Edward R. Pressman‘s movies have been all the time “a bit of taboo, a bit of transgressive,” as his son Sam Pressman tells it, however he all the time fought to get them made, particularly if that concerned championing the rising filmmakers behind them and “by no means giving up on them.”
Pressman’s particular contact helped him work with and alongside a litany of auteurs, together with Terrence Malick, Werner Herzog, Brian DePalma, Oliver Stone, Mary Harron, Abel Ferrara, and David Byrne, to call only a few, up via the indie producing icon’s passing in 2023.
The hope is that very same ethos stays true below Sam Pressman’s management of Pressman Movie, the place the youthful Pressman, present CEO of Pressman Movie, is now charting a course for his father’s firm to maintain telling tales for the following 50 years. He’s doing it via a mixture of unique concepts and flicks that honor his father’s legacy.
Chatting with IndieWire over Zoom from a lodge room in St. Louis, Missouri, the place he was on set for the fourth film Pressman Movie has in manufacturing on this 12 months, Pressman stated “essentially the most important factor” is for him to have the ability to produce motion pictures, and so they’re “staying true to Ed’s philosophy of telling radical tales and backing filmmakers who we actually consider in.”
Again in November, Pressman Movie closed a fundraising providing through Republic.com, a crowdfunding and cryptocurrency platform that enables people to be partial buyers in Pressman’s slate and share within the upside, all leveraging the Avalanche blockchain community. The corporate raised $2 million in operational prices from 370 buyers, which helped bolster its conventional enterprise mannequin. It’s an uncommon fundraising method, one Ed Pressman would’ve recognized nothing about, however Sam stated his father additionally wouldn’t have resisted change or innovation.
“It’s virtually contrapuntal to say, ‘Oh, we’re going to remain true to his spirit and be these impartial thinkers and discover our recent path whereas simply sort of doing the identical factor that he did,” Pressman stated. “When he began within the late ’60s, impartial movie was a revolutionary expertise. The concept you might make movies exterior of the system was nonetheless so new. And after I take into consideration the way forward for the corporate and the way, in 2069, hopefully Pressman Movie remains to be making movement photos, I believe now we have to be excited by the brand new frontier, and now we have to take a look at the brand new applied sciences which have already arrived and take into consideration the way to incorporate that into what we make for the theatrical expertise.”
As a part of that cope with Republic, Pressman Movie is committing to having 50 % of their slate be unique properties, whereas the opposite half will likely be primarily based on Pressman IP. It’s the rationale the corporate goes again to the effectively for considered one of its most iconic movies, “American Psycho,” with a brand new movie set to be directed by Luca Guadagnino for Lionsgate.
Cease us should you’ve heard earlier than that Guadagnino has a bunch of tasks on his plate and it’s unclear which one would possibly really shoot subsequent, “American Psycho” amongst them. However Pressman stated Guadagnino was on the very prime of their checklist for administrators to re-adapt Bret Easton Ellis’ guide and that it was one Guadagnino dreamed of constructing again when he was simply an aspiring movie critic.
Whereas casting rumors have swirled, Pressman stated nothing is confirmed simply but, however that hasn’t dampened his pleasure. “The synergy between Luca and [screenwriter] Scott Z. Burns is palpable,” Pressman stated. “I believe [Patrick] Bateman is an icon of tradition, and I believe Luca’s imaginative and prescient is to make a movie that’s really thoughts blowing, and I hope that it’s a cultural second that folks debate and focus on.”
Along with final 12 months’s “The Crow,” the staff additionally simply wrapped “Unhealthy Lieutenant: Tokyo,” the following movie from Japanese grasp Takashi Miike that follows within the footsteps of each Ferrara’s “Unhealthy Lieutenant” and Herzog’s bonkers and awkwardly titled “Port of Name: New Orleans.” That movie is produced by Oscar-winner Jeremy Thomas and was additionally the primary movie in Pressman’s profession that he had a U.S. distributor on board, Neon, earlier than kicking off manufacturing.
Pressman Movie’s first main unique title is “Useless Man’s Wire,” the primary movie from director Gus Van Sant since 2018, which is premiering this week on the Venice Movie Competition. The movie is the true story of Tony Kiritsis, a person who took hostage the supervisor of a mortgage workplace utilizing a sawed-off shotgun with a wire tied from the set off to across the hostage’s neck. Pressman referred to as star Invoice Skarsgard’s efficiency within the movie “magnetic, transfixing, and psychotic,” and never not like the twisted protagonists of a few of Ed Pressman’s movies.
The corporate additionally simply set a collection at Apple from “Adolescence” author Jack Thorne, and it has a VR challenge referred to as “Darkish Rooms” premiering as a part of Venice’s Immersive part on the upcoming competition, simply considered one of a number of experiments that began with the interactive “Evolver” from Malick and Cate Blanchett. Pressman stated whereas making theatrical movies is their bread and butter, there’s extra the place all that got here from.
“I believe we’re in a second the place impartial movie and impartial producers even have an unimaginable alternative,” he stated. “There’s much less movies being greenlit by the streamers and the studios, and but the worldwide love of cinema isn’t depreciating. So for for an impartial producer, if we make nice movies, there’s an viewers that’s hungry for it. To me, the rapid motion is, how can we provoke neighborhood, and the way can we construct movies which might be nearer in its relationship with the viewers? Individuals may not know Pressman Movie, however folks actually know Pressman’s movies.”