these two loveable losers as they take an ass backwards journey home to reclaim their crown, stopping off at a women’s separatist commune, an amateur strip club competition, and meeting their favorite reality TV star along the way.
Watch an interview with co-writers June Diane Raphael and Casey Wilson here.
Orphan Pip rises from humble beginnings thanks to a mysterious benefactor. Moving through London’s class-ridden world as a gentleman, Pip uses his new status to pursue Estella, a beautiful, heartless heiress he’s always loved. The shocking truth behind his fortune will have devastating consequences for everything he holds dear. Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) adapts Charles Dickens with this Number 9 Films production once again chronicling an orphan (Jeremy Irvine) who learns he has an unknown benefactor and sets off to London with “great expectations.” Helena Bonham Carter co-stars.
Unable to repay their debts, Milan and Victor, best friends and co-owners of a Paris nightclub are lured into a drug deal that goes bad. Tortured by police, they negotiate their freedom against an overwhelming testimony that condemns their psychotic liaison to prison. Six years later, the men’s nightmare begins again when the psychopath is granted his freedom. Now, not having talked for years, Milan and Victor are united again in order to survive. Full of thrilling fights, car chases, gun fights and more, Paris Countdown is joyride not to be miss.
The Motel Life explores the intense bond between two brothers living on the fringes of Reno, Nevada. Orphaned early, they grew up depending on their big imaginations to escape the challenges of their transient life. When one of the brothers is involved in a fatal accident, it forces both of them to choose between running away or facing reality. It is a story of brotherhood, shared dreams and the redemptive power of hope.
Read SB Independent’s interview with screenwriter Noah Harpster here.
Set in the near-future UK, Ronan plays Daisy, an American teenager sent to stay with relatives in the English countryside. Initially withdrawn and alienated, she begins to warm up to her charming surroundings, and strikes up a romance with the handsome Edmund (George MacKay). But on the fringes of their idyllic summer days are tense news reports of an escalating conflict in Europe. As the UK falls into a violent, chaotic military state, Daisy finds herself hiding and fighting to survive.
Years ago, Medora, Indiana was a booming rural community with prosperous farms, an automotive parts factory, a brick plant, and a thriving middle class. The factories have since closed, crippling Medora’s economy and its pride. The population has slowly dwindled to around 500 people. Drug use is common, the school faces consolidation, and as one resident put it, “This town’s on the ropes.” A hit at the 2013 SXSW film festival, “Medora”, follows the down-but-not-out Medora Hornets varsity basketball team over the course of the 2011 season, capturing the players’ stories both on and off the court. The Hornets were riding an epic losing streak when the filmmakers arrived, and the team’s struggle to compete bears eerie resonances with the town’s fight for survival.
Watch MSNBC’s interview with co-directors Andrew Cohen and Davy Rothbart here.
NOW IN THEATERS
In the years before the Civil War, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Subjected to the cruelty of one malevolent owner (Michael Fassbender), he also found unexpected kindness from another, as he struggled continually to survive and maintain some of his dignity. Then in the 12th year of the disheartening ordeal, a chance meeting with an abolitionist from Canada changed Solomon’s life forever.
Watch DP/30’s interview with writer John Ridley here.
Ridley Scott’s The Counselor, from a script by Cormac McCarthy, stars Michael Fassbender as the title character, a slick lawyer who is madly in love with Laura (Penelope Cruz). He asks her to marry him, and she agrees, though she is unaware that serious financial troubles have prompted him to fund a drug deal with a shady but established middle man named Westray (Brad Pitt), that could bring in millions. Part of the counselor’s financial troubles stem from the fact that he’s investing in a club being opened by his best friend Reiner (Javier Bardem), a hedonist and occasional client who has attained his wealth by any means necessary, and likes to keep his wife, Malkina (Cameron Diaz) covered in all the accoutrements the wealthy enjoy. However, when the drug deal starts to go wrong, the counselor finds himself unprepared to deal with the fallout, and soon he’s trying to protect his bride-to-be as well as himself from the wrath of a drug cartel that has no qualms about exacting revenge.
