The first screening of locally tied film production company ATO Pictures’ Choke at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival was Monday, January 21 at 8:30pm at the Racquet Club in Park City, Utah. The film, scheduled for five screenings total, let out at a bit past 10pm with the next screening set for 8:30am the next day at the same venue. Temple Fennell, who develops films at ATO, split with a fair portion of the crowd for Choke’s afterparty at a nearby club called Hyde, where he prepped himself for the rest of his time at the Festival. In his own words: “I stay there ’til it’s sold.”
 “Er, how much?” ATO Pictures’ Choke (starring Brad William Henke, left, and recurring ATO Pictures man Sam Rockwell) nabbed a $5 million deal with Fox Searchlight literally overnight following its first screening at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. |
Amidst a sea of celebrities (including Woody Harrelson, stellar in No Country for Old Men—which earned local Jack Fisk an Oscar bid for Best Art Direction—and Curtain Calls favorite Quentin Tarantino), Fennell grabbed a few cocktails, mingled and quickly caught word that members of production company Fox Searchlight were on their way to the fiesta to talk about the film.
“They showed up at the party around 1am and then we did some negotiating there,” Fennell says a few days later, fresh off a plane at the Charlottesville Airport. “When it looked like, ‘O.K., they’re willing to match the number that we need,’ we packed it up and went to their offices.”
By 5:30am—three hours before its second screening—Fox Searchlight (which also nabbed the creepy ATO flick Joshua) shelled out $5 million for the U.S. and most of the worldwide distribution rights to Choke, adapted from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel about a food-scarfing scammer. At press time, it was the second largest monetary deal announced from the Festival (top billing goes to Hamlet 2, starring Steve “24 Hour Party People” Coogan, which nabbed a $10 million deal from Focus Features).
So Fennell got an early ticket home from the Festival, at which point Curt spoke with the obviously giddy gent. “Without blowing my horn too much,” he tells CC, “they’re saying it’s the hottest ticket at Sundance right now.”
So keep this news in mind, readers, because it may soon benefit you. When ATO nailed the Joshua deal, they set up a screening at the Newcomb Hall Theater at UVA through the Virginia Film Society. We may get our next dose of Sam Rockwell, the film’s star, sooner than we think (and that’s always a cause celebre).
In honor of ATO’s big victory, CC is giving you this week’s injection of art perfection in the spirit of coming attractions. First up: OFFscreen, UVA’s top-notch film society, recently (albeit a bit belatedly) announced its spring schedule, which kicked off January 27. The must-see flicks? The two-part director’s series on Claude Chabrol starting with Les Bonnes Femmes (February 10), American History X director Tony Kaye’s documentary Lake of Fire (March 23) and Hannah Takes the Stairs (March 16), Joe Swanberg’s engagingly plodding romance that kick-started the “mumblecore” film genre.
Cat me if you can?
Curt resumed the hunt for big news on his “Rita Mae Brown” beat in honor of the author’s book release event at the Barracks Road Barnes & Noble at 6pm on Saturday, February 2. When your snooping (and admitted “dog person”) narrator left off, he was speculating on how Brown’s cat, Sneaky Pie Brown could’ve penned 16 books with her master, counting their latest, The Purrfect Murder.
Like a hound after a mallard, CC tracked Brown to her home in Afton and got in touch with her only to ask for—nay, to demand—how she’d developed the Doolittle-ish skill of authoring mysteries with mammals. And got a relatively straightforward answer.
“If I was a really good kid,” says Brown, “my grandfather would let me sleep with his foxhound. [Animals] have a much greater range of communicability than we do.”
Yeah, but writing?
“We’re a fairly reduced species in many ways,” replies Brown. “The more I live with this particular cat—who’s very bright—the more I could see [the story] through her eyes.”
The Purrfect Murder, the latest in Brown’s best-selling “Mrs. Murphy” series, seems a bit bent on taking some unwelcome local residents to task. In the story, recurring protagonist “Harry” Harristeen and her wet-whiskered sleuth of a cat, Mrs. Murphy, take on the murder of Carla Paulson, described on the book’s jacket as “one of the diamond-encrusted ‘come-here’ set who has descended on Crozet with plenty of wealth and no feeling for country ways.”
Allegory? Maybe, but Curt operates with a strict “no spoilers” policy.
In other book news, your typically quick-witted member of the literati got all sorts of tongue-tied after WTJU alumnus Rob Sheffield’s reading at New Dominion Bookshop (though he managed to blabber out his name for a proper autograph in his copy of the excellent Love is a Mix Tape). In fact, the entire audience was relatively mum (prompting Sheffield to ask, “Who am I wearing? I’m glad you asked,” and then to reveal an old pair of Reebok Pumps sneakers), but mostly for the reason that quite a few of Sheffield’s buddies showed up.
Curt ran into his friend Elizabeth McCullough of Charlottesville Words at the reading and she informed him that a recording of Sheffield’s reading would be posted on the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, where she recently helped post a recording of local James Collins (a former editor at Time and a contributor to The New Yorker) reading from his new debut novel, Beginner’s Greek. CC has always been one for reading aloud (it ranks right up there with warm milk and foot baths, people!), and left the reading to head home and try out the Collins podcast.
But, on his way out the door, something in the New Dominion’s window caught CC’s eye. What the f…
CC challenges…
All right, John Grisham. Curt read your easily palatable, highly stimulating legal thrillers at a young age (hell, they single-handedly cultivated his love for “Law & Order”!), but now it’s time he dropped the amicus curiae act and challenged you to an interview on the occasion of the January 29 release of your latest, The Appeal, which is all over the New Do’s storefront just like every one of your previous novels.
You think you can single-handedly keep a book store in business with your clever democratization of big courtroom words? Well, CC has news for you, Grishy—court’s in session. Let’s chat. Adjourned.
Got any arts news? Are you John Grisham? E-mail curtain@c-ville.com.