Venues for Bill Cosby's live shows sometimes can't cancel a show on their own; Alfonso Gómez-Rejón, director of Sundance favorite "Me & Earl ..." (pictured), on why the film is so personal to him; can Pivot TV's $40 million series, "Fortitude," be a hit for the fledgling network?; "Schoolhouse Rock" creators explain its origins.
Sundance 2015: Why 'Me & Earl & the Dying Girl' director dedicated the film to his late father
One of the most talked-about and admired films that premiered at Sundance is a teen love story called “Me & Earl & the Dying Girl.”
It’s adapted by screenwriter Jesse Andrews from his young adult novel of the same name and it was directed by Alfonso Gómez-Rejón.
“Me & Earl” stars Thomas Mann as a witty and creative but isolated high school senior named Greg. He’s forced by his mother to visit a classmate named Rachel, played by Olivia Cooke, who has been diagnosed with leukemia. Needless to say, Greg and Rachel don’t just hang out that one time. The Earl in the film’s title, played by RJ Cyler, is Greg’s only other real friend.
Critics have compared the film to other teen hits such as "The Fault In Our Stars" and "The Spectacular Now," but "Me & Earl" is a wholly original story told through the lens of a director going through his own personal tragedy.
From standing ovations to audiences sobbing in unison, Gomez-Rejon’s highly personal film is generating highly personal responses. The Frame's host, John Horn, caught up with the director after he screened the film for high school students in Salt Lake City during Sundance.
Interview highlights:
How long as this movie been finished and ready to premiere?
We just finished the movie Wednesday morning [Jan. 21]. I saw the final [digital print] at 7 a.m. in New York — exhausted from pulling all-nighters just to make the deadline — and then I flew straight here. I didn't sleep for three-and-a-half days. Because I'm an introvert, the anxiety of having to go up and introduce the movie with no idea of how it was going to be received — we haven't had a test screening, only small things for friends and family — made us all nervous. But people rose to their feet and there were a lot of tears and a lot of love. Every crew member, every actor, everyone put their heart and soul into this movie, and I think people are feeling that.
And then on top of all that you spark a bidding war, with Fox Searchlight winning your movie. Are you able to separate each little distinct thing out? Or are they all blending together?
It all happened very fast, and it all happened at the same time. There's a lot of laughter too, and I think that it's about finding the balance between the bitter and the sweet; sometimes the funniest moments come from great despair, that's just the way life is. And so the idea was to try to incorporate loss into your being and be able to move on.
That's the reason for making the movie — it was for me to process something and come out of it stronger and happier. But as far as the [business] stuff, it just kind of happens and now it's in the hands of Fox Searchlight. They handle these movies quite well.
You mention processing something, and the very first credit at the end of the film is a dedication to your father. Is that what you're processing through this film, and how did that play a role in the making of it?
Thank you for asking. My dad was my best friend, the most incredible person I'll ever meet, and the funniest person I'll ever meet, and so losing him quite suddenly about a year before I read the script was making me, little by little, become a shell of who I once was and who I wanted to be. I was dying to do something personal, to say something and express myself the only way I knew how, and when I read this script I was laughing and laughing.
And then that wonderful scene with Jon Bernthal when he says, "Sometimes when people die their stories continue to unfold. You just have to pay attention." That was such a beautiful, simple idea and one that I really needed to believe at that point. And from that point I was hooked in the script.
I said, If I can make this big movie for my dad, then maybe I can come out the other end a better person. It's not about loss, but of my great love, and if I could do that with a movie then maybe I'd have something.
In this movie, Greg is challenged by the obligation or opportunity that he has to create a film for Rachel, and it's something that weighs heavily on his mind. As a filmmaker who's also making a movie for another real person, are your emotions at all similar to what Greg is going through in the film?
Absolutely. That's what was so terrifying about making the movie, and also why I needed to make the movie. If you're scared, it's always a good thing. It means you're growing, hopefully.
