Morgan Spurlock in 'Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?'
(Credit: Sundance)
As the proceedings wind down this weekend in Park City, many of the New York–based entrants have had strong showings. Here are a few of the movies from our local indie filmmakers hoping to beat the odds and make it to a neighborhood movie house soon.
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Brooklyn-based director Ryan Fleck and screenwriter Anna Borden kicked off their careers with a Sundance entry a few years back. While shopping their short “Gowanus, Brooklyn” in 2004, they later turned that story about a troubled teacher and his precocious student into the Oscar-nominated “Half Nelson,” starring Ryan Gosling. Their new film, “Sugar,” tells the coming-of-age story of a Dominican boy who moves to Iowa to participate in the all-American pastime of minor league baseball.
Two well-liked films with New York connections have already scored distribution deals: the documentary “American Teen” and the fiction film “Choke.” Paramount Vantage ponied up $1 million for "American Teen," a documentary by New York–based director Nanette Burstein (“The Kid Stays In the Picture”) about a group of high-school seniors in Indiana. Another of Burstein’s previous nonfiction films, “On The Ropes,” won a Sundance Special Jury Prize in 1999, so she’s no stranger to Park City accolades.
Fox Searchlight, meanwhile, bought “Choke,” the adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s book about a con man who pays for his mother’s hospital bills by faking asphyxiation, starring Sam Rockwell.
Since she's the daughter of festival founder Robert Redford, you’d expect Amy Redford’s feature debut to be a shoo-in for a Park City screening. After all, she’s watched up close the festival’s transformation from a small showcase to an international movie marketplace. After stints as an actor on TV and in small movie roles, the younger Redford moves behind the camera to direct British actress Saffron Burrows in “The Guitar,” about a woman dumped, fired and given a terminal diagnosis, all in one day. With her last few days and dollars in New York City, she finally starts living life fully, including buying a drool-worthy 1963 red Fender Stratocaster guitar and moving into a swank Tribeca loft.
One well-received New York movie worth mentioning is “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson,” a new documentary by local Alex Gibney, who previously exposed the evil machinations of corporate America in “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and the Iraq war in “Taxi to the Dark Side” (an Oscar nominee this year for Best Documentary Feature). The movie features voice-over by Johnny Depp reading Thompson’s writing (he portrayed the writer in Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”) and extensive biographical material. Gibney again gets political, this time exploring the significance of Thompson’s rabble-rousing work in the context of today's American culture.
Finally, New York’s favorite gonzo documentarian Morgan Spurlock threw himself into yet another risky on-camera scheme detrimental to his health. In "Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden," he eschews consuming dangerous trans fats in favor of seeking out the world's most-wanted terrorist. Spurlock’s movie arrived in Park City with a distribution deal in place and a release date in April finalized, but eager festival audiences were still curious to know if in the movie he found the elusive jihadist (spoiler alert: He didn’t, but his movie still lobs some serious jabs at the Bush administration’s handling of the war on terror).
