Read: Interview: Martin Davidson's "Echo"; A Hollywood Vet's Tale of Dashed Dreams The established studio executive Fred Bernstein is launching a new production and financing company, Astute Films. The newly formed company is kicking off its campaign with $50 million in private equity funding. Bernstein's venture has already made use of the capital by snatching up the distribution rights to Albert French's acclaimed, race-driven novel, "Billy." Martin Davidson ("The Lords of Flatbush") will produce, direct and adapt the work, while Wendell Pierce ("The Wire") has signed on to produce. The novel is set in rural 1947 Mississippi during a time when returning ethnic soldiers did not receive the respect and admiration they deserved, particularly in the South. It is during this time that the story unfolds, going through the events in which a young 10-year-old boy becomes tragically involved with the death of a 14-year-old white girl. The...
- 1/20/2016
- by Riyad Mammadyarov
- Indiewire
In his first foray in producing since winning a Tony Award for producing “Clybourne Park” on Broadway, “Selma” star Wendell Pierce has come on to produce the racial drama “Billy” with Jerry Leider (“The Jazz Singer”), TheWrap has learned. Writer-director Martin Davidson is behind the adaptation of author Albert French’s debut novel, which was published in 1995. Davidson is the filmmaker behind the cult classics “Eddie and the Cruisers” and “The Lords of Flatbush.” A “To Kill a Mockingbird”-esque drama set in 1947, “Billy” is an emotional roller-coaster that tells the story of how a small segregated town in Mississippi reacts.
- 3/4/2015
- by Jeff Sneider
- The Wrap
Leonard Harris, known in the New York area as an arts and theater critic for the local CBS television affiliate in the '60s and early '70s, died of pneumonia in Hartford, Conn., on Sunday. Harris was 81. Outside of New York, Harris was known for his role as Senator Charles Palantine in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976). In the Oscar-nominated drama, Palantine is running for president on a platform of radical social change, at one point sympathizing with Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a mentally unbalanced taxi driver-turned-vigilante who wants to rid New York of its "scum and filth." The eventual results aren't pretty. Palantine is also the link between Bickle and the senator's presidential campaign worker Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a classy-looking blonde with whom Bickle becomes obsessed. According to Harris' New York Times obit, Scorsese knew Harris "through the New York drama scene." Harris played another politician, a mayor,...
- 8/31/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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