We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live - The Joan Didion Documentary

Started by wilder, November 09, 2014, 07:06:55 PM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

wilder



We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live traces the arc of Joan's life through her own writings, and in her own voice. Our film will tell Joan's story through passages she has chosen (and will read aloud) from her work, as her friends, family, colleagues and critics share their accounts of her remarkable life and writing.

We want to honor Joan's language, to visualize the stories she tells, to put her words to picture. Joan's obsessive memory, and her sharp and unsettling observations, will be brought to life, using music and images–rare and atmospheric film and stills that encapsulate her words. We will also be using rare archival from Joan's personal life and family history.


Directed by Griffin Dunne and  Susanne Rostock
Interviewees will include Patti Smith. Vanessa Redgrave. Michelle Williams. Cameron Crowe. Annie Leibovitz. Michiko Kakutani. Anna Wintour. Bret Easton Ellis. Scott Rudin. Jann Wenner. Graydon Carter. Allison Janney. Robert Silvers. Liam Neeson.
Release Date - October 27th, 2017 on Netflix

Trailer

wilder

Joan Didion's "Goodbye To All That" Optioned For Feature Film
via Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: Joan Didion's seminal essay Goodbye To All That was just optioned for the big screen by producers Megan Carlson and Brian Sullivan who have set up the project as the first in their new shingle, Carlson Sullivan Pictures LLC. This is yet another Didion work to be optioned as her novel A Book of Common Prayer has also been picked up for a feature treatment by Campbell Scott. Carlson and Sullivan are currently focusing in on female writer/directors to bring the essay to the screen.

The optioning of Goodbye To All That comes at a time when Didion's work is getting new life. The iconic Didion is the new face of the Celine fashion house and her nephew/director Griffin Dunne's Kickstarter -funded documentary about Didion, We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live, is in the works with co-director Susanne Rostock. Didion started as a staff writer at Vogue before becoming a prominent writer.

Goodbye To All That is an autobiography about Didion going to New York when she was in her 20s and covers the entire period of her life there until 1964 when she and her newlywed husband John Gregory Dunne moved to Los Angeles and thus, began her very well-known writing career as a journalist, essayist, author and screenwriter (with her husband).

This has been a long time coming for Sullivan. "It's been a dream of mine for years to bring this essay to the screen," said Sullivan. "I tried to option it as a student when I was at the San Francisco Art Institute and was turned down. It's been a part of my being for 40 years, and then the planets aligned and here we are. The moment has come for Goodbye To All That."

Sullivan and Carlson have had a long friendship. They used to work together at George Lucas' ILM and then at Anonymous Content before founding their new production company.Those involved in the deal was, of course, ICM Partner's Boaty Boatwright who is friends with Didion as well as the agency's Ron Bernstein who reps Didion in film, Eric M. Brooks from Bloom Hergott Diemer Rosenthal LaViolette Feldman Schenkman and Goodman on behalf of the author and Steven C. Beer from Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell, and Vassallo on behalf of the producers.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can read Goodbye To All That in full here

wilder

Gay Talese's Controversial 'Voyeur' And Joan Didion Docs On Way From Netflix
via Deadline

Netflix said it will release two documentaries Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold and Gay Talese's Voyeur, the controversial story and debunked story about a Colorado hotel owner who spied on guests. Both will premiere at the 55th New York Film Festival and launch globally on Netflix later this year.

The Voyeur's Hotel documentary was being prepped at the same time that Amblin had picked up and was developing the property as a feature film with filmmaker Sam Mendes based on the non-fiction tome. However, the story was later widely debunked as fiction and Amblin since dropped it from its development slate.

So Voyeur — directors Myles Kane and Josh Koury — follows 84 year-old journalist Talese as he reports the most controversial story of his career: a portrait of a Colorado motel owner, Gerald Foos. According to the logline: "For decades, Foos secretly watched his guests with the aid of specially designed ceiling vents, peering down from an "observation platform" he built in the motel's attic. He kept detailed journals of his guests' most private moments — from the mundane to the shocking — but most of all he sought out, spied on, and documented one thing: strangers having sex. Talese's insatiable curiosity leads him to turn his gaze to a man accustomed to being the watcher, exploring a tangle of ethical questions: What does a journalist owe to his subjects? How can a reporter trust a source who has made a career of deception? Who is really the voyeur?"

Voyeur is a Netflix original documentary, in association with Impact Partners, produced by Brooklyn Underground Films in association with Chicago Media Project and Public Record. The film will launch later this year on Netflix.

Also up for Netflix is Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, from actor and director Griffin Dunne who unearths a treasure trove of archival footage and talks at length to his "Aunt Joan" about the eras she covered and the eventful life she's lived, including partying with Janis Joplin in a house full of L.A. rockers; hanging in a recording studio with Jim Morrison; and cooking dinner for one of Charles Manson's women for a magazine story.

In the piece, Didion guides audiences through the sleek literati scene of New York in the 1950s and early '60s, when she wrote for Vogue; her return to her home state of California for two turbulent decades; the writing of her seminal and now iconic books, including Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album; her film scripts, including The Panic in Needle Park; her view of 1980s and '90s political personalities; and the meeting of minds that was her long marriage to writer John Gregory Dunne.

"How does one capture such a celebrated and prolific author while delivering something new for audiences to engage with?," asked Lisa Nishimura, VP of Original Documentaries. "Griffin does a superb job of bringing us into intimate, one on one conversations with his 'Aunt Joan', examining how her struggle shaped her work, and how her work helped shape American culture."

"It is a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to convey the life and work of my aunt, and literary icon, Joan Didion," said director/producer Griffin Dunne in a statement. "This documentary is a true labor of love and to partner with Netflix, who will help bring this to a global audience, is more than I could have hoped for when I started on this over 5 years ago. And to world premiere at NYFF, is just the icing on the cake." Mary Recine and Annabelle Dunne also produced.