Be Kind, Rewind

[MacGuffin]

Black hits 'Rewind' for Gondry
Source: Hollywood Reporter

NEW YORK -- Jack Black is set to star in Michel Gondry's eccentric comedy "Be Kind Rewind," playing a junkyard worker whose brain is magnetized, destroying every tape in his friend's video store and forcing the pair to remake the lost films.

Focus Features International has nabbed international sales rights to the under-$20 million Partizan production, which begins a two-month shoot Sept. 6 in New York.

In the film, Black plays Jerry, a man whose headaches lead him to believe his brain is melting. His brain is magnetized, leading to the unintentional destruction of movies in his friend's store. In order to keep the store's one loyal customer, an elderly lady with signs of dementia, the pair re-creates a long line of films including "The Lion King," "Rush Hour," "Back to the Future" and "Robocop."

Producer Georges Bermann of Partizan said Gondry, who has partnered with Partizan since 1989, came to him in November with several ideas. "Michel is a super-fast writer," Bermann said. "He handed in a draft in three weeks. Focus was interested the second they heard the pitch and made the deal within a week."

 
"We are thrilled to be working with Michel Gondry again," FFI president of sales and distribution Alison Thompson said. "We are especially excited that Jack Black, whose comic genius is perfectly placed within this imaginative script, has been brought into the fold."

Focus released the Gondry films "Dave Chappelle's Block Party" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

No domestic or international distribution deals have been lined up for the film, which FFI plans to launch into the international marketplace this month at the Festival de Cannes

[pete]

"I know EVERYTHING!"

[MacGuffin]

NL, Gondry push 'Rewind' for Black
Source: Hollywood Reporter

New Line Cinema has picked up domestic rights to writer-director Michel Gondry's newest project, "Be Kind Rewind." Jack Black is attached to star in the film, which is being produced by Georges Bermann, Gondry's partner in Partizan Prods. Black will portray a junkyard worker who attempts to sabotage a power plant that he believes is melting his brain. But when his plan goes awry, the magnetic field that he creates accidentally erases all of the videotapes in a local video store where his best friend, Mike, works.

[grand theft sparrow]

I have tremendous faith in Gondry and the idea of Jack Black remaking Robocop already makes me laugh... but this sounds like the joke won't sustain a feature.

[MacGuffin]

New on video: Dunst eyeing 'Rewind' mode
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Kirsten Dunst is in negotiations to join Jack Black in Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind." The move would reunite her with Gondry, who directed her in 2004's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

The story, by Gondry, follows a junkyard worker (Black) who attempts to sabotage a power plant that he believes is melting his brain. But his plan goes awry and the magnetic field he creates erases all of the videotapes in the local video store where his best friend works. Fearing that the mishap will cost his friend his job, the two team to keep the store's only loyal customer -- a little old lady with a tenuous grasp on reality -- from realizing what has happened by re-creating and refilming every movie that she decides to rent.

Georges Bermann, Gondry's partner in Partizan Prods., is producing. Shooting is scheduled for late September.

Guy Stodel and Toby Emmerich will oversee for New Line Cinema, which is releasing the movie domestically.

Dunst is shooting "Spider-Man 3" and will fly to France next week for the premiere of "Marie-Antoinette," which opens in the U.S. in October. She is repped by WMA and Management 360.

[MacGuffin]

What's Jack Black's Role In Michel Gondry's Next Film? Pick One ...
Source: MTV

Kirsten Dunst is in talks to join wacky 'Be Kind Rewind.'

Imagine Jack Black and Kirsten Dunst starring in a movie together, directed by the quirky mastermind behind "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

Now, imagine dozens of movies like that.

That's the winning concept of "Be Kind Rewind," the bizarre-sounding script that has Dunst in negotiations to reunite with "Sunshine" director Michel Gondry. Written by Gondry, the film will follow a junkyard worker (Black) who is convinced that a local power plant is gaining influence over his brain. When he attempts to sabotage the plant, the resulting magnetic field erases all the tapes in the video store where his best friend works.

Afraid that the mishap will cost the friend his job, the two become determined to maintain the membership of a little old lady who is the store's only loyal customer. Enlisting the help of anyone they can find, the group sets out to re-enact every movie that she decides to rent — including "Robocop," "The Lion King" and "Back to the Future" — filming each one themselves and passing it off to her as the original version.

