Photo by Alan Markfield, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Catch a first look at Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams in Sony Pictures Classics’ I SAW THE LIGHT.
I SAW THE LIGHT, the story of the legendary country western singer Hank Williams, who in his brief life created one of the greatest bodies of work in American music. The film chronicles his meteoric rise to fame and its ultimately tragic effect on his health and personal life.
Written and directed by Marc Abraham, I SAW THE LIGHT is based on Colin Escott’s award-winning biography and stars Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen, Bradley Whitford, David Krumholtz and Cherry Jones.
RatPac Entertainment’s Brett Ratner and Bron Studios’ Aaron L. Gilbert produced the film, with G. Marq Roswell and Abraham. James Packer of RatPac Entertainment and Jason Cloth of Creative Wealth Media Finance executive produced. Dante Spinotti iss the cinematographer for the film.
The film opens on November 27, 2015 in limited release, followed by a national rollout.
When Shaun decides to take the day off and have some fun, he gets a little more action than he bargained for. A mix up with The Farmer, a caravan, and a very steep hill lead them all to the Big City and it’s up to Shaun and the flock to return everyone safely to Mossy Bottom Farm.
SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE powers through visual puns, sight gags and rollicking plot twists to arrive at a hard-won realization: there’s no place like home.
As there is no dialogue from any of the characters, the music plays such an important role in the movie. That’s where the fantastic, colorful score from composer Ilan Eshkeri comes in.
Complete with the Shaun the Sheep theme, lively cues, and songs, including the award-friendly “Feels Like Summer” song, Eshkeri score is a wonderful soundtrack for a very funny film.
Eshkeri’s recent film work includes STILL ALICE, for which Julianne Moore won an Oscar, Kevin Macdonald’s BLACK SEA starring Jude Law, 47 RONIN starring Keanu Reeves, and the Oscar nominated THE INVISIBLE WOMAN, Ralph Fiennes’ second outing as a director. Ilan continues to write the music for SIMS, one of the world’s largest video game franchises. Other films include Oscar winning THE YOUNG VICTORIA, KICK-ASS and STARDUST.
Amongst his awards and nominations are a BAFTA for THE SNOWMAN & THE SNOWDOG, an Ivor Novello for THE YOUNG VICTORIA, a Wildscreen Panda Award for the score to David Attenborough’s NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM ALIVE, an International Film Music Critics Association ‘Best Original Score’ for STARDUST and a ‘Discovery of the Year’ from the World Soundtrack Awards for his first film score, LAYER CAKE. Eshkeri is currently commissioned to compose a ballet, and is completing his score to AUTOBAHN starring Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Nicholas Hoult & Felicity Jones.
Read more on what the British composer and songwriter had to say about his latest score.
WAMG: In seven years, Shaun has gone from being this little TV series to a global phenomenon. It’s been quite extraordinary. Fans will love that the theme music from the TV show can be heard throughout the film. Was the melody an obvious cue?
Ilan Eshkeri: I always thought that doing Shaun without Mark Thomas’ Shaun theme would be like doing Bond without the Bond theme. The fans, me included, know it and love it. It’s part of the world and the enjoyment of Shaun The Sheep so it would be disappointing if it wasn’t in there. I felt it was especially important to use it on the farm at the start because the film begins in the world of the TV series. As it expanded into a larger world I brought in other instruments and as it needed to become more cinematic I brought in the orchestra.
WAMG: How did you approach the score to musically tell the story of this loveable little hero without dialogue?
Ilan Eshkeri: I think it’s important to take the characters seriously. They may be sheep and dogs but their struggles and emotions are every bit as real as ours. If you don’t take them seriously on an emotional level you can’t get the audience to empathize with them. I also didn’t hold back for the children. Where music is concerned they respond to emotion in the same way as a grown up. I gave the characters strong melodies and distinct instruments. The directors and I also had this idea that characters from the farm should be played with acoustic instruments and those from the city with electric instruments; so, Trumper is an Electric Guitar, Slip an Electric Piano, Bitzer an Accoustic Guitar. I think this helps support the narrative.
WAMG: “Le Chou Brule” is a funny track and went perfectly with the restaurant scene. It has a Charlie Chaplin/Buster Keaton feel to it – right down to the piano player. What made you go with the music that combines slapstick and deadpan themes?