That's why I took it on: it wasn't going to be autobiographical, but it's about an emotion that I was trying to process. So if I could make a movie that was very, very funny, but that was hopefully an honest journey of mine that other people could relate to, I could indirectly make it about what I was going through. I could bury myself in this character and hope that, by the end, the journey would be an honest one.
What would it have meant to you if your father could have been with you in Park City to see the film?
You know, it's hard, and I'm not going to even look at you because it's such an emotional time. [laughs] This is what's so beautiful about this: we're talking about him, so his story is unfolding. The fact that we're discussing him and that people are asking me about him gives me an opportunity to tell the world how much he meant to me, and there are no words to describe that.
The only way I can really express myself is through images and movies, and hopefully people would feel the love that I have for him. And that underscores the theme of the movie: that people's lives continue to unfold. So here we are in Park City, talking about him. It's kind of beautiful.
So much of the Sundance experience is racing from screening to screening, going from interview to interview, talking to your sales agent about the deals — it's a whirlwind. And part of the message of this movie is that, in all the scurrying about — and all the worries about college applications, grades and friends — you have to stop, step back and look at what is happening to you in the moment. Are you able to do that at Sundance?
I'm constantly being reminded by the people closest me to take a step and savor every second, because this isn't the kind of thing that happens that often. And they know I've been working very hard to make a personal film and be here at Sundance.
I am trying to relish every second, and I'm surrounded by the people I made the movie with. We became so close and we're going through this phase of exhibiting this film together. I don't really worry about the [business] deal; I just know that it looks like it's going to have a chance to be seen.
Regardless of allegations against Bill Cosby, some venues must host his shows
Before the first accusations of sexual assault against Bill Cosby surfaced in November, the comedian’s promoters had booked a 39-city tour that was to run from last month through June. As women have come forward to accuse the veteran comedian, some venues have faced criticism and protests for hosting Cosby's appearances.
But in many instances, the venues may not have a choice.
Eight shows have been cancelled, while eight additional shows have been postponed indefinitely. Just recently, a scheduled Feb. 12 show in Bakersfield was postponed — ticket holders are to be reimbursed. But contracts can obligate venues to host a performer, regardless of any qualms they might have.
Some, if not most, of the shows on Cosby's tour were booked by a promoter who rented the facility. Unless the promoter decides to postpone or cancel a show, the venue is usually bound to abide by the rental agreement.
For example, Cosby is slated to perform at the Singletary Center for the Arts at the University of Kentucky on March 15. The Kentucky Kernel reports the venue is sticking by its contract with the tour:
“The developments are ongoing regarding this tour, so things could change,” [Singletary Center director Michael] Grice said. “However, at this time, National Artists Corporation is contractually obligated to Cosby’s management and intends to execute the space rental contract for the show. UK (and the Singletary Center are) legally bound to honor the space rental contract with the promoter.”
The Frame's John Horn spoke with Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert industry trade publication Pollstar, about the different factors that come into play when canceling a show after a contract has been signed.
Do venues have any recourse if the managers are uncomfortable with the act that they have rented to? What are their options?
There are two different situations. One is where the venue itself is the promoter of the show. And someone like Bill Cosby will directly deal with the performing arts centers and theaters and smaller entities like that, which is different than working with a commercial promoter like Live Nation or AEG — where they make the deal with the artist and they go in and rent the venue. Unless there’s some clause in the rental venue contract that would allow them to reject the show, some nebulous moral grounds, the venue pretty much has to honor the rental contract.
There are a lot different types of contracts for rentals between a promoter and a venue. There could be something were there’s a flat fee [for the venue], and other formulas where you might split ticket revenue with the venue itself?
There’s a lot of different flavors of deals. In the case of somebody like Cosby, typically it’s going to be either the performing arts center or venue making the arrangements directly with Cosby’s reps to bring the show in. Or there is a third-party promoter who makes the arrangements and then goes in and rents the hall.
In regards to the Cosby tour, some of the dates have been cancelled or postponed after tickets went on sale. Does the venue receive its full fee regardless, or is that subject to litigation and negotiation?
