from my friend Randal:
A Film “No One Will Pay To See” Is Sold
Although some analysts had predicted that Death of a President, which made its debut at the Toronto Film Festival this week, would never find a distributor — others had predicted it would never see the light of day in the U.S. — Newmarket Films announced Monday that it had purchased U.S. distribution rights from producer-director Gabriel Range. It reportedly paid $1 million. Newmarket is the same company that picked up rights to Mel Gibson’s equally controversial The Passion of the Christ. President, which is shot as if it were a television documentary, centers on the assassination of George W. Bush during a visit to Chicago in 2007. Using digital techniques, the filmmakers replaced the head of an actor pretending to be shot with the actual head of George Bush. The movie has been denounced by Bush supporters, including Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party of Texas, who warn that it could encourage some unbalanced viewer to attempt a copycat crime. But Range told the Toronto audience that “there have been plenty of fictional films about presidential assassinations.” Meanwhile, Time magazine critic Richard Corliss predicted that “the film will be one of those curios that millions of people read about but few pay to see. It will be forgotten in a year — except by the Secret Service.”
