My version of The Godfather would open with a voice in the darkness saying, “I don’t believe in America. The American Dream is a once-beguiling fairy tale; show’s over, y’all.” But The Dream is still real to many people, and the violence that powerful private interests have done to it in the last century pains them like a kidney punch.

Gonzo journalism pioneer Hunter S. Thompson was one of the wounded, and so is Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Darkside), the far more straight-laced director of the entertaining documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. They share a proprietary sense of outrage over abuses of power they’ve witnessed in their times. For them, America’s Nixons, Enrons and Bush-Cheneys have desecrated the church, the front lawn. For all their passionate trouble-making, there’s no denying that Gibney and the late Thompson, two white males who came up through America’s hallowed institutions (Thompson through the U.S. Air Force; Gibney through Yale), are insiders.

When I went to interview Gibney about Gonzo, I remembered the film’s procession of leathery right-wingers and elites, former Thompson nemeses, who have warm, friendly things to say about “Dr. Gonzo” now that he’s dead, now that his caricature as a gun-toting drughead has endured beyond his politics. I wondered if, in the end, being inside got the hole dug any better than chucking rocks from outside.

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Above is a screencap of a ScreenDaily headline as seen in my Google Reader yesterday. I don’t actually subscribe to ScreenDaily, so I couldn’t read the story, but it appears to indicate that troubled distributor ThinkFilm’s international sales division has taken on the job of repping the troubling Down and Dirty Pictures, as well as the latest film from the guy who made Il Postino, for sale in Cannes.

This *could* be part of the answer to the question posed at the top of AJ Schnack’s second post today on THINK’s troubles: “What is Mark Urman doing in Cannes when the company has no money to pay anyone?” But it seems like the situation has become a little too dire for THINKFilm to bail themselves out on a couple of commissions.
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• The Variety headline: “Production Resumes on [David O'Russell's] Nailed,” which had been shut down due to the production company’s failure to pay union fees last week. The real story: ThinkFilm, and its financial backers, Capitol Films, are having trouble paying the bills. Not only did Alex Gibney threaten a bankruptcy lawsuit after a promised bonus for his Oscar win for Taxi to the Dark Side never materialized, but the mini studio is apparently in a such a cash crunch that they’re having trouble paying for newspaper ads for their current releases, and are expected to stay out of the buying fray at Cannes.
• Another day, another sign that I should stop eating bagels whilst reading the trades, lest I choke to death: The Weinstein Company is making a live-action feature version of Fraggle Rock.
• Steve Martin has sold a pitch to Paramount for a comedy called From Zero to Sixty, which would star he and Diane Keaton. Also, Pink Panther 3 is coming! You can exhale!

The New York Observer reports that Oscar winning filmmaker Alex Gibney is working on a documentary about Eliot Spitzer, the New York governor who was forced to resign after his predilection for semi-pricey hookers was revealed last month. Gibney is collaborating with Peter Elkind, who wrote the book that inspired Gibney’s Enron doc The Smartest Guys in the Room, to produce a book and a movie simultaneously.  Is the public really really so hungry for more information about this story, after so many weeks of exhaustive cable news coverage and loosely-related hooker tie ins across the infotainment spectrum? Is there anything left to say that wasn’t summed up by the New York Magazine cover at right?

After seven hours in the St. Louis airport, I have returned from my long, wonderful weekend at the True/False Film Festival. Below, you’ll find a recap of the films I covered whilst in Columbia, MO. But first, I want to give a shout-out to Satin and Chenille.

Before each screening at True/False, “buskers” culled from all over the country take the stage to perform while the audience is filing in. At some of the larger True/False venues, the buskers sort of fade into the background, but at an intimate space like the new Little Ragtag, the performers really get a chance to take over the room. That’s where I saw Satin and Chenille, a girl and boy (I came late, so I’m not sure which one is Satin and which one is Chenille) who did a tongue-in-cheek set of standards and love songs before the Friday night screening of Carny.

“I hope you guys love each other as much as we love love songs,” said the boy, before they launched into an acoustic guitar-fueled version of “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” They followed that up with an epic, partially-accapella version on “I’ve Had The Time of My Life,” which turned into a mass sing-a-long. It was a great moment, and maybe an audience of 50 or so moviegoers united by a Dirty Dancing reference is a little thing compared to the achievement of such a well-curated program of films, but it’s also one of the many things that sets True/False apart from larger, more impersonal festivals, and it’s definitely a reason to go back next year.

Anyway. Check out a guide to my True/False reviews after the jump.

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True/False co-director David Wilson presented recent Oscar winner Alex Gibney with the festival’s True Vision Award on Saturday, before a screening of Gibney’s latest opus, Gonzo. The film takes a comprehensive look at the zeitgeist-defining glory years and post-middle-age decline of journalist Hunter S. Thompson, whose commitment to truth through fictionalization inspired Wilson to brand him “a man who could well be the patron saint of True/False.” In introducing Gibney, Wilson noted that the festival was proud to host the director on his first stop after last week’s Oscar ceremony. When he reached the mic, Gibney corrected the record. “This is not my first stop after that event in Hollywood,” the filmmaker said. “I looked at that as a warm-up to True/False.”

