Peter Goldwyn, I'm Talking to You!

0 Comments POSTED: August 31, 2006 09:07 | By: Thom Powers
goldwyn.jpgHere?s Peter Goldwyn and Eda Kowan during some night of revelry at Cannes in May (my cigarette smoke wafting in front). Goldwyn and Kowan acquire films for Samuel Goldwyn Films and Lion?s Gate Films, respectively. At Cannes, they were moaning - as acquisition reps often do - over the slim pickings of titles to buy. ?Can you program something that I can actually distribute?? Goldwyn asked me.

Well, TIFF begins one week from today. All I can say, Goldwyn, is you better bring two checkbooks because this year?s documentary line-up is full of buzz-worthy titles. The Weinstein Company already scooped up Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing while everyone else was on summer holiday. Lion?s Gate is off the hook since they?re already backing Deliver Us From Evil and The US vs John Lennon. But the rest of you distributors better pull out your programme books and start studying.

We?ve got high profile laughter in Vince Vaughn?s Wild West Comedy Show; bad taste laughter with John Waters in This Filthy World; a grunge megastar in Kurt Cobain About a Son; a hip-hop gangster epic in Ghosts of Cite Soleil; a gripping murder mystery in The Killer Within; a corporate comedy in Office Tigers; a childhood comedy in Summercamp!; a shocking story of injustice in The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair?

And, oh yeah, blind Tibetan kids climbing Mount Everest in Blindsight. We?re going to hand out spoons for audiences to eat up that one.

But that?s less than a quarter of the docs we?re showing. Who knows what dark horses are waiting to break out among the stories of suburban angst, Japanese prostitution, 1970?s terrorism, shark activism, cinematic perversion and Jamaican dancehall? Who would have guessed that the hottest doc out of Sundance would be An Inconvenient Truth? (Answer: nobody).

Who could have predicted the box office successes of  Crumb, Spellbound, or The Story of the Weeping Camel? Those titles are well known to us now because some distributor took a chance on them at TIFF. What will be this year?s hot title? Stay tuned?

[thanks to ceerock for pulling this pic from my NY files]

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