Gondry, sought-after by actors and musicians alike for his unique take on the world, rose to prominence directing the Lego-filled music video for the White Stripes' "Fell in Love With a Girl" and several Björk videos, starting with "Human Behavior." He recently directed the Dave Chappelle concert film "Block Party," and will soon release his trippy "The Science of Sleep," starring Gael García Bernal.

Dunst and Black have a long line of high-profile projects in the works, many of which will be pushed back by "Rewind," if all goes according to plan. The film is expected to start filming in September, with at least one more major casting announcement due soon.

[Pubrick]

wacky

quirky

trippy

Source: MTV SATAN

[MacGuffin]

Glover minds 'Rewind' store
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Danny Glover is in final negotiations to star in Michel Gondry's "Be Kind, Rewind" for New Line Cinema.

Gondry wrote and will direct the story about a man (Jack Black) who becomes magnetized at a local power plant. He accidentally erases all the videotapes at the local video store owned by Glover's character. Instead of telling the stubborn, old-fashioned store owner what happened, Black and his friend decide to re-create the films using the townspeople as actors.

The film is produced by Georges Bermann, Gondry's partner in Partizan Prods. Guy Stodel and Toby Emmerich are overseeing for the studio.

New Line Cinema has domestic rights, and Focus Features International will handle distribution abroad.

Focus released the Gondry films "Dave Chappelle's Block Party" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

Glover also is signed on to Antoine Fuqua's action drama "Shooter" at Paramount Pictures and next appears in DreamWorks' "Dreamgirls" in December.

"Rewind" is set for a late-September start.

[MacGuffin]

Mos Def Tells You To "Rewind"  
Source: Dark Horizons

Mos Def has been added opposite Jack Black in Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind" reports Blackfilm.

In the film, Black plays Jerry, a junkyard worker whose headaches lead him to believe his brain is melting. While trying to sabotage a local power plant, he becomes inextricably magnetized and leads to the unintentional destruction of movies in his friend's video store.

In order to keep the store's one loyal customer, an elderly lady with signs of dementia, the pair re-creates a long line of films including "The Lion King," "Rush Hour," "Back to the Future" and "Robocop."

Focus Features will release the film, which starts shooting in New York for two months starting September 6th.

[modage]

Dunst Off Rewind?
Source: JoBlo

BE KIND REWIND, the comedy that will star Jack Black trying to recreate every movie in a video rental store, is set to begin filming in my Jersey backyard in a few weeks and the cast is starting to take shape. Director Michel Gondry (ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND) was originally in in talks with Kirsten Dunst and Dave Chappelle to co-star but both appear to have left the project. The two have been replaced by relative newcomer Melonie Diaz and Mos Def. The two actors will play the workers at a video store whose tapes are accidentally erased by Black's character who gets magnetized trying to sabotage a power plant. The three hatch a plan to recreate the movies rented by the store's only loyal customer. Mia Farrow has signed on to play the store's customer with Danny Glover taking on the role of the store's owner. As I said before, filming is scheduled to begin in Passaic, NJ on September 5th. Black can be seen next in another New Line comedy TENACIOUS D AND THE PICK OF DESTINY.

[modage]

In the Future with Michel Gondry
Source: Edward Douglas

When film historians look back at the first decade of the 21st Century, one of the filmmakers who will be remembered as a true innovator is French director Michel Gondry, who first started getting attention after his second collaboration with Charlie Kaufman, 2003's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Gondry's latest film, The Science of Sleep, is the closest a filmmaker has come to capturing the feeling of being in a dream on film.

ComingSoon.net spoke with Gondry a few months ago for the concert film Dave Chappelle's Block Party, and when we had another chance to talk to him, we wanted to find out how things were going on his next few projects.

Since speaking to him a few months ago, Gondry signed onto his next movie as writer and director, the New Line comedy Be Kind Rewind starring Jack Black, Kirsten Dunst, Danny Glover, Mos Def and Mia Farrow. Considering Gondry's growing popularity in Hollywood and this being a major studio release, we wondered whether the movie would still have Gondry's normally quirky sensibilities. "I'd like to have a big blockbuster, but I think I can't help myself," he admitted. "It's the story of about these two guys who erase all the films at a video store, so they reshoot the films themselves, but there is another layer. It's what I started with Dave Chappelle and 'Block Party' about community and different ethnicities. These guys, by recreating these films, bring the community back together, they give life to a city that was a little dead. So that's my message, and they want to shoot this film about this guy, Fats Waller, who they pretend to have lived there but never did, and he becomes a hero that has kind of been invented by them. Maybe I should not tell you too much about the story. Basically, they do their own story but reinvent it."