Ilan Eshkeri: That scene more is an homage to the silent era, so the reference is deliberate. I looked at a lot of Keaton and Chaplin films to try and get the feel for it. It was enormous fun to write, but difficult to perform because of the sheer speed of it, nevertheless the musicians had fun playing it which I hope comes out in the music.
WAMG: As Shaun is being hauled off to jail, the track for “Gaol House Blues” couldn’t have been more spot on, right down to the harmonica, and received a lot of laughs at our initial screening. How much discussion did you have with directors Mark Burton and Richard Starzak for that particular scene?
Ilan Eshkeri: They said from the start that they wanted it to be like a scene from any famous prison scene, The Shawshank Redemption, The Silence of the Lambs, so it seemed clear what to do. The harmonica was hard to get right but was performed brilliantly by Tim Carter, who is in fact the guitarist from Kasabian.
WAMG: Tell me about “The Baa Baa Shop Quintet” song where the other sheep are trying to cheer up Baby Timmy? How did the melody on that adorable scene come about?
Ilan Eshkeri: It’s the sheep singing the title song “Feels Like Summer.” The idea is that the song is from their past and is comforting to Timmy, so when the cassette breaks, Shaun tries to whistle the song and the rest of the sheep come in baa-ing it. We tried lots of different ways of doing it. More sheep like, less sheep like…we spent many hours laughing in the studio. We had to finish it early on so that the animators could animate the mouths to the recording of us singing. You can see me singing on it in the making of the music behind the scenes video.
WAMG: Your previous scores – STILL ALICE starred Julianne Moore, a potent drama about Alzheimer’s disease and how her family deals with her illness and the submarine thriller BLACK SEA set on a claustrophobic vessel. Did you write these prior to SHAUN and how do you shift composing gears between all these different types of genres?
Ilan Eshkeri: I wrote Still Alice during Shaun the Sheep, which I worked on for more than a year. It was very difficult to shift gears because when I write I take on the emotions and then express them through music, so that gear shift was tricky. I don’t know how I did it, it took a while and I can remember thinking, “how am I going to do this? Have I taken this too far this time?” But then it just happened. I guess that’s the magic of being a creative artist. Black Sea came after Shaun, although there may have been some overlap. It wasn’t emotionally as intense as Still Alice, so even though it was a completely different style, it wasn’t as difficult to take on.
Q: Among the many blink-and-you-miss-it sight gags including a Silence of the Lambs homage involving an imprisoned cat in a restraining collar that licks its lips like Hannibal Lecter and a Wolverine movie homage involving The Farmer at the hair salon. There are a lot of jokes that run through the film. What was your favorite part in composing for the movie?
Using the Brahms’ lullaby for the sheep jumping over the fence was a musical gag that I came up with. I’m really happy with that. There are lots of other small musical quotes. In the Panto Horse chase Trumper ends up skiing and I quote the theme tune from a well known British skiing show and at the end of the film when the Pigs are watching TV you can hear the theme from Aardman’s first ever programme called Morph. There’s quite a few musical gags, and although most people won’t ever notice them, they give the score a fun spirit, and that’s important for the film as a whole.
Tracklisting:
1. Feels Like Summer (performed by Tim Wheeler)
2. Humdrum Day
3. Shaun’s Plan
4. You’re Mine
5. Shaun’s Farm House Party
6. Runaway Caravan
7. Anarchy on the Farm
8. Shaun’s Mission
9. Doctor Bitzer
10. Trumper
11. Big City (performed by Eliza Doolittle)
12. Le Chou Brulé
13. Gaol House Blues
14. Beauty Parade
15. Gaol Break
16. Finding the Farmer
17. Feels LIke Summer (Baa Baa Shop Quintet)
18. Building The Horse
19. Trumper on the Scent
20. Go To Sleep Counting Sheep
21. Panto Horse Chase
22. Caravan Ride Home
23. Showdown At The Quarry
24. Goodbye Slip
25. Feels Like Summer (Instrumental)
26. Life’s A Treat – Shaun The Sheep Theme (Rizzle Kicks Mix)
Production is now underway on location in New York City on the New Line Cinema comedy GOING IN STYLE, directed by Zach Braff (“Garden State”) and starring Oscar winners Morgan Freeman (“Million Dollar Baby”), Michael Caine (“The Cider House Rules,” “Hannah and Her Sisters”) and Alan Arkin (“Little Miss Sunshine”).
