By mcneditor editor@moviecitynews.com

Millennium Locates RAMPART

Posted Friday, September 23rd, 2011 - No Comments »

September 23, 2011 — Millennium Entertainment CEO Bill Lee announced today that the company has acquired U.S. rights to Oren Moverman’s critical smash RAMPART, which had its world premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. Millennium Entertainment will release the film theatrically this year with newly appointed Millenium Films’ Mark Gill consulting on the project. Moverman and acclaimed crime fiction writer James Ellroy wrote the screenplay, with Moverman directing a cast that includes Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Robin Wright, Sigourney Weaver, Steve Buscemi, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Ice Cube, Brie Larson, and Ned Beatty. The film is produced by Lawrence Inglee (Lightstream Pictures), Ben Foster, Clark Peterson and Ken Kao (Waypoint Entertainment). Paul Currie, Michael DeFranco, Garrett Kelleher and Lila Yacoub serve as executive producers. Sierra/Affinity is representing the international rights to the film, which have been sold to a majority of territories around the globe.

Officer Dave Brown (Harrelson) is a Vietnam vet and a Rampart Precinct cop, dedicated to doing “the people’s dirty work” and asserting his own code of justice, often blurring the lines between right and wrong to maintain his action-hero state of mind. When he gets caught on tape beating a suspect, he finds himself in a personal and emotional downward spiral as the consequences of his past sins and his refusal to change his ways in light of a department-wide corruption scandal seal his fate. Brown internalizes his fear, anguish and paranoia as his world, complete with two ex-wives who are sisters, two daughters, an aging mentor dispensing bad advice, investigators galore, and a series of seemingly random women, starts to unravel. In the end, what is left is a human being stripped of all his pretense, machismo, chauvinism, arrogance, sexism, homophobia, racism, aggression, misanthropy; but is it enough to redeem him as a man?

“Oren’s is one of the great new voices in American film,” stated Millennium Entertainment’s CEO Bill Lee. “In RAMPART, he has created a compelling, genre-bending picture that is not only a poignant look at one man’s fall, but also an exploration of the conflict that often lies between masculinity and redemption.”

“I first worked with Mark Gill back during his time at Warner Independent and have kept up a great relationship with him over the years,” said Moverman, who previously co-wrote and directed THE MESSENGER, and whose writing credits include I’M NOT THERE and JESUS’ SON. “I have the utmost confidence that the Millennium team will take RAMPART to great heights.” Moverman is repped by WME and NY Office.

Noted producers Inglee and Kao: “Bill Lee, Brooke Ford and Andy Gruenberg have an exciting new vision for distributing and marketing intelligent, groundbreaking cinema. They’ve shown tremendous passion for this project and we’re thrilled to have them on board.”

Vincent Scordino negotiated the deal on behalf of Millennium Entertainment. Alexis Garcia negotiated on behalf of WME Global.

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“I’m in Locarno, my movie is premiering for 1,000 people, which is nuts. A huge-ass screening, second day of the festival, 7:30pm in the sidebar competition. It’s comparable to Un Certain Regard or Director’s Fortnight. Every movie I saw in that section was fun, brilliant movies from around the world. The main competition was like Aza Jacobs and Mia Hansen-Løve, people who have been around. And I was like, “This is crazy. What am I doing inside the bloodstream of this establishment? I’m 27. I don’t belong here.” Every person I talked to there couldn’t believe what the movie cost, and then couldn’t believe when I told them what other American movies cost. We were the cheapest movie there by 65%. The next cheapest movie cost I think three times as much as we did. And they were just like, “You can’t make movies for what you’re telling us your movie cost.” And I told them, “Well, I can, I’m here, I’m in the same section as you are, so you are wrong. People think I’m lying when I tell them my budget. And also everyone likes it. I’m having a great time and people are being very responsive. Maurice Pialat’s widow was like, “I heard your movie’s good, I want a copy of it.” I’m like, “Well this is f**kin’ crazy.” Pedro Costa saw it there and really liked it and I’m like, What am I doing? I had gone in two months from screening at BAM for a lot of friends to Pedro Costa? This is the exact sentence: “Pedro Costa saw your movie. He’s a huge Jerry Lewis fan. He wants to talk to you about your movie and also Jerry Lewis.” And I thought, “I’m out of my element. I cannot have that conversation because that’s ridiculous.” Because his retrospective was happening at Anthology when I worked at Kim’s, and his Criterion box set came out when I was working at Kim’s. He can’t want to talk to me. That’s not possible. That’s not allowed. There is no world where that makes any sense!”  Or like when you wrote me to say that David Gordon Green wrote you to say, “I’m watching The Color Wheel and then I’m going to see Tree of Life.” There is no world where this is allowed! Again, somebody whose DVDs I was putting on the shelf, as, like, a hero. And it’s just like, “Oh, I’ll watch this movie.” There’s just a very fuzzy area in the middle there and it happened very quickly and I don’t understand why.  I still have a voice-mail from Sean [Price Williams, cinematographer]. I wish he was here to talk about it, but the voice-mail is a long pause and he’s just like, “I don’t want to tell you this, because it’s gonna make you so insufferable. I hate having to tell you this, but Leos Carax watched your movie and he really loves it, and he wants to meet you when he comes to New York.” I can’t live in a world where Leos Carax knows who I am, watches my movie, likes it, and thinks, “I wanna meet that guy.”
~ It’s Alex Ross Perry’s World

“I don’t know. It’s been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to make the films I really dream of making. I was in Italy a few years ago scouting for this very beautiful film I wanted to make with Richard Linklater. We worked really hard on the script for a couple of years and couldn’t get the money together. It was an expensive idea. It’s heartbreaking when that happens over and over again and then the movies that do get made are ones that have lots of women being beaten up or zombies being killed. It’s all fine, it’s all okay, but it’s hard. I remember when River Phoenix died, he was ahead of me on this curve. He kind of realized how hard it was to make serious movies. People like Sidney Lumet figured out how to walk that line, but it’s hard. And it requires patience. It’s a life’s work and I wonder if I’m up to the task.”
~ Weary, Wary Ethan Hawke

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