On Monday night, The Hollywood Reporter published a story questioning Focus Features’ marketing plan for Milk, Gus Van Sant’s biopic on the country’s first openly gay elected official who was famously assassinated by a colleague in the late 70s. The story suggested that by “keeping its awards contender out of fall fests and heavily restricting media screenings,” the studio is deliberately trying to avoid any kind of partisan publicity (positive or negative) that could damage the film from reaching a mainstream audience.

Focus chief James Schamus was, apparently, pretty upset by the story, particularly considering that it was timed to hit the web just under 24 hours before Milk’s premiere, a benefit screening at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. He’s written a letter to the editor of THR, which Eugene Hernandez posted on his blog last night before the Milk screening. The gist: Milk wasn’t ready in time for fall festivals, they don’t have enough prints yet to do widespread screening but they will, the entire internet has been going batshit crazy for the trailer (”probably the most inspiring piece of movie marketing about genuine (as well as out) politics ever created”) for over a month, and not only has Focus not avoided political attention but they’ve bought tons of ad space on The Huffington Post and NPR.

If the issue was whether or not Focus is actively trying to create “noise” around Milk, then Schamus’ defense seems solid enough to lead to the conclusion that THR got that part of the story wrong. But the issue might not be the quantity of noise, but the brand of noise.

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After a long layover at Port Authority spent reenacting scenes from Keane (see what I did there? I went for the obscure but creepy reference, instead of the topical, populist one) I took the bus up to Woodstock, NY this weekend, to spend about 24 hours at the Woodstock Film Festival. I finally saw Sean Baker’s Prince of Broadway, an improvised family dramedy which plays something like a Hollywood remake of L’enfant set in the bootleg luxury trade on the streets of New York; it won big at LAFF and took Woodstock’s top narrative prize on Saturday night. The awards ceremony where Broadway was honored was indie star-studded, surprisingly casual and fun, and –– maybe unsurprisingly––littered with references to the ongoing presidential election. “Kevin, we’re giving you the Maverick Award,” screenwriter Ron Nyswaner said at the start of the show to director Kevin Smith. “That means we think you’re qualified to be the leader of the free world.”

You’ll find some of the night’s most memorable quotes, from Smith, Ang Lee and others, below the jump. Above, you’ll find video of James Schamus’ Trailblazer Award acceptance speech, and the tail end of his introduction by Lee.

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• Pamela McClintock at Variety notes that the fact that Universal is opening two comedies in two weeks––Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Baby Mama––is a sign that the release schedule is over-crowded with comic content. Related: Judd Apatow gets yet another job.
• James Schamus will adapt the memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, Concert, and a Life, for Ang Lee to direct.
• MGM has acquired distribution rights to the Simon Pegg comedy How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, which co-stars Kirsten Dunst.

• Oh, good: Indiana Jones and the Dorian Grey-ing of Harrison Ford Into Shia LaBouf will premiere at Cannes! Maybe. No one’s seen the thing yet, but according to Variety, “The cast, which includes Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf and Cate Blanchett, have already been notified to pack their black-tie outfits for the French Riviera’s red carpet unspooling even though the fest has yet to confirm its official lineup.” Because celebrities pack suitcases 10 weeks in advance.
• Theatrical exhibition conference ShoWest will confer a special “Freedom of Expression Award” to Ang Lee and James Schamus, for releasing Lust, Caution with an NC-17 rating instead of cutting the film to get an R. National Theater Owners president John Fithian is inexplicably trying to push studios to revitalize the NC-17 market, even though even Lust, Caution made just under $5 million domestically, and in fact was a super-hit in China…where it was cut to appease the censors.
• Semi-Pro, which opens today, suddenly bears the dubious distinction of being the final release from New Line before the studio is subsumed into the clusterfuck that is Time Warner. It may not exactly send the studio out with a bang: although the comedy is said to be “tracking well among males under 25″ it’s nonetheless expected to “open well lower than Ferrell’s most recent films.”