Freeman, Caine and Arkin team up as lifelong buddies Willie, Joe and Al, who decide to buck retirement and step off the straight-and-narrow for the first time in their lives when their pension fund becomes a corporate casualty. Desperate to pay the bills and come through for their loved ones, the three risk it all by embarking on a daring bid to knock off the very bank that absconded with their money.
The film also stars two-time Oscar nominee Ann-Margret (“Tommy,” “Carnal Knowledge”) as Annie, a grocery cashier who’s been checking Al out in more ways than one; Peter Serafinowicz (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) as Joe’s former son-in-law, Murphy, whose pot clinic connections may finally prove useful; John Ortiz (“Silver Linings Playbook”) as Jesus, a man of unspecified credentials who agrees to show them the ropes; Joey King (“Wish I Was Here”) as Joe’s whip-smart granddaughter, Brooklyn; Christopher Lloyd (“Back to the Future” trilogy) as the guys’ lodge buddy, Milton; and Oscar nominee Matt Dillon (“Crash”) as FBI Agent Hamer.
Braff will direct from a screenplay by Theodore Melfi (“St. Vincent”), based on the film by Martin Brest. The original film starred George Burns, Art Carney, Lee Strasberg and Charles Hallahan.
GOING IN STYLE is being produced by Donald De Line (“The Italian Job”). The executive producers are Tony Bill, who was a producer on the 1979 film GOING IN STYLE, Jonathan McCoy, and Andrew Haas.
The creative filmmaking team includes Emmy-nominated director of photography Rodney Charters (“24”), production designer Anne Ross (“Lost in Translation”) and costume designer Gary Jones (“New Year’s Eve”).
Scheduled for release on May 6, 2016, the film is a New Line Cinema presentation of a De Line Pictures Production. It will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
Check out Bryan Cranston in the official poster for TRUMBO.
The successful career of 1940s screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) comes to a crushing end when he and other Hollywood figures are blacklisted for their political beliefs. TRUMBO tells the story of his fight against the U.S. government and studio bosses in a war over words and freedom, which entangled everyone in Hollywood from Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and John Wayne to Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger.
Featuring Diane Lane, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Louis C.K., Elle Fanning, John Goodman, Alan Tudyk, and Michael Stuhlbarg, the film will have its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival as a Special Presentation.
The first trailer for the movie will be released soon.
From Bleecker Street Films, TRUMBO opens in theatres on November 6, 2015.
Here’s a first look at the new poster for RIDE ALONG 2.
Kevin Hart and Ice Cube lead the returning lineup of RIDE ALONG 2, the sequel to the blockbuster action-comedy that gave us the year’s most popular comedy duo.
Joining Hart and Cube for the next chapter of the series are director Tim Story, as well as Cube’s fellow producers—Will Packer, Matt Alvarez and Larry Brezner—who will produce alongside Cube.
Universal Pictures will release the first trailer on Thursday. The film also features Ken Jeong, Benjamin Bratt, Olivia Munn, Bruce McGill, Tika Sumpter, and Sherri Shepherd.
A corrupt small-town sheriff is on the hunt for two runaway kids who took his car on a joy ride in COP CAR, an unnervingly funny thriller now available on Digital HD and On Demand, and debuting on Blu-ray and DVD on September 29, 2015, from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.
Starring Golden Globe-winner Kevin Bacon (Footloose, Mystic River) and directed by Jon Watts (the upcoming Untitled Spiderman Reboot), COP CAR is “A midnight movie blast!” according to Russ Fischer of Slashfilm.
When a pair of 10-year-olds find an abandoned cop car in a field and take it for a joyride, it seems like they could kill themselves at any moment. But things only get worse when the small-town sheriff goes looking for his missing car—and the illicit cargo he left in the trunk—and the kids find themselves at the center of a deadly game of cat and mouse they don’t understand. The only way out is to go as fast as their cop car can take them.
Grossing a high per-theater average opening weekend, COP CARwill shift into 55 theaters in 45 U.S. markets on August 14th.