Watch an interview with writer Cormac McCarthy here.
Deep into a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean, an unnamed man (Redford) wakes to find his 39-foot yacht taking on water after a collision with a shipping container left floating on the high seas. With his navigation equipment and radio disabled, the man sails unknowingly into the path of a violent storm. Despite his success in patching the breached hull, his mariner’s intuition, and a strength that belies his age, the man barely survives the tempest.Using only a sextant and nautical maps to chart his progress, he is forced to rely on ocean currents to carry him into a shipping lane in hopes of hailing a passing vessel. But with the sun unrelenting, sharks circling and his meager supplies dwindling, the ever-resourceful sailor soon finds himself staring his mortality in the face.
Watch THR’s interview with writer/director J.C. Chandor and star Robert Redford here.
Aging pals Billy (Michael Douglas), Paddy (Robert De Niro), Archie (Morgan Freeman) and Sam (Kevin Kline) have been best friends since childhood. When Billy finally proposes to his much-younger girlfriend, all four friends go to Las Vegas to celebrate the end of Billy’s longtime bachelorhood and relive their glory days. However, the four quickly realize that the intervening decades have changed Sin City and tested their friendship in ways they had not imagined.
Read ScreenwritingU’s interview with writer Dan Fogelman here.
In mid-1980s Texas electrician Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) is stunned to learn that he has AIDS. Though told that he has just 30 days left to live, Woodroof refuses to give in to despair. He seeks out alternative therapies and smuggles unapproved drugs into the U.S. from Mexico. Woodroof joins forces with a fellow AIDS patient (Jared Leto) and begins selling the treatments to the growing number of people who can’t wait for the medical establishment to save them.
Exclusive Q&A with actress Jennifer Garner, screenwriters Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, and crew coming soon.
Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a medical engineer on her first shuttle mission. Her commander is veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney), helming his last flight before retirement. Then, on a routine space walk, disaster strikes — the shuttle is destroyed, leaving Ryan and Matt stranded in deep space with no link to Earth and no hope of rescue. As their fear turns to panic, they realize that the only way home may be to venture further into space.
Watch a 30-minute interview with director (and co-writer) Alfonso Cuaron here.
Captain Phillips is a multi-layered examination of the 2009 hijacking of the U.S. container ship Maersk Alabama by a crew of Somali pirates. It is — through director Paul Greengrass’s distinctive lens — simultaneously a pulse-pounding thriller, and a complex portrait of the myriad effects of globalization. The film focuses on the relationship between the Alabama’s commanding officer, Captain Richard Phillips (two time Academy Award®-winner Tom Hanks), and the Somali pirate captain, Muse (Barkhad Abdi), who takes him hostage. Phillips and Muse are set on an unstoppable collision course when Muse and his crew target Phillips’ unarmed ship; in the ensuing standoff, 145 miles off the Somali coast, both men will find themselves at the mercy of forces beyond their control.
Read Word and Film’s exclusive Q&A with writer Billy Ray here.
Robert Reich is an economist, author, and educator who was U.S. Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and who teaches a course on wealth and poverty at the University of California Berkeley. Since the mid-1980s, Reich has been outspoken on the issue of the growing divide between America’s rich and poor; in his book Aftershock, Reich presents his argument that this gulf is slowly but surely wiping out the middle class, and will lead to an economic catastrophe if left unchecked. Filmmaker Jacob Kornbluth presents a powerful look at Reich and his theories in the documentary Inequality for All; featuring footage from Reich’s lectures to students as well as interviews with the author and his conversations with Americans from many walks of life, the film provides disturbing evidence of the roles stagnating wages, growing personal debt, an economy based on consumer spending, and the decline of manufacturing are playing in the weakening of the American economy. Inequality for All received its world premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Watch IAmRougue’s exclusive interview with economist Robert Reich and director Jacob Kornbluth here.
Many thanks to Wendy for today’s post. Remember to Declare Your Independents by going to a theater or use V.O.D. to watch an indie feature this weekend.