Neville's film debuted at Venice Film Festival after it was bumped last minute from Cannes Morgan Neville is following up his mega-hit documentary on Fred Rogers with a film on one of the greatest cultural figures of his time, the late Orson Welles. They'll Love Me When I'm Dead documents the making of Welles' last film, The Other Side of the Wind, which the director began in 1970 but never finished. With financing from Netflix, producer Frank Marshall recently supervised completion of the Welles film at long last, and it debuted at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. Neville's documentary also premiered there. "They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is the untold final chapter of one of the greatest careers in film history: brilliant, innovative, defiant and unbowed," Netflix said in a statement. The documentary will begin streaming on Netflix November 2, coupled with a limited theatrical release. In 1985, Welles died, leaving as his final testament the most famous unfinished movie in film history. "Welles shot the picture guerrilla-style in chaotic circumstances with a devoted crew of young dreamers, all while struggling with financiers and fate... The negative stayed in a vault for decades - until now," Netflix said, adding the documentary includes "revelatory new insights from Welles collaborators including Peter Bogdanovich, Frank Marshall, Oja Kodar and daughter Beatrice Welles." The documentary originally was scheduled to premiere at Cannes, but after a dispute between Netflix and festival organizers, the streaming platform pulled both The Other Side of the Wind and Neville's doc from the lineup. Netflix has released a new trailer for Neville's film. Watch it here: Documentary by Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster won audience awards at Sundance and SXSW The new documentary Science Fair opens with a moment of pure delight -- young Jack Andraka winning the top prize at the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in 2012. Just to experience the 15-year-old (see photo above) bound to the stage to accept his honor is worth the price of admission. But there's much more to the film directed by Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster, than just Andraka's moment of victory, of course. It follows a group of kids from the U.S. and abroad trying to follow in Adraka's footsteps as ISEF winners. Science Fair won audience awards at multiple film festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Sun Valley and Portland. It's now playing in New York, Los Angeles, Sherman Oaks, Calif., and Roslyn, New York and expands to more cities in the coming week (details here). Nonfictionfilm.com spoke with Costantini and Foster shortly before Science Fair opened in LA, a followup to our interview with the filmmakers last January at Sundance. Watch below. Michael Moore on his 'Fahrenheit 11/9' doc and the toll of Trump's presidency: 'He hates democracy'9/21/2018 Filmmaker talks with Nonfictionfilm.com as his new doc opens wide Director Michael Moore is not one to mince words. So it comes as no surprise that his new documentary Fahrenheit 11/9 eviscerates Donald Trump and all he stands for. The film opens across the country today, two days after its LA premiere, where Moore shared his thoughts on what Trump is doing to American democracy. "The threat is real. It gets worse every day," the filmmaker told Nonfictionfilm.com on the red carpet. "He has no respect for the rule of law." Moore noted that in many respects Trump's views put him in the mainstream of corporate chieftains. "He hates democracy, but to his credit that doesn’t make him that much different from most CEOs. They don’t run their businesses as democracies," Moore asserted. "They don’t like the idea of 'one person one' vote because these billionaires — well, what, there’s 325 million of us and, what, less than a thousand of them — I’d hate to be in their position in a country that if we really had one person one vote and we didn’t have voter suppression, we didn’t have gerrymandering, we didn’t have these things they’d be in deep, deep trouble by now." We asked Moore to cite the interview he did for Fahrenheit 11/9 that stood out most to him, and he mentioned one that didn't make it in. "The most memorable interview I did for the film, the subject of the interview would not let me have a camera in the room. His name was Steve Bannon. Two hours. Just Steve Bannon and myself," he recalled. "The most chilling thing and the most honest thing he said to me is, ‘The difference between our side of the political fence and your side is that we go for the head wound while you guys are having pillow fights.’ I thought, ‘Wow. Isn’t that the truth.' We have to stop the pillow fights. We have to get some gumption in us and we have to get some fight in us or we are going to go down." Wednesday night's premiere at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills drew a variety of stars and prominent figures in the doc world, including actors Jennifer Lewis Alyssa Milano, Richard Schiff and Ron Perlman, Oscar-winning filmmaker Bryan Fogel (Icarus), director Darren Foster (Science Fair), and Omarosa Manigault Newman, who served in the Trump administration before her abrupt departure in December 2017. Manigault Newman recently published Unhinged, an account of her time with Trump beginning with The Apprentice and extending to her tenure as director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. Her critical view on Trump triggered a typically sharp response from her former friend, who labeled her "wacky" and "vicious." "It’s pretty disgusting, the things that he called me and said about me and the fact that he tweeted these things, these threats of getting the Justice Department to arrest me," she told Nonfictionfilm.com. "These are just examples of how completely and totally challenged — mentally challenged — he is, and compromised." Lewis, the star of the ABC sitcom black-ish, makes a brief appearance in the documentary. She echoed Omarosa's sentiments about Trump's psychiatric health. "I know what mental illness looks like. I myself have bipolar disorder. Trump’s in bad shape," she declared. "I don’t hate him. I feel sorry for him. It’s a lot of pain... Twisted, sick, greedy man. He has to step down." We asked Milano how damaging she believes Trump has been.