BLU-RAYAND DVD BONUS FEATURE
Their First and Last Ride: The Making of Cop Car
FILMMAKERS
Cast: Kevin Bacon, James Freedson-Jackson, Hays Wellford, Shea Wigham, Camryn Manheim
Directed By: Jon Watts
Written By: Jon Watts, Christopher D. Ford
Produced By: Sam Bisbee, Andrew Kortschak, Cody Ryder, Alicia Van Couvering, Jon Watts
Executive Produced By: Lance Acord, Kevin Bacon, Jackie Kelman Bisbee, Frank Brenner, Walter Kortschak, Bill Perry, Tom Valerio
Director of Photography: Matthew J. Lloyd, Larkin Seiple
Production Designer: Michael Powsner
Edited By: Megan Brooks, Andrew Hasse
Costume Design By: Ruby Katilius
Music By: Phil Mossman
TECHNICAL INFORMATION BLU-RAY:
Street Date: September 29, 2015
Copyright: 2015 Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Selection Number: 62171305
Layers: BD-50
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Rating: R for language, violence and brief drug use
Languages/Subtitles: English SDS, French and Spanish Subtitles
Sound: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Run Time: 1 hour, 28 minutes
TECHNICAL INFORMATION DVD:
Street Date: September 29, 2015
Copyright: 2015 Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Selection Number: 62171304
Layers: Dual
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Rating: R for language, violence and brief drug use
Languages/Subtitles: English SDS, French and Spanish Subtitles
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1.0
Run Time: 1 hour, 28 minutes
The Weinstein Company has released the new poster for their upcoming film, BURNT.
The movie features an all-star ensemble cast including Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Omar Sy, Daniel Brühl, Matthew Rhys, Uma Thurman and Emma Thompson.
Chef Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) had it all – and lost it. A two-star Michelin rockstar with the bad habits to match, the former enfant terrible of the Paris restaurant scene did everything different every time out, and only ever cared about the thrill of creating explosions of taste. To land his own kitchen and that third elusive Michelin star though, he’ll need the best of the best on his side, including the beautiful Helene (Sienna Miller). BURNT is a remarkably funny and emotional story about the love of food, the love between two people, and the power of second chances.
Directed by John Wells (AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY), BURNT hits theaters everywhere on October 23, 2015.
Working across a wide range of musical mediums, Ivor Novello Award-winning and BAFTA-nominated composer Daniel Pemberton has embraced everything from large scale orchestral and choral works to innovative electronic sound design, live salsa bands to post-rock guitar line-ups.
From THE COUNSELOR, THE AWAKENING and the upcoming STEVE JOBS film, to name a few, Pemberton has delivered another eclectic score – this time Guy Ritchie’s latest movie THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., in theatres Friday, August 14.
Fans of the TV show are familiar with the theme music from composer Jerry Goldsmith, with additional music for the various seasons provided by Morton Stevens, Walter Scharf, Lalo Schifrin, Gerald Fried, Robert Drasnin and Nelson Riddle.
Now comes the film version and a 5-star, international score that exudes the 1960’s as if it was pulled from a time vault. You’re right into the film from the first musical note and drum beat.
Recently the composer and I spoke about his affection for spy movies and on being chosen by Guy Ritchie to take on the music for THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
WAMG: Guy Ritchie said of your MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. music, “The score was a very important, fundamental part of the film.” When were you brought onto the project and what did he tell you he was looking for?
Daniel Pemberton: Right from the start. I had a meeting with Guy and he asked me if I wanted to do it. I try to get involved in films as early as possible, that way you write a better, more unique score. I was involved as they edited and we worked in tandem. Guy has an amazing editor James Herbert who had some important musical ideas. I worked with them all the way through the process and we would add my music to the film in different ways.
We would do that 4 or 5 different takes. James is great. He’d say, “We’ve got the scene. Let’s try it a different way.” They’d always be pushing you to try different music that was the most surprising and exciting ones that would end up in the movie.
WAMG: It doesn’t sound like something from today – it’s as if you’re watching and listening to a score set in the 60’s from one of the composers of the time – like Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein or Jerry Goldsmith.
DP: I love 1960’s spy scores. It’s probably my favorite movie genres and I grew up with that. I spent decades absorbing every great spy score. This world wasn’t new to me. I didn’t have to do the research as it was already running through my blood.
I wanted to make it feel it was of the time and a 1960’s spy score. I wanted every one of the tracks on UNCLE to feel like the tracks on those spy scores.
WAMG: Was it a conscious decision to stay away from using the Goldsmith/ Lalo Schifrin themes from the TV show?
DP: Guy wanted a very different take on the film’s theme. He had a vision on how he wanted the film to look and sound, that you have to respect, and we had it in there for a while, but it didn’t feel right.
