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PRODUCTION UPDATE
Compiled and edited by FILMMAKER Contributing Editor, Mary Glucksman.


William Douglas Lansford’s Adios, East Los tells the story of three Chicano teens who cross East L.A.’s mythic Fourth Street Bridge in hopes of conquering the rich "gringo" world on the other side. A longtime network television writer, Lansford, who turns 77 this summer, boasts one of the more compelling first-time director backstories. A Mexican-American L.A. native, he spent five years in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and was awarded a Purple Heart before seguing into nine years as a commissioned officer in the army’s 11th Airborne Division. He parlayed that wealth of experience into five published books, some 300 articles and short stories for national magazines, and a number of plays written and directed for regional theater groups. "Directing seemed like the next logical step," he says.

Adios, East Los follows our teen heros as, inspired by their favorite swashbuckler movies, they embark on a great adventure culminating in a fairy tale voyage aboard a "borrowed" sailboat to a seemingly deserted island. Romance complicates their journey as the two boys in the trio both fall in love with their younger and sometimes wiser partner. "These are kids who've grown up 20 minutes from the beach but have never seen it" says Langsford, who was raised in East L.A. "They just want to break out and see what the world is like."

Adios, East Los was shot in East L.A., Marina del Rey, on nearby Santa Cruz Island and aboard the 44-foot ship Dreamweaver over 18 days last fall; the film is 35mm color. Star Maps-discovery Douglas Spain, Eddie Alcazar (Boy Meets World) and Simi (Grand Ave.) play the kids. The filmmakers are currently navigating the final stages of post-production; all rights are available.

Cast: Douglas Spain, Simi, Eddie Alcazar, Jim Brewer, Dana Lee, Ruben Garfias, Evelina Fernandez, Pete Moraga Jr. Special Appearance by Bill Zuckert. Crew: Producers, Christopher J. Kinsman, Andi Armaganian; Executive Producer/Screenwriter/Director, William Douglas Lansford; Cinematographer, Charles Schner; Editors, Armaganian, Kinsman, Matthew Lansford. Contact: W.D. Lansford, Eldorado Entertainment, 6953 Trolley Way, Playa del Rey, CA 90293. Tel: (310) 823-1097, Fax: (310) 821-1419

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John Mendoza’s debut feature, Adventures of a Catholic Atheist, tells the story of a Christmas at which 27-year-old Martin Garcia finally tells his devoutly Catholic family that he doesn’t believe in God. Naturally, all hell breaks loose as the various Garcias try to balance their blood ties with the blood of Christ. Adventures stars Carlos Leon, who has appeared in The Replacement Killers and The Big Lebowski but is perhaps more familiar as the man who fathered Lourdes Ciccone, Madonna’s baby. "What Martin does is no simple rebellion," says Mendoza. "It’s a decision not to accept the church as the ultimate authority over individual life – and you can extend that to rejecting any orthodoxy."

Mendoza, 35, was born and raised in tiny Amarillo, Texas. Earning a photography degree while in the Marines Corps, he began screenwriting during college at Cal State Northridge and started his film career as a Paramount Studios page. The first feature script he completed, an Attila the Hun biodrama, made news in 1994 when Arnold Schwarzenegger flirted with a starring role; meanwhile, Mendoza moved on to jobs in casting at Paramount and development at Disney. Because Adventures is such a highly personal story – one Mendoza says mirrors his real experience coming out as an atheist to his die-hard Catholic parents – he decided he had to direct it himself and sold his house to finance production.

Adventures was shot in Los Feliz, Los Angeles in 35mm over a tight 12 days in December 1997 with a 40-man crew and SAG actors. The film sports a soundtrack driven by rock en espagnol, the rebellious Latin rock form whose representative bands major labels have lately been scrambling to sign. At press time Mendoza was raising finishing finance through an LLP and weighing the possibility of transferring his digital cut to film in order to come up with a festival print. All rights are available.

