• The Midnight Express snack stand from Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express has been turned into a 7-11. Wouldn’t it be amazing if they did a promotion with that film the way they turned US stores into Kwik-e-Marts for The Simpsons Movie?
• Beautiful Losers producer Jared Moshe links to images of the 22 Nike Dunk Hi models produced in connection with the doc’s release.
• The Spongebob angle makes this movie-related: “There’s a new exhibit at Coney Island that’s fun for the whole family: the “Waterboard Thrill Ride.” Greeted by Spongebob exuding “It don’t Gitmo better!” you walk in to peer through bars at dude in dark sweats leaning over another guy in an orange suit, his face wrapped in a towel. Slip a dollar into the machine, and for 15 seconds, “Dark Hood” pours water into Orange Jumpsuit’s nose and mouth while he convulses.”

So: Sidetrack Films, the producers of Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard’s doc Beautiful Losers (see our SXSW coverage here), have signed a deal with Nike to sponsor the film’s release in five cities, starting with its New York premiere this Friday.

Like Mark Rabinowitz, who wrote a post on indieWIRE’s new Docsider blog pondering What This All Means in relation to the state of documentary film distribution, I have mixed feelings about this.

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• Disney unveiled its through-2012 animation slate this week, with projects including “a sequel to Cars [and] an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story,” and a commitment to releasing nothing but digital 3D.
• Blair Witch Project star and Beautiful Losers co-director Joshua Leonard will direct Danny Huston and possibly 50 Cent in Spectacular Regret, a Crash-esque drama about “four Angelenos struggling to overcome past events.”
• Chloe Sevigny and Zooey Deschanel will star together in Divorce Ranch, a period indie written and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and “set in Nevada just after WWII, when a quickie divorce could be granted after residency was established.”

In the early 90’s a small group of kids gravitated to Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery in New York City. It wasn’t so much a gallery as hang out spot that used to be a storefront, but to pass time this group–loosely knit through skateboarding and punk music–experimented creatively. They were the dispossessed losers of suburban America and as Mike Mills, whose one of them, says, “If you’re not dispossessed, why make art? Why try to save your life by making something?”

Having fun creating only to look back and realize that creating was your survival, then having to negotiate getting back to that fun spot so you can survive is the path of Beautiful Losers. Aaron Rose’s documentary is a painfully funny coming-of-age story about some of today’s most influential artists and it follows one rule: Don’t take us seriously. …Read more

What I didn’t expect from Beautiful Losers was how much fun it would be to watch a documentary of the most unpretentious, unmoody and successful artists of my generation. All the artists (Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Stephen Powers, Thomas Campbell, Margaret Kilgallen, Shepard Fairey, Jo Jackson, Ed Templeton, Geoff McFetridge, Chris Johanson, Barry McGee, Aaron Rose) seem like they’re unconsciously competing to steal the show and win biggest laugh (Harmony wins, in my book). But the best part of Aaron Rose’s movie is how it transcends its genre and becomes a coming of age movie like I’ve not seen in a doc before.

Aaron Rose is the director, but his legendary Alleged Gallery was the incubator for these artists in the early 90’s. I talk to him about being at the center of this scene back then and what it meant for him and his buddies to “grow up.”

 

 SXSW 2008: Aaron Rose interview [7:39m]: Play Now | Download

SXSW 2008: Aaron Rose interview
(Written transcript after the jump) …Read more