It wasn’t like it didn’t go with the tone of the film, Guy just wanted a new take on the music. In the same way when Christopher Nolan did BATMAN, he didn’t use the Nelson Riddle TV theme – although that would be quite funny.
But I was quite keen on getting THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. in there somewhere. There is a short little musical cameo of the TV theme that’s in there. It’s in the scene where Napoleon Solo is changing the radio channels in the car and he hears it for a second, dismisses it and keeps changing the channels. Once again the film’s editor, James Herbert, while doing the sound mixing, quickly edited it in the scene.
WAMG: The soundtrack is filled with some fabulous tracks of a Cold War, espionage score. “Escape From East Berlin,” “The Vinciguerra Affair“ and “Bugs, Beats and Bowties” to name a few. It’s what you’d expect in this type of exotic film. What did you use to get a bold, 60’s type sound?
DP: Another great thing about scores from that era, everyone was using crazy instruments. I love using crazy instruments because it gives you something new and something you haven’t heard before.
Guy loves anything that’s unexpected and unusual. There’s an amazing flute player, Dave Heath, who we used a lot. He plays a lot of the crazy sounds you hear in the “East Berlin” track.
We’ve got a lot of percussion, organs and a Marxophone, which is a bit like a zither and a cymbalom which is like a giant zither, famously used by John Barry on THE IPCRESS FILE. It gave it a classic, Cold War sound.
We’ve got vintage guitars and genuine old 1960’s harpsichords. We had two harpsichords – an old classical one and a 60’s boxy one. The classical one had this beautiful range, but didn’t have the punch or the attitude that the 60’s one did and it had such a great sound to it, so we used more of that. That harpsichord sounded brilliant. We also put it through an old 60’s mixer which compressed everything a bit more heavily.
WAMG: The percussion section on “The Drums of War” is just insanely great.
DP: That was the result of a crazy evening in the edit suite. Everyone was pleased with the cue, but felt like we’d heard that before. Everyone on this film loves mad percussion and wanted mad bongos, so it was 7 or 8 in the evening and they tell me there will be a first screening the next day and to just throw in some big percussion. I went home and worked all through the night until 3 in the morning and pretty much what I wrote that evening is in the film now. It’s all the different drums playing the different tempos together as they’re going in and out of time.
WAMG: What’s going on in the “Take You Down” track? Is it Vocals run through a mixer or purely instruments?
DP: That’s vocals run through really heavy distortion. I really enjoy that track and it was great to write crazy bold cues. My favorite kinds of movies are ones where you don’t know what’s going to happen – where you’re ready for a surprise. And when it’s accompanied by crazy music, you go, whoa what’s that?! It’s a great moment when it enters the movie and it was a really fun track to do. We did that cue with two drummers playing at the same time and that’s why it sounds so big – we wrote each drummers part full out and had them play it together at Abbey Road and it sound huge.
It’s very much like the “Drums of War” track where you have this polyrhythmic music to create these crazy sounds.. It’s chaotic in the middle and eventually comes back together at the end. It’s very complicated to do but sounds very cool.
WAMG: The songs mixed throughout are fantastic! Nina Simone, Louis Prima, Tom Zé and Valdez – you could almost swear the film was made 50 years ago. The selection of these songs just makes the soundtrack even more fun to listen to.
DP: I’m a massive soundtrack album geek and anytime I put a soundtrack out, I’ve gone over every single detail down to the pauses between each track. Those songs are a big part of the film and they had to be on the album. “Jimmy, Renda se” by Tom Zé and Valdez was one of the first songs we added and Guy loves that song – he hadn’t heard it before. None of the songs feel out of place alongside the score.
WAMG: During the action sequences and transitions, there are kaleidoscope split-screens, where the score is very important. How did you approach these?
DP: There’s a scene where the screen is starkly divided into eight parts, along with these cutting sounds effects, and I wrote in the bongos cues, so as the screens divides, you hear the bongo player’s music as an added sound. We spent a lot of time trying to get details like that spot on so it feels really cool.
WAMG: You previously worked with Ridley Scott on THE COUNSELOR, which was a very modern score. Depending on the genre, how much do you like to experiment and come up with new sounds for your scores?
DP: Every film I do, I want to come up with a unique sound for that world. When I get hired, people want my take on the story and on the world, and I often come up with different ideas very early on and usually they’re not like the film.
