Peter Bogdanovich
Dean Martin had a laid-back charm that made him successful in everything from big-screen comedies to television variety shows to live acts in Las Vegas. Filmmaker Tom Donahue explores Martin’s varied career, including his complicated relationships with Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, and others. We hear from admirers such as critic Gerald Early, actor Jon Hamm, and Hip-Hop artist RZA who testify to Martin’s enduring mystique.
Young, bestselling author Eryn Bellow concludes her bookstore tour with her agent selling film rights and closing a six figure advance for her follow-up. Headwinds arise as critics get offended by the claims that Eryn is being declared a living literary legend. The storm gathers force as the assaults gravitate from bad reviews to a fake-memoir designed to obliterate her from the field. Through the noise, Eryn attempts to write her way out of the public fray, and reclaim her voice in the minds of her readers. Along the way, she hopes to prove a happy ending is not always a bad thing.
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich and packed with rare concert footage and home movies, this documentary explores the history of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, including Petty’s famous collaborations and notorious clashes with the record industry. Interviews with musical luminaries including Jackson Browne, George Harrison, Eddie Vedder, Roger McGuinn, Jeff Lynne, Dave Stewart and Petty himself shed some revelatory vision.
Three actors in Hollywood live and love together. A director comes from New York to make a movie about actors and Hollywood.
How did America change from Easy Rider into Donald Trump? What became of the dreams and utopias of the 1960’s and 1970’s? What do the people who lived in that golden age think about it today? Did they really blow it? Shot in Cinemascope – from New Jersey to California – this melancholic and elegiac road-movie draws upon the portrait of a confused, complex and incandescent America one year after the start of the electoral campaign. That golden age has become its last romantic border and an inconsolable America is about to pull on a trigger called Trump.
Thanksgiving get-together for the eccentric Turner clan goes from bad to worse when estranged daughter Nina makes a surprise visit home for the first time in 15 years. Nina clashes with her stepmother Deborah, and sister, Lindsay, while half-brother Jacob tries to keep a massive gambling debt a secret. Meanwhile, family patriarch Poppy has his own dramatic news to share. “Cold Turkey” is a black comedy about how – despite our best efforts – we all eventually turn into our parents.
‘Smiling Through the Apocalypse’ chronicles a man whose editorial instincts produced one of the greatest magazines ever: Harold Hayes, the swinging editor and cultural provocateur of the iconic Esquire Magazine of the Sixties. Through the narrative of his son Tom, a journey ensues opening unprecedented access to some of the Esquire magazine’s most compelling talents, from Nora Ephron to George Lois, and Tom Wolfe to Gore Vidal. The film is a story of risk, triumph, and challenge told by the people that helped make the magazine great, and a son who only come to understand his father’s editorial greatness 23 years after his passing.
A newly-married couple tries to build their social life.
Nora Wilder (Parker Posey), a single, career woman works at a Manhattan boutique hotel where her excellent skills in guest relations lack in the romantic department. If it is not her loving and dominant mother (Gena Rowlands) attempting to set her up that consistently fail, she has her friend’s (Drea de Matteo) disastrous blind dates to rely on as a backup for further dismay. She’s surrounded by friends who are all happily engaged or romantically involved and somehow, love escapes Nora — until she meets an unusual Frenchman (Melvil Poupaud) who helps her discover life beyond her self-imposed boundaries.
Documentary on the effects of 1970s filmmaking.
A look at 1970s Hollywood when it was known as New Hollywood, and the director was the star of the movie.
Combining extensive filmmaker interviews and rare archival footage, Chuck Workman’s documentary takes us through the life of one of cinema’s greatest masters: Orson Welles.
A documentary detailing the effort dedicated filmmakers went through to bring Orson Welles final feature film, The Other Side of the Wind into the public conscience
A documentary focused on Orson Welles’ fifteen years spent trying to finish his final film, The Other Side of the Wind.
Surrounded by fans and skeptics, grizzled director J.J. “Jake” Hannaford returns from years abroad in Europe to a changed Hollywood, where he attempts to make his innovative comeback film.
A struggling actress inherits a bevy of colorful villains after desperation (with a touch of femme fatale) drives her and her gullible boyfriend to steal big from the Los Angeles underworld.
The Independent is a mockumentary comedy film made in 2000, directed by Stephen Kessler, starring Jerry Stiller as an independent film maker, who makes little-known B movies with titles like Twelve Angry Men and a Baby. The film spoofs independent directors and independent film. The film features Janeane Garofalo, Max Perlich, and cameos by Anne Meara, Ron Howard, Roger Corman, Peter Bogdanovich, John Lydon, Ben Stiller, Andy Dick, Fred Dryer, Jonathan Katz, Fred Williamson, Karen Black, Nick Cassavetes, Julie Strain and adult film actress Ginger Lynn. The fictional career of Morty Fineman (Stiller) is said to have made 427 films. It is not specified as to whether he directed them all, or if it refers to films produced or written by the Fineman character.
The world’s most beautiful woman was also the secret inventor of secure wifi, bluetooth and GPS communications, but her arresting looks stood in the way of her being given the credit she deserved… until now.
Longtime couple Henry and Dianne are afraid that if they finally tie the knot it would mean the end of their days as free-spirited urbanites. But a whirlwind night apart involving temptations from a duo of strangers will either make them realize why they are together in the first place or finally drive them apart forever.
Filmmakers discuss how Francois Truffaut’s 1966 book “Cinema According to Hitchcock” influenced their work.
Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, David Lynch, and Jonas Mekas, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman shows what these filmmakers and others do that can’t be expressed in words – but only in cinema.
Chronicles the six-decade career of the U.S. film industry’s most diverse, dogged and resourceful low-budget producer-director-entrepeneur, painting the soft-spoken Roger Corman as an indie cinema trailbrazer as well as an extraordinary conduit for new talent.
While researching his book In Cold Blood, writer Truman Capote develops a close relationship with convicted murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.
After his first date at age 15 ended with the girl making out with another man at a party, aspiring writer Lester Grimm has treated all his girlfriends with jealousy and suspicion. While dating Ramona Ray, paranoia gets the best of him when he discovers that her most recent ex is successful novelist Dashiell Frank. Lester begins attending the same group therapy sessions as Dashiell to learn about Ramona’s past with him.