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Home , Antonio Banderas, Avy Kaufman, Donald Rosenfeld, Edward Burns, Eric Daman, Feast of July

Sundance Festival – 2005 Grand Jury Prize Film Festival/Panorama 2005

FORTY SHADES OF BLUE

By Ira Sachs

“Atmospheric and haunting… is a movie that seeps under your skin” David Ansen, Newsweek

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FORTY SHADES OF BLUE

Cast Alan ...... Rip Torn Laura ...... Dina Korzun Michael ...... Darren Burrows Lonni...... Duigan ...... Red West Celia ...... Jenny O’Hara Shel ...... Jerry Chipman Sam ...... Andrew Henderson April...... Emily McKenna Cox Cindy ...... Liz Morton Betty...... Joanne Pankow

Filmmakers Director ...... Ira Sachs Screenwriters ...... Michael Rohatyn, Ira Sachs Producers ...... Margot Bridger, Ira Sachs Mary Bing, Jawal Nga, Executive Producers ...... Geoff Stier, Diane Von Furstenberg Director of Photography ...... Julian Whatley Editor...... Affonso Gonçalves Production Designer...... Teresa Mastropierro ...... Original Music ...... Dickon Hinchliffe Music Supervisor...... Susan Jacobs Casting ...... Avy Kaufman, Jordan Beswick Sound Recordist…………………….……………………………..Antonio Arroyo Sound Mixer…………… …………………………………….…Dominick Tavella

FORTY SHADES OF BLUE

FORTY SHADES OF BLUE tells the story of Laura, a young Russian woman living in Memphis with a much older rock n’ roll legend, and the personal awakening she experiences in the wake of her unfortunate affair with his estranged son.

Alan James is a legend in Memphis, a white man who produced black music back in the 60’s and 70’s, the heyday of Memphis Soul. Now in his later years, he’s still living the high life in a comfortable house in the right part of town.

Alan lives with his girlfriend, Laura, a Russian beauty he met on tour in Moscow. Laura spends most of her time alone or raising their three-year- old son, Sam. A stranger in Memphis, she lives an easy, alienated life,

Alan also has a grown son, Michael, with whom he has a complicated relationship fueled by jealousy, disappointment and anger. When Michael returns home for the first time in many years, the initial hostility he radiates towards his father's "girl" develops into something much more, and a messy, dangerous affair ensues.

In the bars and bedrooms of this very contemporary city, a love triangle forms, illuminating the hearts and souls of these three tangled lives.

Starring veteran actor Rip Torn as Alan, Darren Burrows as Michael, and Dina Korzun as Laura, the woman caught between them, FORTY SHADES OF BLUE was shot on location in Memphis, – the hometown of director/co-writer Ira Sachs – and where he made The Delta, his first feature film. Screened at the Sundance and Toronto festivals, The Delta was distributed in the US by Strand Releasing.

Rip Torn’s magnetic performance in FORTY SHADES OF BLUE is a return to the kind of lead roles he was known for in the 70s, in like Payday, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and the seminal Coming Apart. For Dina Korzun, it’s her first role in an American film, a stunning follow up to her award winning performance in Pawel Pawlikowski’s Last Resort.

The Producers of FORTY SHADES OF BLUE are Margot Bridger (The Delta, Jesus’ Son, Sidewalks of New York), Donald Rosenfeld (Howard’s End, Remains of the Day), Jawal Nga (The Clearing), Mary Bing and Sachs. The film was developed and produced in association with Mirage Enterprises. Executive Producers are Geoff Stier (Up at the Villa, Polish Wedding) and Diane Von Furstenberg, whose clothes are worn by Korzun throughout the film. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

Set in the world of Memphis music, FORTY SHADES OF BLUE confronts many of the issues that have been central to director Ira Sachs’ work in the past. As in his first feature The Delta (1997) -- in which a half-black, half-Vietnamese gay man living in Memphis was at the center of the story - - Sachs continues to be interested in people who exist both inside and outside of their own environment.