Cast: Carlos Leon, Tony Perez, Irene Olga Lopez, Tricia Cruz, Karmin Murcelo, Abe Alvarez. Crew: Producers, John Mendoza, Jen Liu; Executive Producers, John Mendoza, Barbara Zavala-Mendoza; Screenwriter/Director, John Mendoza; Cinematographer, Frederick Iannone; Gaffer, Russell Caldwell; Wardrobe, Bob Perez; Editor, Terry Kelly. Contact: Mendoza Entertainment, 6404 Hollywood Blvd. #327, Hollywood, Ca 90028. Tel: (323) 464-7168, e-mail: MendozaEnt@worldnet.att.net.

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Rune Bendixen’s Bullfighter is a mystical fever dream about good and evil starring Olivier Martinez (Horseman on the Roof) as a gangster who tries to go straight in Mexico by learning the art of bullfighting. Of course, the past – personified by Jared Harris, who plays the bullfighter’s former criminal protégé – violently catches up with him. The film costars Willem Dafoe, Michelle Forbes, Domenica Cameron Scorsese, an NYU grad film writing student previously seen, briefly, in her dad’s Cape Fear and Age of Innocence, and in films by directors Robert Rodriguez and Guillermo del Toro.

Sitting, Left and Right: Jared Harris and Michael Parks in Rune Bendixen's Bullgihter. Photo: Deena Newcomb.

Bullfighter bears the distinctive stamp of screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson (Paris, Texas), who's producing with partner Cynthia Hargrave under the MainPix banner they formed after trial runs into indie film as exec producers on Bottle Rocket and Hurricane Streets. Carson adapted Bendixen’s original screenplay with 21-year-old son Hunter and calls it a millenial story. "If you can save yourself, you can save the world," says Carson. "Bullfighter has an improbable hero, but it doesn’t take itself that seriously – it’s irreverent and funny."

Bendixen is the Danish techno music wizard behind the Overlords, the Northern European techno band. Bendixen, who’s also produced music for Billy Idol and Blue Pearl, got his first directing credits on the Overlords’ striking music videos. In 1995 he teamed up with Danish film distributor Majken Gilmartin to develop Bullfighter as his feature debut. Carson reports that Copenhagen-based Scanbox Entertainment is financing the film (to the tune of several million dollars) in its entirety as the first entry in a MainPix slate.

Though Bullfighter is set in Mexico it’s being shot across the Rio Grande in Texas, where principal photography kicked off February 12 on an 80-square-mile ranch along the Mexican-U.S. border. Bullfighter should be done some time next fall and Scanbox is handling all rights.

Cast: Olivier Martinez, Michelle Forbes, Michael Parks, Donnie Wahlberg, Domenica Cameron Scorsese, Assumpta Serna, Jared Harris, Willem Dafoe. Crew: Producers, Majken Gilmartin, L.M. Kit Carson, Cynthia Hargrave; Screenwriter/Director, Rune Bendixen (adaptation by Hunter and L.M. Kit Carson; Cinematographer, Ronn Schmidt; Production Design, James D. Kanan; Costumes, Janet Schwartz. Contact: L.M. Kit Carson, MainPix, 46 Laight Street, New York, NY 10013. Tel: (212) 925-9165, Fax: (212) 431-4992.

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Jay Anania follows two experimental features – The Pagan Book of Arthur Rimbaud and Long Time Since – with The Citizen, a moody political thriller. The film focuses on an American journalist, John Owen, who follows a story down to El Salvador during the civil war and becomes romantically involved with a reclusive rebel leader’s girlfriend. On his return he’s investigated, and the film consists of flashbacks unfolding during the investigation. Stage actor Thomas McCarthy plays Owen, Italian film star Andrea di Stefano is the rebel leader, and Najwa Nimri (Lovers of the Arctic Circle) is the woman between them; also in the cast is Caroleen Feeney as the girlfriend who risks her life to save Owens’ name. "It’s an interior film," says Anania, "but compared to my other work, it’s a genuinely gripping yarn."