The True Vision Award is designed to honor mid-career filmmakers who, in the words of Wilson, “are pushing the non-fiction form forward.” It’s a bit of a disappointment, then, that formally, Gonzo swings wildly between stylistic experimentation and rote talking-head traditionalism. Shooting on high def video to appease producers Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban, who will release the film theatrically under the auspices of Magnolia before broadcasting Gonzo on their HD Net TV, Gibney seems to struggle to transcend the standard visual tropes of the medium. The bulk of the film consists of sit-down interviews with expert witnesses, including Thompson’s son and two ex-wives, Jann Wenner and Pat Buchanan; much of the rest of the footage is culled from fiction films about Thompson and previous documentaries. When Gibney does take chances––such as when he casts actors in a home-video style reenactment set to an actual audio recording of Thompson’s visit to a Nevada taco stand, the transcription of which formed a chapter of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas––the end result is not dissimilar to something one might see on basic cable. There are inspired ideas here, but with its sometimes awkward video effects and general made-for-TV patina, the whole thing looks a little downmarket for a filmmaker of Gibney’s caliber.

Which is not to say that Gonzo doesn’t offer valuable insight into Thompson’s life, work, and, especially, the power of his celebrity. …Read more

Tomorrow morning, I’m flying to St. Louis, then taking a bus to Columbia, Missouri to check out the True/False Film Festival. The festival brings together non-fiction films from recent major festivals, world premieres, and surprise screenings. Here’s a look at a few of the films that I plan to see before heading back to New York on Sunday. If you’re showing a film at the festival or will just be there hanging out and would like to meet up, send me an email at karina AT spout DOT com, and we’ll make it happen.

Shake The Devil Off: In post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, pastor Father LeDoux tries to stop the closing of St. Augustine’s church, a vital community center thought be some to be the birthplace of jazz. See the French-subtitled trailer (the film first premiered at Locarno) here.

Carny: A work-in-progress presentation of Allison Murphy’s doc on the personal lives and relationships of carnival workers, based on Virginia Lee Hunter’s photo book. Judging by the footage shown on Carny’s website, the film, which blends Super 8 film with video, looks amazing.

Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go: A cinema verite portrait of an English school for troubled kids, Kim Longinotto’s film won a special jury prize last fall at IDFA.

Gonzo: I missed the press screening of Alex Gibney’s Hunter S. Thompson doc at Sundance, but maybe it’s for the best: recent Oscar-winner Gibney is expected to to be in attendance at Gonzo’s Saturday True/False screening.

Very Young Girls: David Schisgal’s doc on teenage prostitutes premiered last fall at Toronto. At True/False, it’s being honored as part of the True Life Fund, though which the festival choose one film per year for which to “raise funds to support and honor those who appear in front of the camera.”

• Did you hear? Reed Elsevier is planning to sell Reed Business Information, the trade magazine pubishing division that includes such titles as Packaging Digest, Test & Measurement World, and Variety! No buyers have yet expressed interest, there’s no time table for the sale, blah blah. But I hope they sell to NBC/Universal, because as I’ve said before, Variety would be the perfect subject for a reality webseries version of 30 Rock.
• “There’s been an unusually strong awards box office bump this year,” says Pamela McClintock, “With the five best picture contenders combining to gross $97 million domestically since Academy Award nominations were announced Jan. 22.” All the more incredible, when you consider that literally the day before yesterday, this was the year that nobody was going to watch the Oscars because they haven’t seen the movies.
• Alex Gibney has made a deal to have Taxi to the Dark Side shown on HBO in the coming months, as much as a year before the film is scheduled to debut on its original cable home, the Discovery Channel. For whatever reason, Discovery announced after pacting with Gibney that they had no intention of airing the film until 2009; eager to get his film into living rooms befor the election, Gibney then sought out a side deal with HBO.
• Hey, it turns out that writers were actually allowed to write during the strike! But most of them didn’t, and now there’s a lot of hand-wringing because it’s been a week since the strike ended, and there have been no deals.

• The MPAA has rejected a proposed one-sheet poster for Alex Gibney’s documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The original design incorporated an image from a news photo, of a hooded detainee flanked by two soldiers. The MPAA says since they won’t allow hoods on posters for torture porn, they can’t allow similar imagery to promote a torture doc. Distributor ThinkFilm plans to appeal.
• Brad Pitt is in talks to replace Heath Ledger, who was previously cast opposite Sean Penn, in Terrence Malick’s upcoming drama, Tree of Life. There are still few details to report about the project itself, although I guess we can reasonably deduce that whatever character Ledger was going to play has suddenly become about 14 years older.
• Midwestern exhibition chain Marcus Theaters has declined to book Sweeney Todd on any of its 49 screens, on the grounds that Paramount is asking for too much money for the prints. This seems like a late-game decision, considering the film is scheduled to open semi-wide on Friday, but Paramount says the release will be unaffected.
• Nancy Buirski is stepping down from her role as head of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, in order to create and manage “a fund to incubate and produce independent docus and fiction films.”

