Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Sheldrake's interview with Jason Ruscio, writer/director of LAURA SMILES, and RKO Pictures! Yes, King Kong's RKO Pictures... famed Tim Curry climbing prop RKO Pictures... Included in this interview are words from the producers of LAURA SMILES. Be sure to CLICK HERE to see some Tribeca pics including the crazy gang interviewed below! Apparently LAURA SMILES will premiere very shortly at the festival, so hopefully we'll get some more info on the flick as reviews start comin' in! In the mean time, here is Sheldrake!
Sheldrake here at the Tribeca Film Festival. 1:10 pm. Saturday.
RKO Studios is one of the original seven studios in the old studio the system, the one that was always run lean and mean and low-budget, so it's both great and appropriate that they're showing their new movie LAURA SMILES here at the festival. Here's a quick chat with three of the perps; rick arthur, the producer -along with Ted Hartley, the CEO of RKO-; Jason Ruscio, the writer and director and Joe Di Maio, the executive producer.
SHELDRAKE: - now – you've made made LAURA SMILES – and you're telling me it's the rebirth of RKO—that got my attention. now, RKO was my favorite of the original seven studios...so how did this happen, why RKO--
RICK: I was at the naval academy and spent years out in the western, pacific, and ted hartley, the CEO of RKO, was also a naval academy guy...i walked in and said Ted, we have a movie we should make together. then i brought Jason into it...
JASON: I charmed the living daylights out of him—and offered him a part
SHELDRAKE: this is really your first feature
JASON: I did a smaller one before, won a number of awards, but it was just too depressing to sell
SHELDRAKE: give us a taste of LAURA SMILES..
JASON: LAURA SMILES tells the story of a woman, she's living in the city, everything's wonderful, dream romance, then her fiancee dies...she tries to reinvent her life nine years later and little by little becomes unhinged as those repressed emotions begin to reveal themselves, goes on a fucking spree...
SHELDRAKE: (wryly) yes, i'm familiar with this sort of case...
JASON: she falls to pieces and does everything she can to get back to the past tense – something you can't ever do in real life, but with celluloid or whatever, anything is possible.
SHELDRAKE: yeah, life forces us to distinguish between fantasy and reality...but in movies...maybe you can make the delusions work...
JOE: i've been the head of physical production at rko for three years. that's when i met rick and jason. i'm just consulting now.
SHELDRAKE: what did you work on at rko
JOE: we did shade with stallone, didn't have a huge theatrical release...we were trying to do one with sidney lumet...but the financing never got finalized. but we bought this small movie, laura smiles, small in production but a very big movie in other ways, and we're all really excited about it.
JASON: they're really committed to making good movies now.
SHELDRAKE: what changed them...
JASON:Me!
SHELDRAKE: ahh, one man and a dream.
RICK: buncha dreamers in that place. ted hartley really put all this together.
And that's it for right now...the premier is tomorrow night. Sheldrake will see you there --