Anania, 48, was trained in visual design and started out as an editor for WGBH in Boston. He still earns a living shooting network news features in exotic spots like the Philippines, Pakistan, Sudan and Egypt. He made Rimbaud, his first feature, in ’96, and the film premiered in the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama section the following February. Berlin invited Long Time Since for ’98 but Anania couldn’t secure finishing funds in time to complete post, and the film ultimately premiered at Toronto last fall. Anania had a much easier time finding money for The Citizen, which Sunshine Amalgamedia is producing and financing for about four times the cost of Long Time Since. "By any standard it was a piece of cake," says Anania, a longtime client of attorney Jed Alpert, who Sunshine brought on board as president last year to head the multimedia company’s expansion into feature film production. Sunshine is also the company behind the new six-screen arthouse set to open down the street from the Angelika Film Center in New York later this year.

The bulk of The Citizen was shot in Costa Rica over 21 days in February following a three-day New York shoot. Anania had a month before that to ready the film’s key location, a hidden rebel camp in the jungle, but reports he still had to bring his grip package in from Miami by boat. The film’s cinematographer was Oliver Bokelberg, who also shot Long Time Since. Anania expects to deliver The Citizen in time for the fall festival circuit. All rights are available.

Cast: Thomas McCarthy, Najwa Nimri, Andrea di Stefano, Caroleen Feeney, Angel David. Crew: Producer, Gregory Little; Executive Producer, Jed Alpert; Associate Producer, Carrie Harvey; Screenwriter/Director/Editor, Jay Anania; Cinematographer, Oliver Bokelberg; Sound, Bill Kozy; Production Design, Luis Carlos Vasquez; Line Producer, Gretchen McGowan; Script Supervisor, Mariana Hellmund. Contact: Jed Alpert, Sunshine Amalgamedia Inc., 740 Broadway, 2nd floor, New York, NY 10003. Tel: (212) 995-2222, Fax: (212) 995-2221.

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Christopher Livingston’s genre-bending Hit and Runway pairs a neurotic gay playwright with a straight Italian naif some ten years his junior. Michael Parducci (Gravesend) plays Alex, a would-be writer who's stuck working in his family’s Greenwich Village café following his dad’s death. Unexpectedly, Alex sells a movie pitch about a tough cop who goes undercover as a male runway model. But Alex can’t really write, so when he realizes that the stranger cruising the café’s sexy new waiter (Dawson’s Creek’s Kerr Smith) is a bona fide playwright, he enlists him as his writing partner. Of course, an unlikely friendship blossoms between the two as they coach each other through a dizzying set of romantic quandaries. But will they make their deadline?

Livingston is a ’94 NYU film grad with something of a Hollywood pedigree: his mother’s Nancy Olson, the ingenue in Sunset Boulevard; his dad ran Capitol Records in the ’60s; and an uncle wrote the theme songs for Bonanza and Mr Ed. Livingston co-wrote Runway with standup comic Jaffe Cohen, an NYU alum who later founded the comedy trio Funny Gay Males. His 55-minute NYU thesis film, Chicken of the Sea, won several school awards including the Eagle Award from the CINE festival in Washington, D.C. He raised the cash to shoot Runway in 35mm by hosting invitation-only readings of the script in New York and L.A. and sold investor units at $10,000 apiece; his family also put in money.

In November ’97 Livingston swapped the L.A. apartment he'd been renting for the past year for one in New York and returned East for production. With experienced New York low-budget veterans Andrew Charas and Chris d’Annibale (The Definite Maybe) on board as producers, Runway shot throughout downtown New York for 44 days into January ’98. At press time the film had been accepted for an LAIFF premiere; all rights are available.