Does this mean that Black will be spoofing the various movies he is trying to remake? "Well, it's not spoofing," he replied. "They're trying to do these movies, first just so that people can see the tapes that they erased, so they do it seriously, but obviously, they're only two and then they have their mechanic dressed as a girl, so it's going to be comical."

And how have things been going, working with Jack Black to prepare for the movie? "I met [Jack] years ago and we kind of evolved separately," Gondry told us. "Obviously, he's a big star now, but we started around the same time, so I'm pretty aware. We started to rehearse already and it's going great."

Since Gondry just finished working with Dave Chappelle, one of the country's most popular comedians who's well known for his movie spoofs, we wondered whether Gondry considered having Chappelle play a role in Be Kind Rewind. "We talked about it and then he didn't want to do a movie, so Mos Def is doing it," Gondry explained. "But it's not like he said yes and then he said no. We talked about it and then he explained to me that he didn't want to do a movie at this time. I'd like to, but I'm not sure that he's willing to be in a movie. Unfortunately for him, he didn't get to do movies that he liked very much, so he's not really crazy about moviemaking. I think he got more out of doing his TV show and doing stand-up comedy. He's always going to return to stand-up because he likes this contact with an audience, and he also doesn't like to be bothered by someone telling him what to do to be funny. Maybe he's already talking to Spielberg for a project, I have no idea."

For a long time, Gondry has been attached to direct a movie based on Rudy Rucker's novel Master of Space and Time, and earlier this year, it was announced that comic artist Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Art School Confidential) would be writing it. When ComingSoon.net spoke to Clowes, he thought that it would be a hard movie to adapt, and Gondry agreed. "It's very hard, because all of the reasons why we both like the book are reasons why the studio would not do a movie," he said. "It's quirky, it's unpredictable, it's absurd, it's funny, and it's not slick at all. It's rough and grotesque. It's like if you would try to do 'Superman' now the way it was done in 1978 or 'Superman III,' for instance, which was really f*cked up and quirky with Richard Pryor. To me, that is the only superhero movie I liked. I don't like the serious superhero."

Gondry mentioned that writing the film is kind of on hold until he has a chance to meet with the studio to discuss it. "Right now I'm busy doing this one, so I'm going to see, but definitely, I want to work with Dan Clowes, and maybe we'll do something else together. He's a really great guy."

The Science of Sleep opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, September 22. You can read more with Gondy about this fascinating film closer to that date.

[MacGuffin]

Jack Black Playing Muhammad Ali? Hit 'Rewind' And You'll See
Actor 'remakes' 'When We Were Kings,' 'Ghostbusters,' 'Driving Miss Daisy' in Michel Gondry's demented comedy.
Source: MTV

BEVERLY HILLS, California — It may have been as a member of Tenacious D that Jack Black rose to stardom, but it's his role in a remake of "RoboCop" that could launch the actor to even further heights. Or maybe "Ghostbusters," some say. Even his work as Muhammad Ali in the documentary "When We Were Kings" could turn heads. And that's not to mention his performance as a black chauffeur in "Driving Miss Daisy."

If you have a hard time believing Black would take on any of those roles, try wrapping your head around this: The "remakes" are all part of his next flick, "Be Kind Rewind," the demented story of a man whose magnetized brain erases every tape in his friend's video rental store. That means the two have to quickly refilm every movie in order to satisfy the store's most loyal customer.

"There [were] tons of movies that we did," Black said of the upcoming Michel Gondry-directed film. "We did 'When We Were Kings,' the documentary about Muhammad Ali — I play Muhammad Ali, strangely. We did 'Superman.' I probably shouldn't say that ... we had to change the name of it to something else — 'Incredible Flying Man,' I think. We did 'Ghostbusters,' we did 'Robocop,' we did 'Driving Miss Daisy,' just to name a few."

