EdieSedgwick Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means -- time for The Write Stuff! This week Cinematical spoke with screenwriter Captain Mauzner. Mauzner has an interesting perspective on screenwriting because he's written two major films based on true events and actual people. He co-wrote 2003's Wonderland -- the story of the infamous "Wonderland Murders," which starred Val Kilmer as legendary porn star John Holmes. And he wrote last year's Factory Girl, the tale of Edie Sedgwick (played by Sienna Miller), Andy Warhol (Guy Pearce), and a Dylanesque "Musician" played by Hayden Christensen. We spoke about Mauzner's scripts, process, and the trickiness of writing scripts based on fact.

Cinematical: Are you working on anything right now?

Captain Mauzner: I am working on something right now, yeah. I'm adapting a book. It's a small book, it's called The Food Chain, by Geoff Nicholson. A friend of mine runs a small company and I'm adapting it with the hopes of directing it. It's kind of about food, sex, and cannibalism. Revenge, food, sex, and cannibalism.

Cinematical: Well, alright!

CM: It's a little dark comedy. It's fun. And what was nice about it was -- I've written so many things and a lot of them are true life stories, and they all seem to be about kind of deplorable human beings. And I think that my comfort zone is really kind of in the dark side -- the drug addicts, the deviants. And I think that as I've kind of gotten older and left that world myself, I guess you could say I've become less and less interested in it. You see these movies like Wonderland and Factory Girl and you could say "oh, they're like an argument against doing drugs." But I know for myself, there's always a glamorizing element to it. And as much as you want to say this is the downfall of these people, which it is -- and obviously there's nothing glamorous about the drug lifestyle, or the party lifestyle because it does lead to bad things. But just the act of writing about it or making these the main characters or trying to explain these people, I feel like that somewhat glamorizes it, or at least in my mind it was very glamorous. I had a very romantic notion, at like 14-years-old I discovered Bukowski and I was kind of off to the races. So I think that as I get older I'm ready to move on to maybe something light and happy. My family's always like "Why can't you write something that we can take Grandma to?"

Cinematical: So do you find when you're writing about drugs and debauchery, that you're not looking to condemn it and point a finger, you're just looking to present it and let the audience decide?

CM: Absolutely. I'm not looking to condemn it at all. I'm not looking to be moral about it. I believe in experimentation. I believe in doing kind of what you want and not having anybody else tell you what to do. I think that my fascination with it is always the "why." Why do people do this? I think that's kind of the fun of being able to do those kind of things is that you can live kind of vicariously through these people, and try to figure out the "why" without being judgmental.

Just by watching the trailer for Factory Girl, I gathered that Hayden Christensen's character is supposed to represent Bob Dylan. He's got the voice, the look and the harmonica. Sure, the character has a different name, and the film's producers are insisting that it is actually a composite of Dylan, Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison, but as played and depicted, it is as obviously specific as it gets. The whole thing makes me think of Velvet Goldmine, which featured Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Ewan McGregor blatantly portraying David Bowie and Iggy Pop, respectively, without the film's use of real names. But that film had no intention of being passed as a true story, unlike Factory Girl, a biopic that otherwise represents real people by name. Velvet Goldmine also didn't implicate any of its characters as being responsible for a person's death.

Dylan is no idiot, and he isn't about to let a movie indirectly accuse him of being the cause of Edie Sedgwick's suicide. According to the NY Post's Page Six column, he's prepared to take legal action; lawyers have already begun proceedings by demanding they see the film before anymore screenings are held. Though the case isn't yet involving the courts, if Factory Girl producers Bob Yari and Holly Wiersma don't comply with the missive issued them, things might get ugly.

Dylan is reportedly very concerned about how the film will affect his image. And he should be. As if the trailer wasn't enough, it is being noted that people who've seen the film say that it is unmistakably Dylan being portrayed. Plus, there's the matter that the original script had the character named Bob Dylan before it was changed to the fictionalized "Billy Quinn" (or is it "Danny Quinn"?).

This legal matter adds to a very long list of controversy surrounding Factory Girl, including a lawsuit over distribution rights and a complaint from the literally depicted Lou Reed.


[via Hollywood Wiretap]

At Sundance last week, the Weinstein Company triumphantly announced that it had landed the rights to distribute the Edie Sedgwick biopic, Factory Girl, in a group of English-speaking territories, including North America. This news came as a bit of a shock to the people at Sony, however, who thought they had acquired North American rights back in October. Oops.

According to a lawsuit filed by Sony early this week, they first saw the script in July, and had further contact with Holly Wiersma, the film's producer, the following fall. When the movie found itself struggling for financing, Sony "offered to buy the North American distribution rights - something Wiersma agreed to in writing, through her agents, after negotiations concluded in October." Though the producer has yet to publicly respond to the charges, it would appear that the agreement - if, in fact, it happened - slipped her mind when Harvey and Bob were chatting her up in Park City. Did I mention oops?