Premieres at Sundance Film Festival to Be Released in Theaters, on Television and VOD
Features Interviews With Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman,
Dennis Hopper, Sydney Pollack, Peter Bogdanovich, Milos Forman, Sidney Lumet,
William Friedkin, Julie Christie, Ellen Burstyn and Many More
December 16, 2002 (New York, NY) – The Independent Film Channel (IFC) announced today a multiplatform distribution plan for A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE, a comprehensive overview of American cinema during the 1970s, a singular decade during which every aspect of filmmaking was profoundly changed, the impact of which is still felt today. Co-directed by the late Ted Demme (Blow) and Richard LaGravenese (Living Out Loud), A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE will premiere in the Documentary Competition category at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival in January. An IFC Original produced by the network, A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE will be distributed in theaters by sister company IFC Films in Spring 2003. Following, the film will be shown in an expanded format as a three part television series on IFC TV, with additional interviews and behind the scenes material. The series will air each night Wednesday, August 21 through Saturday, August 24 accompanied by a celebration of films from the era. Exclusive Broadband content will coincide with the television premiere as well as a subsequent VOD release.
“This film is truly a love letter about an amazing era in film,” says Alison Bourke, Executive Producer for IFC. “It’s for people who love movies and want to hear stories that audiences haven’t heard before. It’s the perfect project to fulfill IFC’s original programming mandate and it lends itself well to various forms of distribution so we can reach the widest audience possible.”
In A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE, pioneering writers, directors, and actors talk about the times, their films and their colleagues. “For this brief period in film history, anything was possible. The studios weren’t telling filmmakers how to do their work, they were allowed to make their own personal statement,” says director Richard LaGravenese. In a unique twist to the documentary format, these filmmakers are interviewed by the next generation of filmmakers, which brings out intimate, personal and often untold stories. Demme and LaGravenese shared the interviewing duties with fellow filmmakers including Neil LaBute, Alexander Payne and Scott Frank.
Filmmakers interviewed for the documentary include:
Martin Scorsese (Director, Taxi Driver)
Francis Ford Coppola (Director, The Godfather)
Robert Altman (Director, MASH) )
Peter Bogdanovich (Director, The Last Picture Show)
Ellen Burstyn (Actor, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore)
Julie Christie (Actor, Shampoo)
Dennis Hopper (Actor/Director, Easy Rider)
Sidney Lumet (Director, Dog Day Afternoon)
Milos Forman (Director, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest)
Robert Towne (Writer, Chinatown)
Sydney Pollack (Director, The Way We Were)
Paul Schrader (Writer, Taxi Driver)
Pam Grier (Actor, Foxy Brown)
William Friedkin (Director, French Connection)
Bruce Dern (Actor, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They)
Roger Corman (Producer, Fighting Mad)
Mike Medavoy (Chairman/Co-Founder, Phoenix Pictures)
Polly Platt (Writer/Producer, Pretty Baby)
Jerry Schatzberg (Director, Scarecrow)
Roy Scheider (Actor, Jaws) )
Jon Voight (Actor, Midnight Cowboy)
Paul Mazursky (Director/Writer, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice)
John Calley (Producer, Catch-22)
John Avildsen (Director, Joe)
Marshall Brickman (Co-Writer, Annie Hall)
Monte Hellman (Director, Cockfighter)
Interviewers include:
Ted Demme (Director – Blow, The Ref, Beautiful Girls, Life)
Richard LaGravenese (Writer/Director – Living Out Loud; Writer – The Ref, The Fisher King)
Alexander Payne (Writer/Director, Election)
Neil LaBute (Writer/Director, Your Friends & Neighbors)
Scott Frank (Writer, Minority Report)
Michael DeLuca (Studio Executive, Dreamworks)
Mark Riley (Journalist)
James V. Hart (Writer, Tuck Everlasting)
Robert Mark Kamen (Writer, The Fifth Element)
Steven Schiff (Journalist/Critic/Screenwriter)
The 1970s was an extraordinary time of rebellion, of questioning every accepted idea: political activism, hedonism, protests, the sexual revolution, the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the music revolution, rage and liberation. Every standard by which we set our social and cultural clocks was either turned inside out or thrown away completely and reinvented. For American cinema, the 1970s was an era during which a new generation of filmmakers created work for a new kind of audience — moviegoers who were hungry for stories that reflected their own experiences and who were turning their backs on aged old studio formulas.
As a result, emerging filmmakers influenced by foreign directors such as Godard, Kurasowa and Fellini coupled with the social climate and a struggling studio system, converged to create a new kind of moviemaking. “There was a disparity between a conventional view of the country and what the filmmakers felt the country was about…and I think there was an audience for that disparate view,” says writer/director Robert Towne in his interview. Through their choice of material, filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Peter Bogdonovich, William Friedkin, Roger Corman and Paul Schrader revolutionized mainstream movies and for the first time personal visions were coming out of the studio system.
In his interview, Francis Ford Coppola adds, “Of course we thought that movies could make the world better and could illuminate contemporary life, that artists didn’t have to just be employees, artists could stand with the other leaders of society and contribute a more humanistic, less mercantile sentiment into the mix.”
Credits:
Directors: Richard LaGravenese & Ted Demme
Executive Producers: Alison Bourke, Caroline Kaplan, Jonathan Sehring
Producers: Gini Reticker & Jerry Kupfer
Cinematographers: Clyde Smith & Anthony Janelli
Editor: Meg Reticker
Associate Producer: John Miller-Monzon
TED DEMME:
Ted Demme has shown considerable versatility in the projects he directed and produced. Demme’s directing credits include Blow with Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Paul Reubens and Franka Potente; The Ref starring Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary and Judy Davis; Beautiful Girls with Uma Thurman, Natalie Portman, Matt Dillon and Timothy Hutton; the critically acclaimed Monument Avenue with Billy Crudup, Denis Leary, Famke Janssen, Ian Hart and Martin Sheen; and Life starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. Operating through Spanky Pictures, Demme produced several films including Monument Ave., Rounders with Matt Damon, Edward Norton and John Malkovich; A Lesson Before Dying with Don Cheadle and Cicely Tyson for HBO, which won both the Emmy and Peabody Award, and Tumbleweeds for Fine Line Features starring Academy Award nominee Janet McTeer.
RICHARD LAGRAVENESE:
One of the most prolific writers in Hollywood, LaGravenese began his screenwriting career with his original script The Fisher King, directed by Terry Gilliam. The film went on to earn five Academy Award nominations, including Best Screenplay. Other writing credits include: The Ref, (directed by Ted Demme), A Little Princess (directed by Alfonso Cuaron) and Unstrung Heroes (directed by Diane Keaton), The Bridges of Madison County (directed by Clint Eastwood), The Mirror Has Two Faces, (directed Barbra Streisand), The Horse Whisperer (directed by Robert Redford, sharing credit with Eric Roth) and Beloved (directed by Jonathon Demme). LaGravenese made his directorial debut for Jersey Films with his original screenplay for the critically acclaimed Living Out Loud starring Danny DeVito, Holly Hunter and Queen Latifah.
The Independent Film Channel (IFC) is the first and most widely distributed channel dedicated to independent film presented 24 hours a day, uncut and commercial-free. IFC Entertainment, a division of IFC, consists of IFC Productions, a feature film production company; IFC Films, a theatrical film distribution company; and IFC Originals, which produces cutting-edge original programming for the network. In addition, IFC Productions launched InDigEnt, an initiative that helps established filmmakers shoot productions on digital video.