I did another project with Ridley called “The Vatican” where I used Italian choirs with organs and hip-hop breaks. I love coming up with different ideas of how to approach a film and I often start with the main cue because there are so many different ways to tell a story. I want it to be unique and its way more work and way more grief, but when you get it right it’s exciting because when I go to see a movie, I want to think anything could happen here – not just two hours of an obvious sound.
WAMG: Your next score is for Danny Boyle’s STEVE JOBS and it was just announced that the movie will close the 59th BFI London Film Festival. You said you like your scores to be unique, so will it have a melodic motif with a technological sound like a computer or from the world of Steve Jobs?
DP: I’m not telling. (Laughs) We record that this week at Abbey Road and we’re doing some very different chords and cues than on any previous film. The only thing I’m allowed to say is that the Apple slogan from 1998, “Think Different,” has a big part.
From WaterTower Music, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. soundtrack is available to order at iTunes and Amazon. The track list is below.
1. “Compared To What” – Roberta Flack
2. Out Of The Garage
3. His Name Is Napoleon Solo
4. Escape From East Berlin
5. “Jimmy, Renda se” – Tom Zé and Valdez
6. Mission: Rome
7. The Vinciguerra Affair
8. Bugs, Beats and Bowties
9. “Cry To Me” – Solomon Burke
10. “Five Months, Two Weeks, Two Days” – Louis Prima
11. Signori Toileto Italiano
12. Breaking In (Searching The Factory)
13. Breaking Out (The Cowboy Escapes)
14. “Che Vuole Questa Musica Stasera” – Peppino Gagliardi
15. Into The Lair (Betrayal Part I)
16. Laced Drinks (Betrayal Part II)
17. “Il Mio Regno” – Luigi Tenco
18. Circular Story
19. The Drums Of War
20. Take You Down
21. We Have Location
22. A Last Drink
23. “Take Care Of Business” – Nina Simone
24. The Unfinished Kiss
Henry Cavill stars as Napoleon Solo opposite Armie Hammer as Illya Kuryakin in director Guy Ritchie’s action adventure THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., a fresh take on the hugely popular 1960s television series. Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, it centers on CIA agent Solo and KGB agent Kuryakin who are forced to put aside longstanding hostilities and team up on a joint mission to stop a mysterious international criminal organization bent on destabilizing the fragile balance of power through the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology.
The duo’s only lead is the daughter of a vanished German scientist, who is the key to infiltrating the criminal organization, and they must race against time to find him and prevent a worldwide catastrophe.
The film also stars Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki, with Jared Harris and Hugh Grant.
Opening in select theaters on August 14, here’s a look at the second trailer for director Noah Baumbach’s MISTRESS AMERICA.
In MISTRESS AMERICA, Tracy (Lola Kirke) is a lonely college freshman in New York, having neither the exciting university experience nor the glamorous metropolitan lifestyle she envisioned. But when she is taken in by her soon-to-be stepsister, Brooke (Greta Gerwig) – a resident of Times Square and adventurous gal about town – she is rescued from her disappointment and seduced by Brooke’s alluringly mad schemes.
MISTRESS AMERICA is directed by Noah Baumbach from a script written by Baumbach and Greta Gerwig.
Gerwig says, “I’m a fan of the kind of ’80s movies in which some amazing girl drags “the square” into a crazy underground. They go on a big adventure and all this happenstance tumbles in. We wanted that feeling. I love the energy of those movies and I felt like I hadn’t seen one for a long time.”
“Movies like SOMETHING WILD, AFTER HOURS and DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, in which the protagonist is taken on a wild ride by an alluring stranger, were an influence. These were movies I saw when I was a teenager and they had a big effect on me,” adds Baumbach.
Director Noah Baumbach on the set
According to producer Lila Yacoub, Baumbach has taken an increased interest in telling female stories in recent years, especially since the success of FRANCES HA. “Noah really loves women,” she says. “There’s usually a strong woman in his stories, which is one of the things that attracts me to his work. I’m thrilled that he’s writing characters like Tracy and Brooke. I completely respect him as a filmmaker and as a writer. I’m so proud to be part of this little family that we’ve created. He brings a unique perspective to filmmaking.”
MISTRESS AMERICA focuses squarely on the evolution of the friendship between two women, says Gerwig. “It is unusual to see a story about women that has nothing to do with their relationships with the men in their lives. That was a parameter we very deliberately set for ourselves.”
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