• From the Is That Even Legal? file: With the writers strike seemingly neverending, CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler is asking film producers “to dust off any unproduced scripts that could be turned into TV series.” The part of the story I really love? Shoddy pastiche is encouraged: “Because most movies tend to run around two hours in length, Tassler isn’t looking to produce the full scripts. Instead, she’s asking producers to identify key scenes or passages that could be filmed and cobbled together into a pilot or shorter pilot presentation.”
• China has banned the import and release of American films for at least three months. This will effectively eliminate the Chinese release of at least five major studio films, including Beowulf and Enchanted.  The Chinese government probaby, in part, is looking to lessen competition for locally-produced films; there’s also a wee chance this might have something to do with the fact that it’s kind of a crap time for U.S./China relations.
• Morgan Spurlock, Alex Gibney, and Jesus Camp directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing are among a host of documentary stars that have signed on to direct a segment of a doc based on Steven D. Levitt’s Freakonomics. The film is being co-produced by Seth Gordon of King of Kong fame.

Last night the Tribeca Film Festival announced the winners of their various jury prizes, and you know what that means: it’s time to take another look at the Tribeca 2007 Buzz-O-Meter, my oh-so scientific analysis of the pre-Fest attention derby. Here’s a rundown of which films lived up to the buzz, which films didn’t, and which come-from-behind contenders soiled the betting pool.

Buzz Fulfilled

Taxi to the Dark Side
Pre-Fest Buzz Class: Earth-Shattering
Pre-Fest Odds of Living Up To Buzz: 10:1
What Happened This Week: Alex Gibney’s torture doc won the Festival’s highest documentary prize, despite mixed reviews. At indieWIRE alone, Howard Feinstein criticized the film for covering familiar ground and dismissed it as “slow [and] right for TV”, while Anthony Kauffman allowed for Taxi’s similarities to Sundance hit Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, but said Gibney’s film “nevertheless still gripped me by the throat and never let go.”
What Happens Now: Expect a distribution deal to be announced soon.

A Walk Into The Sea
Pre-Fest Buzz Class: Earth-Shattering
Pre-Fest Odds of Living Up To Buzz: 5:1
What Happened This Week: Esther Robinson’s doc kept up a steady stream of blog buzz throughout the week, ultimately taking the “NY Loves Film” award for best homegrown non-fiction film at the Fest.
What Happens Now: With two major fest prizes in tow (the pic was also named Best Documentary at Berlinale in February), Sea continues its tour of the circuit with screenings at the Seattle International Film Festival later this month.

Still Life
Pre-Fest Buzz Class: Earth-Shattering
Pre-Fest Odds of Living Up To Buzz: 2:1
What Happened This Week: Still Life failed to make a mark on the competition (it lost out in the Narrative feature category to David Volach’s My Father My Lord), but nine months after the film’s premiere at Venice 2006, it finally secured North American distribution.
What Happens Now: New Yorker Films is planning a platform release, beginning this fall in New York City.

Buzz Deflated

Gardener of Eden
Pre-Fest Buzz Class: Earth-Shattering
Pre-Fest Odds of Living Up To Buzz: 20:1
What Happened This Week: To be fair, Eden earned a fair amount of admiration from the difficult-to-impress Tribeca press, especially considering its dubious pedigree (a highly-stylized directorial effort from a flavor-of-the-month TV star? Considering Tribeca’s track record with these sorts of films, it’s amazing anyone bothered reviewing this at all). But while director Kevin Connolly and producer Leonardo DiCaprio head back to Hollywood with their share of friendly ink, Eden failed to make an impression on the Tribeca jury. It’s also, as of this writing, without a distributor.
What Happens Now: Even as bloggers drool over the Eden poster, the pros express skepticism that the film will ever see the mainstream light of day. As Mike Goodrich put it as Screen Daily, “Leonardo DiCaprio’s [involvement] might entice buyers to take the risk, but otherwise there is not enough novelty here to distinguish a low-budget US independent in today’s brutally crowded distribution marketplace, domestically and especially overseas.”

WTF? Buzz Spoiler

The Education of Charlie Banks
Pre-Fest Buzz Class: Not on the Buzz-O-Meter. I made the crucial mistake of underestimating the directing prowess of the former tattoo artist/rapcore sensation/amateur porn star who gave it all for the nookie. My bad!
What Happened This Week: Um…Durst went to Morimoto with a guy from the New York Times while critics dismissed his film as “facile“. Then last night, out of nowhere, Alex Gibney (yeah, that Alex Gibney), Minnie Driver and the rest of the “Made in NY” jury named Charlie Banks as the best locally-produced narrative in the Festival. Weeee!
What Happens Now: One presumes Durst will manage to parlay a combination of this shot of cred and his own F-list celebrity into some sort of distribution deal. But will Tribeca–already a festival desperately in need of an identity fix–*ever* be able to regain its dignity as a showcase for important independent film, after giving The Dude From Limp Bizkit one of their highest salutes?