In FORTY SHADES OF BLUE, however, it is the rumbling beneath his protagonist’s layered surface that drives the story more than in Sachs’s previous work. By conveying Laura’s depth through cinema, Sachs challenges the audience's easy dismissal of this woman whose only power seems, on the surface, to be in her looks. Instead, he asks the viewer to look deeper, and think of both the challenges and the circumstances that make Laura a heroine in the classic fashion.

“From its ,” Sachs said recently, “my intent was to turn the camera towards a character that often gets overlooked: a woman on the arm of a powerful man, who usually stays on the periphery.”

By steadily focusing on one woman’s troubled awakening, Sachs shapes FORTY SHADES OF BLUE in the style of a novel by Henry James or Edith Wharton. Inspired by films like Belle de Jour, Contempt, and ’s Charulata, Sachs’s strong visual style, both in terms of design and in terms of camera, gives Laura a more iconic presence on screen.

“The film is a chamber piece,” says Sachs, “in which we needed to chart each phase of Laura’s self-discovery with precision.”

For Dina Korzun, the Russian actress who plays the main character in FORTY SHADES OF BLUE, Laura is “a woman who has illusions and wrong ideas about life, and this love story gives her a reason to wake up and start to ask questions.”

Adds Korzun, “She is totally unlike me.”

“I needed a great actor,” says Sachs of Korzun, “who could approach this very modern part as if it were as complicated a role as Nora in The Doll House. I saw that potential in Dina’s wonderful, naturalistic performance in Pawel Pawlikowski's film Last Resort, but it wasn’t until I met her in person, and saw her natural beauty and sharp intelligence, that I understood her true potential.”

To create the character, Korzun looked for people who had some of Laura’s qualities and found three girlfriends who shared some of Laura’s traits. “I mixed them up and from that, I invented Laura,” she says.

“When I got the script, I knew how to do this and knew what to do with her,” says Korzun.

“Dina was immensely empathetic towards Laura and her predicament,” adds Sachs. “She understood the challenges, and the potential, of this part deeply, and I was constantly amazed on set by the boldness and bravery of her choices.”

“It’s happy work,” Korzun said while making the film. “I don’t usually have such a nice contact with the director. Even at our first meeting in London, I was surprised by his trust.

“It’s destiny, a miracle how this project happened. I don’t think for me this kind of a relationship with a director will happen again."

The soundtrack for FORTY SHADES OF BLUE features the little known soul classics of legendary music producer Bert Russell Berns, the creator of such pop standards as “Twist and Shout” and “Down in the Valley.”

Like Berns -- or any of the well known music producers from Memphis like Sam Phillips, Willie Mitchell, or Jim Dickinson -- the character of Alan James, as played by Rip Torn, is known primarily by people who love the music. “Musicians come to these small towns because they want to work with the legends,” says Sachs in discussing the European art rock band that’s recording with James in the movie. “They want a piece of that magic.”

Sachs got a piece of magic – and a legend of his own – in Rip Torn, for whom he wrote the part of Alan James.

The director compares Rip Torn to “a great Shakespearean actor, in that he has an amazing ability to find both the comic and the tragic in every beat of his performance. He’s also a man who has lived a long and full life, and is able to convey the depth of that experience in the most subtle ways. You feel the history in his eyes, in his intonation, and in the rich emotions he’s able to convey.”

The Memphis location and the music aspect of the character is part of what attracted Rip Torn to the role.

“Working on this film was a chance for me to come down to Memphis and be in the kind of place I grew up in,” Torn said in an interview during production. “I had an uncle and aunt who had a dance hall in Texas, I was deep into music. Like it says in the script, my own father came back from World War II and said to me, ‘You know that music you like, hillbilly music, black music, blues, that’s what people everywhere are going wild about.’”

Sachs recalls, “Rip is a complicated, cantankerous, brilliant man and we wrestled every day on set, but in the end, I have to say that he knew what he was doing more than I did. When we got into the editing room, all the conflict disappeared and what emerged was a performance of great lightness and beauty. Arguing, for Rip, is a way of finding his way and burrowing into this larger-than-life character.