"On a scale of 1 to 10?" she responded. "I think he's an 11." Schiff, who starred on NBC's White House drama The West Wing, expressed grave concern about where the country is heading under Trump. "If you read about the fall of the German democracy in 1932, 1933, there are very, very, very close similarities. Hitler wasn’t elected by a majority. Events happened which allowed him to claim more authority and before people knew it he had overtaken any kind of opposition, any kind of checks and balances and democracy ended in Germany," he observed. "We face that threat. We have a guy in the White House who doesn’t understand or care what the Constitution states, doesn’t care about our traditions of checks and balances, doesn’t care about the fact that this democracy is on stilts. It’s fragile. You have to have faith in those institutions. Tradition is very much part of it. He’s chopping at it with an axe. I couldn’t be more fearful for the future of this country and for my children living in this country." Now playing: Documentary 'Hal' celebrates life and extraordinary career of filmmaker Hal Ashby9/14/2018
Amy Scott makes directorial debut with film on man behind Being There, Shampoo, Harold and Maude and more
Ask someone to name the greatest American filmmakers of the 1970s and they'll probably say Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg. Hal Ashby? He may not come up.
But ask people to identify the greatest films of that era and they may well point to Shampoo, Harold and Maude, Coming Home and Being There -- all movies directed by Ashby. He may qualify as the foremost cinematic talent of his time whose name, if not his work, remains relatively little known. He didn't make a brand out of himself, essentially. He wasn't in the spotlight ever.
The new documentary Hal, directed by Amy Scott, could go a long way to elevating Ashby's name to the rank it deserves. The film opens today in Los Angeles, a week after it debuted in New York, and expands to more cities across the U.S. in the coming weeks (details here).
"Hal's films... always stood out to me. They tackled heavy issues and themes but they really had this insight into the human condition that I felt was really unique to him," Scott explained in an interview with Nonfictionfim.com. "I have looked at these films inside and out, held them up to the light." Film makes case for therapeutic success of CBD oil for children with cancer Director Abby Epstein and executive producer Ricki Lake have struck a distribution deal for Weed the People, their documentary that promotes the healing properties of oils derived from marijuana plants. Variety reports Mangurama and Bobb Films will distribute the film, which held its world premiere at SXSW in March. "We are thrilled to be working with Mangurama on the theatrical release of our documentary," Lake and Epstein said in a statement provided to Variety. "We hope that Weed The People will humanize the controversy around medical cannabis. As our film reveals, access to this plant has become a human rights issue.” At SXSW, Epstein told Nonfictionfilm.com, "You've got these parents [of children with cancer] who are looking for everything. They are not getting the results they want from what they're being offered through the standard medical system. And when you start looking for everything cannabis comes up. We know cannabis kills cancer in the test-tube or represses tumor growth." Lake told us of the documentary, "We really feel like we have a gem on our hands." No theatrical release date has been announced for the film. Related: |
AuthorMatthew Carey is a documentary filmmaker and journalist. His work has appeared on Deadline.com, CNN, CNN.com, TheWrap.com, NBCNews.com and in Documentary magazine. |