For someone who suddenly found himself as the pseudo star of some of Hollywood's best-known classics, Jack Black did surprisingly little research, he admitted.

"We were under strict orders not to watch any of the movies again, and if we had not seen it, [not to] see it," he explained. "[Gondry] wanted it to look that way, [like it] was based on the commercials that you had seen of the movie. Because there was no time in the movie for us to do any research, he wanted to keep that consistent with us as actors — to not have time to research the movies we were remaking."

Call it controlled anarchy or planned spontaneity — contradictions that Gondry purposively fostered on set, Black said.

"He is a very spontaneous director and super-creative on every level," Black explained of the "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" director. "I guess a lot of the time I felt like nobody knew what was going on except for him. I think he likes to create a little bit of chaos on the set and then, at the last minute, focus it."

[MacGuffin]

Our first review of Michel Gondry's BE KIND, REWIND starring Jack Black and Mos Def!!!
Source: AICN

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Yes, the review is very positive and yes, the reviewer wants to be called "Plant! Plant!" but having read the script for this, I tend to believe everything "Plant! Plant!" says. It sounds like what I read was translated perfectly to the screen. The script was incredibly sweet and funny and it sounds like that's exactly what we'll end up with the finished film. Enjoy this very early look at Michel Gondry's BE KIND, REWIND!

Hey, I saw a test screening of "Be Kind Rewind" last night in Pasadena and thought it was great. It's not what I expected, because the film's premise is a little one note. For anyone not in the know, it's about Jack Black and Mos Def as two guys from a run down little vhs video store who accidently expose their library to magnetism, and destroy all their tapes. In an effort to keep from going under, they decide to remake a bunch of the films using a camcorder and a little elbow grease to keep renting them out to people.

Michel Gondry hasn't made a movie like this before, I'm so used to his romance films and focus on what makes our minds work. This is as close to a "studio picture" as he's going to make, but there are no fart jokes here. It's very classy and weird, but mainstream audiences can definetly get into it. Jack Black is pretty standard Jack Black, but Mos Def is great. He and Black's friendship is very fun to watch and is remiscent of the best onscreen duos we've seen in the past. There's a lot of physical comedy, probably inspired by the old time Laurel & Hardy type shorts from the 30's. If they still made those kinds of shorts today, this plot could fit perfectly for one.

I was surprised that Danny Glover was in it. He plays the owner of the video store. It's no wonder he doesn't want to make any more Lethal Weapon movies and wants to make small stuff like this. He's really great in it, and it's probably my favorite role he's had so far. The recreations of the movies were classic Gondry makeshift lunacy. I wish they would've shown more of them, but he seemed to know when enough was enough. The scene where they remake GHOSTBUSTERS will have film geeks rolling in the aisles, this I will promise you. It's the hardest I've laughed in the theater since BORAT. The ending was great, I thought from it's build up that it was going to fall flat, but ended up being the sweetest part of the film.

It's not a think piece, but it left me very satisfied. I think for the hard core film geek, they'll get a little bit more out of the movie because the love for cinema in this movie isn't portrayed as a casual hobby, or a prentious academic analysis. It's more about the fun that comes from the making and watching them. It doesn't have a release date yet, but I think it might come out this summer. The version I saw was pretty complete.

If you post this, call me "PLANT! PLANT!"

[MacGuffin]

From MTV:

By now, you might know the setup for "Be Kind Rewind," the new Michel Gondry-directed flick about two video store clerks (Jack Black and Mos Def) who have to quickly refilm the shop's entire VHS library. But which movie re-creation will have the most fans talking? " 'Robocop' is the movie fans are going to geek out over," co-star Melonie Diaz enthused. "It's funny. I'm a cop, and Jack is Robocop, and it's the three of us singing." A musical version of "Robocop"? "You know, like: 'Robocop! Robocop'!" crooned "The Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" star, invoking the melody of the Robocop theme. "It's really silly." The 22-year-old actress said her character also has a hand in remaking "Rush Hour," "The Lion King" and "Ghostbusters." "Michel is amazing in reinventing these films — they're really authentic because they're made by the characters in the film who don't know anything about movies," Diaz gushed. "They're really low-budget looking, but really beautiful."

[Pozer]

gonna go for an early REWIND this eve.  i'll report back asap of course, my horses.