“I remember one day late in the shoot, when I was sitting with Rip in his trailer, and he’s telling me a story about working with on , and I had this rushing feeling of my own good fortune, of having the opportunity to get to know and work with this man who has been such a part of the history of American theater, and film, and in such an intimate, workingman’s way.

“Rip is like an itinerant farmer, who goes from field to field, part to part, and I love him for his love of acting. Besides his family, it’s really what he lives for.”

When putting together the film, Sachs’ decision to cast Darren Burrows as Alan James’ son was a natural one.

“I always wanted to cast Darren Burrows,” he says; “I knew he would be a big discovery in this role.”

Sachs elaborates, “Darren has so much going on in his eyes, which is what I was struck by most when I first saw him in a movie. He has a kind of emotional detail, and honesty, that’s uncommonly fine. When we began to work together on FORTY SHADES OF BLUE, we bonded over a love of Montgomery Clift and a certain kind of acting that you would see in American films of the 1950s, where the actor conveyed big emotions through small and delicate gestures.”

The genesis of the story of FORTY SHADES OF BLUE comes out of Sachs’ relationship with his own father, a Memphis entrepreneur, who now lives in Park City, Utah.

“When I was growing up, my parents divorced, and my father had countless girlfriends,” says Sachs. “It was the 70s in Memphis and he was a larger-than-life personality who, like Alan James in the movie, was a big fish in a small pond. Picture my dad and one of his friends in the front seat of a Cadillac convertible, and me and this girl so different from me in the back.

“But as time went on, I got to know one or two of them very well, and that’s where this story was born. I wanted the film to mirror my own experience of meeting a woman very different from myself, and learning to love her for what’s going on underneath.”

After completing a first draft, Sachs began working on the script with co- writer Michael Rohatyn, who had written the music for his film The Delta, and in 1998 they took the project to the Sundance Writer’s Lab. “It took us a long time to find the right balance and to hone the story,” says Sachs, “and, as a musician and composer, Michael brought to the process an intimate knowledge of the music world, as well as an innate sense as a writer of how to turn ideas and metaphors into .”

In FORTY SHADES OF BLUE, emotions are viewed through a strong, cinematic use of sound and image. The tension between the classically dramatic structure and style, and the ordinary setting in which the story takes place, gives the film its very particular tone and texture.

“I’ve been greatly inspired by the work of filmmakers like Maurice Pialat and Ken Loach, as well as the European art films of the 50s and 60s,” explains Sachs. “It is that sense of authenticity, as well as simple, honest emotion that I find in those movies -- as conveyed through a distinct cinematic language -- that I want to bring to my own.”

Loach, in particular, has been a major influence on FORTY SHADES OF BLUE, specifically with the work he did with cinematographer Chris Menges in the 60s and 70s, in movies like Kes and Looks and Smiles. Indeed, Sachs cites a retrospective of the British director’s work at New York’s Walter Reade theatre at the Film Society of Lincoln Center as a key event in the early development of the film.

When talking about his collaboration with cinematographer Julian Whatley, Sachs elaborates:

“What we learned from Loach and his work with Menges – and it was really Julian who arrived at this epiphany first -- was that if we put the camera in a discrete corner where it doesn’t interfere with the actors’ work, we would get these comfortable, natural performances, and at the same time, it would be the characters who lead us through the film’s landscape -- instead of the camera operator or the director dictating what the image will be.

“We wanted the characters to always be in an intimate relationship to the architectural spaces in which they live,” Sachs continues; “the film frame is not just a rectangle, but a box, and you want the box to have depth, height, shallowness and density in all directions.”

To create the world of the film, Sachs worked closely with both his Production Designer Teresa Mastropierro and his Costume Designer Eric Daman. “In Memphis, because I had grown up there, we had this incredible access to locations,” says Sachs, “but both my key designers understood that we needed to elevate the particulars of the world, and create something that was both real and hyper-real.”