A lot of it's in negotiation. People who are concerned about hosting a Cosby show would prefer the whole thing go away. They’re not so much interested in the money as much as just the politics of the situation.
What if the venue has lost potential opportunities to book other shows? Do they scramble to find somebody who can put in that place or are they just basically out of luck?
The difficulty for a venue or a promoter who arbitrarily wants to cancel an act, especially if its booked by a major agency like [Creative Artists Agency, which represents Cosby], is it has hundreds of other acts. The last thing you want to do is upset them and they refuse to sell you their other clients.
What happens if a performer gets sick or injured the night before a show? Is there contract language that tends to cover those kinds of things?
It’s going to vary. There are acts-of-God clauses, and some artists do insure their tours for those kinds of things. But generally speaking, it’s incumbent upon the artist to make the promoter whole on a replay date ... The artist doesn’t make any money, but when they reschedule a date they factor in those expenses from the cancellation, so the promoter has a chance to get their money back.
In the sense of Bill Cosby, there are slim chances that people want to reschedule him down the road?
That’s probably true.
Does it surprise you that some venues are still going on with the show and people are showing up?
No. I suppose Cosby still has some element of his audience left. And it’s an awkward position for people to be in. Being a fan of Bill Cosby these days has some downside to it in the court of public opinion.
Neither Cosby tour’s promoter, National Artists Corporation, nor his representatives at Creative Artists Agency, would comment for this story.
'Fortitude' creator Simon Donald set out to make a show unlike anything seen before
Things are really starting to heat up for Simon Donald. His last show, "Low Winter Sun," was a two-part miniseries that aired on the U.K.'s Channel 4 and became a series on AMC. His new show, "Fortitude," represents a considerable step forward for the producer.
The show is set in a small town in the Arctic Circle — the northernmost civilized town on the planet. As Donald says, Fortitude's a town where, if anything terrible happens, there's no cavalry coming — you're on your own.
When Donald recently came by The Frame studios, host John Horn asked him about the changing nature of television, polar bears, and the genre-melding ambition of "Fortitude."
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
This show is unbelievably ambitious in terms of its look, its production design, the scope of the story — everything about this is ambitious. Did it grow to become that way, or was your goal almost to make a feature film and put it into the television format?
There were two stages, really. Originally, I had in my head a fairly small horror film idea that I was thinking of setting in the wilds of Siberia, in a deserted Russian gulag. And that was just so uncommercial that there was no chance that anybody on the planet would ever make it.
But when I pitched it to Patrick Spence, the co-executive producer on this, he said, "Well, why don't we use that idea and build a whole series? Take it to Sky Atlantic, they're looking for big, ambitious projects." And it provided us with a seed from which the whole series could grow.
One of the things that is striking in the pilot of the show is that people do not appear to be as they seem, that somebody who, in another setting, would appear to be trustworthy and reliable, might not actually be that. It almost seems as if you're creating characters for whom the audience has very specific expectations and then you want to subvert them in the most radical way.
I love doing that. It's what draws me to specific dramatic situations. The main ambition I have when I set out writing anything is that I want to write something I've never seen before; I want to write something that leaves you wide-eyed and open-mouthed because it takes recognizable characters into places that you've never seen before.
And this is an absolute gift for that kind of work, you know? It's a pressure cooker, and a crucible. And it's an extreme landscape and a wonderful background, both psychological and physical. We really lucked out in how this all came together.
Are there other shows or even movies that you were thinking about where you have this desolate world, high production value, small town, beautiful scenery, and this web of mysteries slowly being revealed?
No. [laughs] Again, I really deliberately and carefully set out to not go to places and shows that I've loved and enjoyed myself. So one of the huge attractions for me was that this is a fresh world to explore.
But there are a couple of movies that were in my head very early on that made me think, This is going to be great fun. Movies like John Carpenter's "The Thing," with the isolation, the crucible nature of the little weather station those guys are trapped on, being trapped in the freezing cold — that was one of the early ones, but apart from that I tried to get to new places all the time.
Not the original film for "Insomnia?"