Cast: Michael Parducci, Peter Jacobson, Kerr Smith, Judy Prescott, John Fiore, Hoyt Richards, J.K. Simmons, Jonthan Hogan, Teresa De Priest, Bill Cohen. Crew: Producers, Chris D’Annibale, Andrew Charas, Christopher Livingston; Screenwriters, Jaffe Cohen & Christopher Livingston; Director, Christopher Livingston; Cinematographer, David Tumblety; Production Design, Mark Helmuth; Costumes, Jory Adam; Casting, Eve Battaglia. Contact: Bob Aaronson, Producer’s Rep, 1013 S. Curson Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90019. Tel: (323) 937-9704, Fax: (323) 857-1241.

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Alison Maclean (Crush) is now directing the feature adaptation of cult fave Denis Johnson’s nihilistic short story collection Jesus’ Son. The linked stories are set in the ’70s drug culture and cover four years during which a young addict in his twenties stumbles towards sobriety along a path studded with hallucinations, misapprehensions and self-destructive impulses. Ultimately, Jesus’ Son is about redemption; as the addict antihero, called only Fuckhead, walks his personal stations of the cross he’s as often overcome by ecstasy as by despair.

The film cuts back and forth through time as Fuckhead (Billy Crudup) works in an old age home and a warehouse for the deformed. Along the way he meets an astonishing procession of grotesques played with sly humor by Dennis Hopper, Denis Leary and Holly Hunter. Fuckhead also has a girlfriend, played by Under the Skin’s Samantha Morton, although she’s just as likely to bring him his destruction as his salvation. Maclean calls Jesus’ Son "a kind of cubist narrative that comes at the train wreck of [Fuckhead’s] life from many different angles."

New Zealand-born Maclean was accorded high praise and indie A-list status for Crush, her first feature, after the film debuted in competition at the ’92 Cannes film festival and went on to Sundance and Toronto. Previously, she’d already drawn enthusiastic buzz with Kitchen Sink, a grisly short that also played Cannes’ competition and screened at Sundance. More recently Maclean directed episodes of Sex and the City, Homicide and Subway Stories. She was sought out to direct Jesus’ Son by producers Elizabeth Cuthrell and David Urrutia, theater professionals making their first foray into film. Cuthrell and Urritia had already secured rights to Johnson’s book and written a screen adaptation with Interview film critic Oren Moverman. With Maclean on board, Cuthrell, Urritia and Moverman raised equity financing under their new Evenstar Films banner and added experienced hands-on producers Lydia Pilcher (Chinese Box) and Margot Bridger (Arresting Gena) to their team.

Jesus’ Son was shot in Philadelphia over seven weeks beginning January 14, with a second unit capturing a day’s worth of key location atmosphere in Tucson, Arizona. An eclectic soundtrack drives the film and reflects time shifts in the narrative. At press time the filmmakers were editing in New York; all rights are available.

Cast: Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Holly Hunter, Dennis Hopper, Denis Leary, Jack Black, Will Patton, Greg Germann, John Ventimiglia. Crew: Producers, Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia, Lydia Pilcher; Executive Producer, Steve Tuttleman; Co-Producer, Margot Bridger; Associate Producer, Oren Moverman; Screenwriters, Cuthrell, Urrutia, Moverman; Director, Alison Maclean; Cinematographer, Adam Kimmel; Production Design, David Doernberg; Casting, Laura Rosenthal, Ali Farrell; Editor, Stuart Levy; Production/Post Supervisor, George Paaswell. Contact: Elizabeth Cuthrell, Evenstar Productions, 393 Broadway, New York, NY 10013. Tel: (212) 219-2020, Fax: (212) 219-2323.