Mastropierro took the shell of a fifties ranch house and turned it into James’s lair, from antique wallpaper on down, while Daman incorporated many of Executive Producer Diane Von Furstenberg’s clothes into his astutely psychological design for Laura’s many “looks.” The film is filled with music throughout, with an original score by Dickon Hinchliffe, of the band , who Sachs discovered through Hinchliffe’s scores for French filmmaker (Trouble Every Day, Friday Night). Along with the original recordings of four Bert Berns songs, the film also includes R&B legend J. Blackfoot’s rendition of the Dan Penn/Chips Moman classic “Dark End of the Street,” and original American folksongs written and performed by Jim Dickinson and Sid Selvidge, who were both central to the underground sound that came out of Memphis in the , working with bands like Big Star and Mudboy and the Neutrons.

“Throughout the film,” concludes Sachs, “music gives us a specific sense of who these characters are, and where they come from, while simultaneously elevating, and giving cinematic resonance to the emotions of the story.” ABOUT THE CAST

Rip Torn (ALAN) was born in Temple, Texas. In 1955 he headed to New York where he was discovered by director . Kazan brought him into the Actor’s Studio and gave him his first acting assignment as understudy for on Broadway in . By the end of the show’s long run, Torn was starring. From 1957 to 1960 he became a top performer in live television, with such shows as Omnibus, Kraft Theatre, Playhouse 90 and Alcoa Hour. Torn made his motion picture debut in 1957 with Time Limit, while he continued to focus intensely on his stage work as a performer and director. His uproarious portrayal of Artie in “The Gary Shandling Show,” won him many awards, including an Emmy in 1996 for Best Supporting Actor in a comedy series. During his distinguished career he has had starring roles in such critically lauded films as The Man Who Fell to Earth, Payday, Heartland, and Cross Creek, for which he was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor, as well as his memorable comic roles in films like Dodgeball and Men in Black.

Dina Korzun (LAURA) studied at the Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT) in Russia. After graduating, she made her professional debut in Love in The Crimea, and won the Best Actress award at the 1995 Moscow Theatre. Dina’s first film role was as Yaya in Valery Todorovsky's Land of the Death. Her stunning performance won her the Russian equivalent of the Oscar (the Nika) and the Golden Ram for Best Actress from the Moscow Film Critics. Three years later she was cast as the lead in Pawel Pawlikowski's internationally acclaimed BBC production, Last Resort. The film won the Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature at the 54th Edinburgh Film Festival, and Korzun won the Best Actress awards at the Gijon () International Film Festival and Thessaloniki (Greece) Film Festival. Since then, she has continued working in film, most recently in The President’s Grand Daughter, directed by Tigran Keossaian, The Road, directed by Natalia Petrova and Theory of Drunkeness, directed by Natalia Pogonitcheva. She was also cast as the lead in Sergei Sniejkin's ambitious 20 episode television series, "Woman Romance." Shot entirely in St. Petersburg, the series was commissioned by Russia's ORT channel and began airing in December 2003.

Darren Burrows (MICHAEL), a Kansas native, made his way to LA at the age of 16 to start a career in acting. Following a role in a called 976-EVIL, Darren joined the cast of Brian DePalma’s Casualties of War, shot over three months in Thailand. Since that time, Darren has been seen in John Waters’ Cry Baby, ’s Amistad, Stephen Frear’s Hi-Low Country, and Adam Collis’s Sunset Strip. Darren’s television credits include roles in the mini-series, “The Siege at Ruby Ridge,” and on the critically acclaimed CBS series, “Northern Exposure,” as Ed Chigliak. Darren currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and four sons.

Red West (DUIGAN) was born in Tennessee, outside of Memphis. He met in 1949 at Humes High, and they began a lifelong friendship during which they toured and made movies together for many years, a real life role not dissimilar to the one he plays with Rip Torn in Forty Shades of Blue. He began to write songs in the early 1960’s, and enjoyed great success. The recording of his song, “If Everyday Was Like Christmas,” has gone on to sell 20 million copies worldwide. Around that time, West was cast in “Wild, Wild West,” on CBS, and went on to co-star in “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” a television series based on Greg “Pappy” Boyington’s illustrious WWII combat career. Since then West has appeared in many commercials, television and feature films. A short list includes The Rainmaker, Cookie’s Fortune, and most recently Glory Road, with John Voight and Josh Lucas.

