Stephen Elliott
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Five Questions for Stephen Elliott about The Rumpus Lo-Fi Film Festival
The debut edition of The Rumpus Lo-Fi Film Festival unspools this coming Saturday, July 30, at the Brewery Arts Complex in Los Angeles. Encompassing four features and two panels, the one-day event is, according to author, filmmaker and The Rumpus founder Stephen Elliott, an extension of the literary site’s personality and ethos into the film festival world as well as a kind of a DIY battle cry. Frustrated by the festival rejection notices he was receiving for his third feature, After Adderall, Elliot surveyed other filmmakers about their festival submission experiences. He published the results in a much-debated blog post […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 24, 2016 -
The Rumpus Launches Lo-Fi Los Angeles Film Festival
What to do when your film doesn’t get accepted to any film festivals? Why, start your own film festival! Of course, it’s helpful if you’re the founding editor of a successful web site such as The Rumpus. That’s the case with Stephen Elliott, who was frustrated when his latest film, After Adderall, didn’t get accepted to any film festivals. Elliott wrote an in-depth report investigating a “rigged” system of film festival programming which makes it nearly impossible for paid submissions to be programmed. Titled “The Great Film Festival Swindle”, the article, published recently on The Rumpus, analyzed the odds of getting into various film festivals […]
by Paula Bernstein on Jun 23, 2016 -
Filmmaker Stephen Elliott Investigates a “Rigged” Film Festival Submission Process and Launches the Lo-Fi Los Angeles Fest
Stephen Elliott is an author, filmmaker, and founding editor of the respected literary web site, The Rumpus. He co-wrote and directed the James Franco-starring About Cherry, which premiered at The Berlin International Film Festival in 2012 before screening at other festivals. And the film The Adderall Diaries, based on his memoir of the same name, premiered at Tribeca in 2015. With these credentials, he (rightly?) assumed that his own second feature, Happy Baby, based on his novel of the same name, had a reasonable chance of getting accepted into one of the more than 15 film festivals he submitted to. But, it […]
by Paula Bernstein on Jun 10, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Pamela Romanowsky’s The Adderall Diaries
Pamela Romanowsky’s adaptation of Stephen Elliott’s meta-memoir, The Adderall Diaries, gets a pulse-pounding trailer from A24. The film tells the story of a writer, Elliott, navigating writer’s block while reporting on a murder trial taking place within San Francisco’s SM community. James Franco, who originally optioned Elliott’s book, plays the writer; Amber Heard is the journalist who gains his access to the case; and Ed Harris plays Elliott’s father, whose rageful relationship with his son provides the film’s emotional throughline. The film premieres on DirectTV on March 10 and in theaters April 15.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 8, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Stephen Elliott’s After Adderall
“What’s the difference between a memoir and life?” “I’m an agent, not a philosopher.” That’s writer/director/actor Stephen Elliott quizzing his agent, played by James Urbaniak, in After Adderall, the director’s feature-length, rapid-response to the strange experience of having his memoir turned into a movie starring James Franco. Elliott has assembled a great cast, including Michael C. Hall and Lili Taylor alongside numerous authors playing themselves (Jerry Stahl, Susan Orlean, Michael Cunningham). The film is currently being submitted to film festivals.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 19, 2016 -
The Rumpus Launches Manual Typewriter iPad App, Typing Writer
I grew up on a manual typewriter, the same one my mom used to write articles for Life Magazine in the ’50s and ’60s. It was a small portable in a beat-up canvas case, and you had to hit the keys hard. Later, my dad outfitted his basement home office with an IBM Selectric. I loved that typewriter. It was a brick, a giant slab of molded something, and once you gave the keys a little push the thing would explode. The violence of it was kind of thrilling. Still, I don’t fetishize old-school typewriters, manual or electric. I can’t […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 10, 2014 -
Polish Progress: American Indies in Wroclaw
If any one moment encapsulated the fervor for U.S. independent cinema among the young cinephiles of Wroclaw (pronounced Vrot-swof, by the way), it arrived at around 11:00 PM on my final night of attendance at the 4th edition of the city’s American Film Festival (22-27 Oct, 2013). I was strolling back to my hotel in the company of Killer Films honcho Christine Vachon and Tennessee-based producer Ashley Maynor when a lissome young Polish fellow with rosy cheeks, Kurt Cobain hair, and a T-shirt bearing the legend ‘Hipsters Don’t Wear Frames’ suddenly appeared. With a shallowness of breath that suggested he’d […]
by Ashley Clark on Nov 4, 2013 -
Buy a Relationship with James Franco for $6,000
A couple of weeks ago we selected Stephen Elliott’s Happy Baby for our curated Kickstarter page, and since then he’s been adding a number of provocative awards to the campaign. The most interesting was added today: for $6,000, Elliott will transfer to you his relationship with the actor and director James Franco, who starred in his feature About Cherry and owns the rights to his novel The Adderall Diaries. Muses Elliott, “What does that mean?” “I’m not really sure,” he continues. “I can’t promise anything from James, but I’ll send you a notarized document transferring full ownership.” Memorializing and transferring […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 19, 2012 -
A Kickstarter Launch for Stephen Elliott’s Happy Baby
Author Stephen Elliott (The Adderall Diaries) founded the culture website The Rumpus and recently directed his first feature, About Cherry. He’s launched a Kickstarter campaign for his second, Happy Baby, an adaptation of his 2004 autobiographical novel. The below is excerpted from Elliott’s Daily Rumpus newsletter, which, as a newsletter writer myself, I highly recommend. — SM Someone asked yesterday why I was doing a Kickstarter for my movie. He said he would donate $5, he doesn’t have very much money (which is fine), but he wanted to know why I needed you (he said, “Why do you need us?”). […]
by Stephen Elliott on Nov 8, 2012 -
TRAILER WATCH: STEPHEN ELLIOTT’S “CHERRY”
Here’s the just-posted trailer for Stephen Elliott‘s Berlin-bound Cherry, the debut feature of the author (The Adderall Diaries, Happy Baby) and Rumpus website founder. It stars Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco, Lili Taylor, Jonny Weston, Dev Patel and Heather Graham. From the film’s website: Cherry is about Angelina (Ashley Hinshaw), an 18-year-old girl on the verge of finishing high school. Angelina’s family life is difficult. Her mother (Lili Taylor) is an alcoholic and her step-father is violent and unpredictable. One morning her boyfriend (Jonny Weston) suggests she take naked pictures for money. She balks at first but then does the photo […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2012