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Pecker meets After Hours in The Photographer, a fable set in the downtown Manhattan art world that first-time director Jeremy Stein says was "loosely inspired" by The Wizard of Oz. Newcomer Reg Rogers (Paul Morrissey in I Shot Andy Warhol) plays the title character, Max, a successful young New York artist who is in a creative slump and fears he’s lost the ability to "see". His reputation is hanging in the balance when he finds a striking set of first-rate prints in a bar and decides to pass them off as his own. But just as suddenly Max loses the misappropriated prints, and so begins an overnight search that introduces him to a trio of unconventional New Yorkers (played by Rob Cambell, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Chris Bauer) who ultimately restore his vision. The film’s eclectic supporting cast includes Saul Williams, Anthony Michael Hall, Kristen Wilson, Mary Alice, John Heard and Tom Noonan.

Stein got an MFA in theater lighting and design from the prestigious Yale School of Drama and has had a prodigious career as a lighting designer for theater, opera, modern dance and ballet. His first feature screenplay, Shade of Grey, caught the attention of Good Will Hunting co-producer Chris Moore when Moore was still an agent at ICM. Stein wanted to direct Shade himself but Moore thought raising appropriately high financing for the piece was an unlikely goal for a neophyte director and suggested he write a screenplay that could be made for a moderate sum. By then Stein was working with Beacon Films’ Peter Almond and Charles Burnett on Forever Free, an historical documentary featuring Alfre Woodard, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee that took several years to complete. The Photographer was written during that time and Almond, who collaborated closely on its development, is producing with Moore, who currently has a three-year first-look deal with Miramax.

The Photographer shot in New York for four weeks beginning in late January. All photos that figure in the story were taken by Tom LeGoff, a rising downtown photographer who specializes in moody portraits of indie film types and recently had his first high-profile show at prestigious gallery Staley Wise. The film should be done sometime this summer and all rights are available.

Cast: Reg Rogers, Rob Campbell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Christopher Bauer, Kristen Wilson, Anthony Michael Hall, John Heard, Mary Alice, Tom Noonan, Tina Holme, Saul Williams, Leslie Lyles, Fenton Lawless, Marissa Barenson, Missy Yager, Richard Bright, Josh Stamberg, Alex Draper, Miles Chapin, Siobhan Fallon, Joan Cargill. Crew: Producers, Chris Moore, Peter O. Almond, Jeremy Stein; Co-Producer, Per Melita; Associate Producer, Marco Londoner; Original Story, Stein & Almond; Screenwriter/Director, Stein; Cinematographer, Vanja Cernjul; Initial Cinematography, Joey Forsyte; Editor, Sylvia Waliga; Production Design, Joe Worsan; Costumes, Neda Pourang; Casting, Hopkins, Smith, Barden. Contact: Peter O. Almond, Beacon Communications, Warner Hollywood Studios, 1041 N. Formosa Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90045. Tel: (323) 850-2652, Fax: (323) 850-2613, email: poalmond@earthlink.net.

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Tom Noonan’s Wang Dang is the real-time story of a washed-up director (played by Noonan) who’s come to an unnamed film school to speak on the travails of his career and ends up entertaining two nubile grad students in his seedy off-campus motel room. "In their eyes he’s a big deal, and he uses his status to get it on with them," says Noonan.

As with What Happened Was... and The Wife, his first two features, Noonan mounted a workshop production of Wang Dang on stage at the East Village theater he owns in order to prepare for the shoot. "Some people have a misconception that I’m a playwright who makes movies, but I’m not," he says. "[Staging the screenplays] is how I find out what the scripts are about, where the laughs are, and what works and what doesn’t, since as a writer I’m just intuiting. That’s what the Marx Brothers did when they took their material on the road."

As an actor, Noonan has appeared in more than 20 films, including Manhunter, Mystery Train, Heat and The Last Action Hero. He graduated from Yale in 1973 and founded the Paradise Theatre in 1982; by the late ‘80s he was writing cable features like Red Wind, a thriller. He made What Happened Was... in 1993 after workshopping it at the Paradise, and the film won the Grand Jury Prize and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance in 1994. His follow-up film, The Wife, also premiered at Sundance and was financed by the now-defunct French production entity CIBY 2000.

