Honeydripper, a film by John Sayles

We’ve posted an exciting new addition to the website: John’s bios for many of the characters in Honeydripper, ranging from Tyrone ‘Pinetop’ Purvis to Zeke, the liquor truck driver. It’s a great resource for learning about the story and setting, as well as the writing process.

Individual character bios are linked off the Cast page, or you can browse through all of them in the Character Bios category. More bios will be posted in the next few days.

I stumbled across the following blog, which takes off on the Honeydripper self-release to discuss the state of distribution. I quote it in its entirety with permission from the author…

Saturday, February 02, 2008

The Digital Divide

Okay I’m a realist at heart. I wasn’t that way earlier in my career, but I am now, and I think you have to be in this business if you ever want to do some serious work, and make some money at it. I read an interview with John Sayles the filmmaker. His film Honeydripper is out now, and he and his long time creative producer & partner Maggie Renzi are promoting it. Now I find Sayles to be an extraordinary filmmaker & writer, and I admire how he gets his films done. Honeydripper is his 16th film he’s done, and the Sayles doesn’t seem to be slowing down. In the article Sayles and Renzi discuss the difficulty of getting a film financed in today’s market. Both Honeydripper and Silver City were self-financed for a little over $5 million. I don’t know where you come from, but $5 million is a lot of cash, and yet it still isn’t enough. Factor in advertising & marketing expenses and your costs go up. Renzi mentions that it is easier for filmmakers now to finance their films in Europe then here in the United States, and Sayles may just do that in the future.

If a filmmaker like Sayles is struggling what chance does a guy from Philly have? But that’s if you think of filmmaking as it was. It isn’t like that anymore. The story you tell still has to be smart, and worth hearing, but the delivery of it is different. How do you do it? How do you reach enough people to generate interest in either sales of your own DVD or downloads? That’s the million-dollar question everyone is asking including the studios. Yes even the studios are craving your dollar, and they want to know how they can get more of it. But what the studios can’t do and what you can do is instantly react to market forces. You can be quicker, and faster.

(more…)

I’d like to know who the person who wrote this is…

Acting: John Sayles has been fearless in writing about, and directing, black folks for more than three decades, and never succumbs to the white man’s curse of making us saints, savants, or simpletons. His black characters are admirably complex and grounded in a recognizable American reality. Still, even he’s never quite risen to the heights he reaches in Honeydripper, a comic drama set in 1950s Alabama amidst the beginning surge of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not just that the principal cast is black but that the movie’s world and perspective is entirely African-American. Whites—Stacy Keach as a corrupt but essentially benign sheriff, Mary Steenburgen as an aloof southern belle—are basically bystanders; the black folks run Honeydripper. Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Yaya DaCosta, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Keb’ Mo’ and newcomer Gary Clark, Jr. all give fine, nuanced performances. Sayles grounds them in a world so tactile, and allows them to play in it so well, that the Honeydripper Lounge feels like a place that exists before and after the viewer enters the movie. Glover and Dutton, playing old friends, push and pull at each other’s behavior. The gentle, but long-simmering, attractions and arguments between characters have gone on for years, and create a network that’s as close to a fully realized black southern community as I’ve seen. The actor spin and expand that web line by line, gesture by gesture, until it’s something perhaps even greater than Sayles intended—a portrait of black life in flux but also in curious stability.

http://quietbubble.typepad.com/quiet_bubble/2008/02/of-time-and-fes.html

Honeydripper opens this Friday in new theaters in Hartford, Boston and throughout Illinois and Georgia. The Release Dates page has a complete list of theaters with an interactive map. Check back regularly or subscribe to see more theaters opening on February 1st. Also, check the Special Events page for parties and appearances by director John Sayles and producer Maggie Renzi with several members of the cast.

The film is still playing in New York and Los Angeles. Here is a video showing what some of the New York opening night audience thought of it.

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Honeydripper has been nominated for two NAACP Image Awards: Outstanding Independent or Foreign Film, and Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture.

From the press release:

The NAACP Image Awards honors projects and individuals that promote diversity in the arts in television, recording, literature and motion pictures. The theme of this year’s show is “Stand Up and Be Counted.” During this crucial election year, the NAACP encourages everyone to be socially conscious and take a stand on critical human and civil rights issues.

This year, over 1,200 entries were received. From those entries, a special committee of 300 industry professionals and NAACP leaders from across the country selected five nominees in each of 44 categories. Any artist, manager, publicist, production company, record label, studio, network or publishing house could submit an entry to the NAACP Image Awards. The final selections are voted on by NAACP members, and winners will be announced during the live airing of the 39th NAACP Image Awards.

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