This is interesting: Variety reports that I Love You Phillip Morris, a comedy in which Jim Carrey plays Ewan McGregor’s boyfriend which debuted at Sundance and shocked people who get shocked easily by leaving without a distribution deal, has been picked up by Consolidated Pictures Group in advance of its premiere in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes.
Consolidated’s Randall Miller and Jody Savin had an indie hit last year with the Miller-directed Bottle Shock, another title that premiered at Sundance but didn’t land an ideal offer there. According to a profile in Screen, after self-distributing Miller’s film the duo teamed up with Bottle Shock releasing partner Freestyle Films as well as the company formerly known as Leonidas films and, armed with equity financing, sought “to do for other peoples films what we did for Bottle Shock.”
Of course, some people might say that a Jim Carrey comedy shouldn’t need the lo-fi, grassroots treatment that netted Bottle Shock a whopping $4 million at the domestic box office. But those people probably haven’t heard that the sky is falling, we’re all going to die, and that the only recourse is to take refuge under new models and to set expectation bars low enough that they can be easily cleared.
In a bit of an about-face, after issuing a press release announcing his intention to decline an invitation to screen his Tetro out of competition at Cannes, Francis Ford Coppola has agreed to allow the film to open that festival’s non-competitive Director Fortnight sidebar. For that reason and many more, the Fortnight lineup is terribly exciting: new movies from Josh and Benny Safdie, Pedro Costa and Hong Sang Soo will screen alongside Lynn Shelton’s Humpday and the still distributor-less Sundance comedy I Love You Phillip Morris. The full lineup, including shorts, after the jump.
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Move over Milk. I Love You Phillip Morris does the gay rights movement one better, using in-your-face comedy and mainstream casting to defuse whatever anxiety the Heartland might have with guy-guy relationships — the irony being that this outrageous conman comedy from Bad Santa scribes Glenn Ficarra and John Requa was originally supposed to be directed by none other than Gus Van Sant. When Van Sant dropped out, the writers stepped in to shoot their own screenplay, resulting in a first-time film that feels more polished and professional than 90% of the studio comedies in theaters these days.
It helps that Ficarra and Requa went in with a proper script, an ingredient too frequently missing in Judd Apatow and Adam McKay’s improv-happy method, where a cocktail napkin sketch of a plot seems to be all the team needs. No doubt Ficarra and Requa allowed their leads, Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, a certain flexibility in interpreting their parts, but it’s refreshing to find a comedy that cuts together, where one scene sets up the next and ideas planted early in the film pay off for bigger laughs later on. The final gag, which shows an unmistakably phallic-shaped cloud, completes a joke set up in first-act flashbacks to Steven Jay Russell’s childhood.
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I Love You Phillip Morris is based on the true story about a Texas policeman named Steve Russell, and the relationship he falls into with fellow inmate Phillip Morris. Its Sundance premiere attracted a lot of attention because of the on-screen relationship between Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor who play Steve and Phillip, respectively.
Producers Andrew Lazar and Luc Besson, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Renqua, and stars Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor spoke at a press conference at Sundance, and discussed how Besson and Carrey met on the set of Ace Ventura, why the criminal who inspired the story will never see it, and the evolution of gay relationships on screen.
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