Noonan developed Wang Dang with help from a 1998 New York Foundation for the Arts playwriting fellowship and a Guggenheim fellowship in filmmaking. The film was financed through Elevator Pictures, a production outfit whose principal, Steve Apicella, met Noonan as first asistant director on What Happened Was… and most recently produced Rocky Collins’ Pants on Fire (due out this fall from Shadow). Wang Dang’s producers are Eddie Collyns, who line produced Pants and co-produced ‘99 LAIFF selection Cherry, and Victoria Robinson, a five-year vet of New York indie shoots who produced Jamie Babbit’s Sundance ‘98 short Sleeping Beauties.

Wang Dang’s four-week shoot rolled March 8 in Liberty, New York, near Noonan’s Catskills home. The film is being shot on PAL digital video which will be blown up to 35mm. Noonan will edit himself and the film should be done by Labor Day. All rights are available.

Cast: Tom Noonan, LeAnna Croom, Megan Edwards. Crew: Writer/director, Tom Noonan; Producers, Victoria Robinson, Eddie Collyns; Associate Producer, Matthew Langdon; Executive Producer, Stephen X. Apicella; Cinematographer, Rufus Standefer; Production Design, Zeljka Pavlinovic; Sound, Noah Timan; Contact: Wang Dang LLC, 1133 Broadway, Suite 1429, New York, NY 10010. Tel: (212) 645-0722, Fax: (212) 645-0788.

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Catherine Jelski makes her feature directing debut with The Young Unknowns, a harrowing portrait of a spoiled and self-destructive 23-year-old from L.A.’s ruling class. Charlie Fox is one of those kids who’s had everything money can buy along with a level of parental neglect that would have landed poorer kids with social services. His commercial director dad is currently in London with his third wife and new baby, so Charlie and his model girlfriend have the L.A. spread to themselves. There’s no one to put the brakes on a day that starts with a pitcher of margaritas for breakfast. "I wanted to write something as brutal as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf about empty young lives in L.A.," says Jelski.

Jelski started out as a dancer and after initial training in San Francisco and New York spent three years as one of two foreign students at the state ballet school in East Berlin. Back in the States she directed plays Off Off Broadway and studied film at the AFI before embarking on a career as script supervisor on films like Dazed and Confused and The End of Violence. Her short film Angela’s Story won a CINE Golden Eagle. She adapted The Young Unknowns from a 1969 play, Magic Afternoon, by Austrian theater of cruelty enfant terrible Wolfgang Bauer; the resulting screenplay was one of 15 finalists for the Walt Disney Screenwriting Fellowship. Financing for the film came through private investments raised by producing partners Kimberly Shane O’Hara and Eric Klein, whose previous credits include ‘99 Flix Tour entry Bury the Evidence and Quentin Carr, a Columbia University thesis short starring Jared Harris that became something of a cult hit.

The Young Unknowns was shot on Super 16mm color over 17 days last fall, mostly at a sprawling neo-Hollywood mansion once occupied by Heidi Fleiss. The film’s cinematographer-and editor is Gabor Szitanyi, best known through Tamara Jenkins’ shorts, Fugitive Love and Family Remains. The filmmakers are editing on a Mac 9600 with Adobe Premiere 5.1 and Film Logic "matchback" software, the latter courtesy of Film Logic developer Loran Kary. All rights are available.

Cast: Devon Gummersall, Eion Bailey, Arly Jover, Leslie Bibb, Priscilla Barnes, Dale Godboldo. Crew: Producers, Catherine Jelski, Kimberly Shane O’Hara, Eric Klein; Co-Producers/Casting Directors, Dan Shaner, Michael Testa; Screenwriter/Director, Jelski; Cinematographer/Editor, Gabor Szitanyi; Production Designer, Warren Young; Costumes, Merrie Lawson. Contact: Eric M. Klein, Wit’s End Productions, 11269 Palms Blvd., Suite C, Los Angeles, CA 90066. Tel: (310) 398-7504, Fax: (310) 398-1445




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