Paprika Steen (LONNI) is best known to American audiences for her roles in ’s , ’s The Celebration, and ’s Open Hearts. In 2003 Steen received both a Danish Critic Association Award “Bodil” and a Danish Film Academy Award “Robert” for Best Actress in Jesper Nielsen’s Okay. In the same year, she received those same awards in the Best Supporting Actress category for her performance in Open Hearts. Her role in FORTY SHADES OF BLUE is her first in an American production.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

Ira Sachs (Director/Co-writer) was born in Memphis in 1965. His first feature, The Delta (1997), was screened at Sundance, Toronto, and Rotterdam, and was distributed in the US by Strand Releasing. Sachs was the recipient of the Emerging Talent award at the 1997 LA Outfest, and was awarded a 1999 Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. He was also a 2001 Fellow at the MacDowell Artist Colony, and has made several shorts, including Vaudeville and Lady (Sundance ‘95). With Forty Shades of Blue, Sachs participated in the Screenwriter's Lab at the Sundance Institute. He is presently at work on Marriage, a suspense film set in San Francisco in the 1940s, written in collaboration with Oren Moverman (co-writer on Jesus’s Son and ' upcoming Bob Dylan project, I’m Not There).

Michael Rohatyn (Co-writer) is a writer and musician living in NYC. He has written scores for Personal Velocity and Angela (both by Rebecca Miller) and The Delta (Ira Sachs), as well as songs for Habit (Larry Fessenden). His music is featured this year at Sundance in scores for Duane Hopwood (directed by Matt Mulhern) and The Ballad of Jack and Rose (directed by Rebecca Miller). FORTY SHADES OF BLUE is his first screenplay.

Margot Bridger (Producer) also produced Sachs’ first feature, The Delta. That film, along with her second feature as a producer, Hannah Weyer’s Arresting Gena, had their U.S. premieres in the dramatic competition of the 1997 . She produces for , beginning with Sidewalks of New York, a comedy that Paramount Classics released in 2001, and then Ash Wednesday, a drama also written and directed by Edward Burns, starring Burns, Elijah Wood and Rosario Dawson. Bridger co-produced Jesus’ Son, featuring Billy Crudup, which was released in 2000 by Lions Gate. In addition to completing Forty Shades of Blue, she is currently developing several feature scripts with Edward Burns. Margot has been making independent films since graduating from Yale in 1987, starting as a producer’s assistant on such projects as Longtime Companion and Mississippi Masala.

Jawal Nga (Producer) began working in film after graduating from NYU in 1996 as the Executive Assistant to Producer James Schamus. Nga served as Associate Producer on The Clearing, featuring , and . He is currently adapting the Michael Ignatieff book Charlie Johnson In the Flames, with writer Justin Haythe and is working again with Sachs on his next project, Marriage.

Donald Rosenfeld (producer) has had a successful and distinguished career in motion pictures. From 1987-1998, Rosenfeld ran Merchant Ivory Productions where he produced two films a year, including Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, The Ballad of the Sad Café, Howard’s End (which received eight Oscar nominations), Remains of the Day ( Oscar nominations), , , and . Additionally, Rosenfeld has produced films independently, including Catwalk, starring , and Naomi Campbell, and Chris Munch’s The Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day, which won the cinematography prize at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. Rosenfeld has recently formed his own production company, and is currently working on the following film productions: , directed by Ric Burns; Victor, written by and starring ; The Confidence Man; City Poet and Eugene O’Neill, with and .

