Epstein / Friedman are two great film makers and this foray into fiction was very interesting. James Franco is amazing: a sophisticated and elegant actor, he is not Channing Tatum. I think this film was lost after the Berlin Film Festival. Thanks for bring it back.
Thanks for this, David. Looking forward to seeing this once it makes it out to the hinterlands.
It’s going into release in the Fall. Sometime in October I believe.
David Ehrenstein
Saw Rob and Feffrey’s movie last night at Outfest Los Angeles (openign night) and it’s quite a revelation. Their first dramatic feature it boasts a pwoerhouse cast headed by James Franco who’s not only babe-a-liciousness personfied but is rapdily emerging as one of the greatest film actors of our time. I’d have to go back to deNiro in “Raging Bull” for a comparasion. Every line in the film is from actual events, and it moves freely from a recreation of the poem’s first reading, to the obscenity trial, to an interview Allen gave about the trial a few years later. Plus there are animated sequences that expound upon the poem’s themes — particularly in evoking Carl Solomon’s shock treatments. Solomon himself isn’t dramatized but a whole gang of teriffic actors play participants in the trial. Bob Balaban is the judge. David Straitharn is the prosecutor, John Hamm the defense attorney, and as witnesses for and against, Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker, Treat Williams and the yummy Alessandro Nivola.
It washed the bad taste of “Brokeback Mountain” out of my brain.