Ah, well, that's a really interesting film. It's a great film. You know, there's a little bit of that in it, yes, you've caught me out there. That whole insomniac feel of wall-to-wall, 24-hour daylight. The most interesting thing when we researched it was that I went to [the Norwegian archipelago] Svalbard during the winter months, when it was 24-hour darkness. And I thought that when we got to this place, it would be gloomy, depressed, desolate, down-spirited. But it was absolutely the opposite, and that was a really interesting discovery. The people who lived there loved it when it went dark.
But you're also talking about a part of the world and a daylight/darkness pattern that is home to horror movies. So were you thinking about that as well, the way that light and dark could play into the more genre aspects of the story you're trying to tell?
Yes, absolutely, and again, what's really exciting about working in television these days is the boundaries of genre have become porous, and you can take an audience into something that feels like one genre but has elements of another. You can play with the audience's awareness of different genres, which is just such fun.
You can have them thinking, I'm watching a police procedural in a small town, but, oh my goodness, this is becoming a horror movie. I didn't expect that, that makes it scarier. I love the place for that, as well.
The show will be presented in the U.S. on Pivot, which is owned by Participant Media, a company that has a great reputation for doing programming with some sort of social relevance that means something beyond the entertainment itself. Is there a component to this show that you think is socially relevant?
Absolutely, and that's why Pivot is a great partner for us in this project. As well as the location and the scientific, natural world giving us a psychological backdrop to a thriller, the thriller allows us to go into this world where really interesting changes are happening in the real environment, and they're beginning to expose causes and suggestions for why these things are happening.
In the opening episode, the scientist who arrives there is starting to investigate what's happening in the polar bear population. Svalbard has the highest polar bear population of anywhere in the Arctic. There are 3,000 bears and 2,000 people, so that's a lot of apex predators walking around with no fencing. He's arriving because — and this is all based on research and fact — there are changes happening in this predator population in the Arctic that might have to do with change in climate or other factors that he's also there to investigate.
There's a scene of a young girl shopping at a grocery store, and in her cart she has a gun the way a kid in Southern California might have an umbrella. Guns and being constantly vigilant for the intrusion of the natural world into the man-made world are on everybody's mind, every minute of the day.
There's nowhere else like that. When we stayed in Svalbard we were walking back from the restaurant on the main street to the hotel, which is about 400 yards away, and it was pitch dark. The journey involved going across a bit of snowy wasteland, and when we left the restaurant they said, "Be careful. Bears use that as a shortcut across town, and you won't hear them coming."
And they're the most terrifying predators, polar bears. One of the things that I discovered that makes the hairs come out the back of your neck is that they don't kill their prey before they eat it. When lions kill wildebeests it's because wildebeests can actually injure them. Nothing can hurt a polar bear, so it grabs you and then it eats you alive.
And you actually put that in the show itself.
We do, yes.
Your last show, "Low Winter Sun," aired on AMC, which is a very big and established network. This show is on Pivot, which has only been on the air for a year and a half. Does that change what you think the show has to prove, or the audience it might reach? How are those dynamics different?
I'm not sure if you think about it that way while you're writing it or thinking about it. Although Pivot is a less well-established and smaller channel, I had bigger ambition for this than I did for "Low Winter Sun."
With the popularity in streaming TV and watching shows online, does it even really matter where a show airs?
That's the issue, isn't it? The way we're consuming television is in such flux and such revolution at the moment that all the old verities and certitudes are up for challenge.
Do you know how far into the future this show goes? In other words, how far out have you mapped all of the intertwined mysteries on the show? You must know in your own mind how they reveal themselves. But, as a creator, how far out do you have to think about revealing these stories?
I'm pretty sure I know where we're going up to the end of season two. Again, one of the things that's interesting about this TV show is the continuity between seasons. Television used to be made quite amnesiac, where there's a new season with a fresh slate, even though you'd recognize the characters.
The world of television doesn't do that any more; audiences are much more sophisticated than that. You have to have something that evolves across the seasons, and I think we certainly have that to the end of season two.
"Fortitude" premieres Jan. 29 at 10 p.m. on Pivot.