Geoff Stier (Executive Producer) is an independent producer based in Los Angeles. After graduate work in film studies at UCLA, Stier worked at the UCLA Film Archive before joining Sydney Pollack’s Mirage Enterprises in 1991. While there he was the Associate Producer of 's Sense and Sensibility; production executive on the Showtime Cable series “Fallen Angels,” with episodes directed by , Alfonso Cuaron, Agnieszka Holland, and Peter Bogdanovich; co-executive producer of the HBO film Poodle Springs, written by Tom Stoppard and directed by Bob Rafelson; producer of Polish Wedding, starring Lena Olin, and ; and producer of Up at the Villa, starring and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Affonso Gonçalves (Editor) In 1996, after studying at the London Film School and the American Film Institute, Affonso Goncalves began his collaboration with Sachs, editing The Delta. He went on to edit such films as Trans, The Adventures of Sebastian Cole, Tully, The Mudge Boy, and , as well as contributing to ’s The Company. He is the editor of the documentaries Talk to Me: Hostage Negotiators of the NYPD, The Green Monster , and Musica Colombiana. Goncalves won the Best Editing Award at the 1992 Fuji Film Scholarship Awards and served as Editing Fellow at the Sundance Filmmaker Lab from 1999-2002. At Sundance, his work can also be seen in Doug Sadler’s Swimmers, and he is presently at work on Julian Golberger’s The Hawk Is Dying, starring , Michael Pitt and Sarah Polley.

Eric Daman (Costume Designer) After graduating from the Sorbonne with honors, Daman began work on the production of “La Ballade de l’Amour,” an AIDS benefit involving many of the most influential designers in the international fashion world. The position led Eric to be contacted by the photographer , who asked Eric to for a Calvin Klein campaign, which became a controversial focal point in America. Soon thereafter, Eric decided he was better off on the other side of the lens and began his career as a stylist. He worked with up and coming New York photographers such as , on such magazines as “The Face,” “Dazed and Confused,” and “Visionnaire.” Soon after, he began his work as a costume designer for film, working with director on The Adventures of Sebastian Cole. He was then contacted by , head designer of the new HBO series, “ and the City” and became assistant designer and direct consultant for the character of Carrie Bradshaw. Most recently, Eric was costume designer on Williams’ Door in the Floor, starring and .

Teresa Mastropierro (Production Designer) has worked on such films as Alchemy, winner of Best Film at South by Southwest in 1996, and Two Family House, winner of the Audience Award at Sundance in 2000. She was an Art Director on Dear Diary,” which won the Academy Award for Best Short Film, Pollock, and The House of D. She has also worked in television as production designer on several pilots, commercials and seasons 2 and 3 of the Comedy Central series “Strangers With Candy.” She recently completed designing Strangers With Candy – The Movie.

Dickon Hinchliffe (Original Score) is a founding member of the cult band Tindersticks and in addition to electric violin, keyboards and vocals, also does all the orchestral arrangements that have been a distinguishing feature of this band’s recordings over the past few years. Away from the band, he also scores feature films and has worked extensively with the acclaimed French director Claire Denis, on Nenette et Boni, Trouble Every Day, and most recently on the romantic drama Vendredi Soir, which was selected for the Venice, New York, Toronto, San Francisco and Edinburgh film festivals.

Susan Jacobs (Music Supervisor) has worked extensively in the film, television, and music worlds. Starting out as assistant to Chris Blackwell, owner and president of Island Records, she has since gone on to supervise the music for Shortcuts and Kansas City for Robert Altman, Basquiat and Before Night Falls for Julian Schnabel, Happiness and Storytelling for Todd Solondz, and Unbreakable and The Village for M. Night Shyamalan. Her soundtrack for Mark Christopher’s 54 became the best selling dance compilation of 1998. Most recently, she worked on Going Up River – The Long War of John Kerry, and is presently completing work on Liev Schreiber’s first directorial effort, Everything is Illuminated.

Dominick Tavella (Sound Mixer) Over the years, Dominick Tavella has worked at many of New York’s famous sound facilities, including DuArt Laboratories and Photo Magnetic Sound Studios. In 1988, he joined Sound One, where he built his reputation among such clients as , Jim Jarmusch, D.A. Pennebaker, Ric Burns and Ken Burns. His breadth of experience has led him to continue to make his mark on avant- garde and documentary projects, and recently led to his work with Michael Minkler on Chicago, for which they won an Academy Award in 2002.