Im sure all of you remember when I spoke with Illeana Douglas last year. Well it was about the theatrical release of Greg Pritikins film, Dummy. Well now Dummy has been released on DVD and the movie doesnt suffer one bit on DVD. In fact it becomes even funnier and creepier.
Dummy tells the story of a young man [Adrien Brody] who struggles to express his feelings, learns to communicate with the world as a ventriloquist, through his dummy. Milla Jovovich plays his best friend, an aspiring Yiddish folk singer.
I had an amazing time talking with Greg Pritikin. He was eager to get his SuicideGirls password and to talk about his new film, Surviving Eden, which premiered at South by Southwest film festival.
Buy Dummy on DVD.
Daniel Robert Epstein:watched the DVD for Dummy but I didnt get a chance to listen to the commentary track by Jeff Dunham.
Greg Pritikin: Well gee. Too bad.
DRE: Did I miss out?
GP: I dont know I never heard it.
DRE: Whos idea was that?
GP: That was the brilliant idea of someones over at Artisan or Lions Gate. Thats what happens in this business. People do things in your name and you have no idea how or why it happened. The problem is that right in the middle of Dummys theatrical run Artisan was taken over by Lions Gate. They pulled a bunch of their movies out of the theatre and it was just a bad deal for all the filmmakers involved with Artisan at the time. Dummy played for about a month then it was shut down.
DRE: How did it do when it was playing?
GP: I think it would have done really well if it had been allowed to go. Our opening weekend we were number four of the top ten indie films that were out and our box office average was the same as Once Upon a Time in Mexico, especially considering we were competing with Lost in Translation which had cleaned up everything. We think it did well considering it was terribly marketed and terribly promoted.
DRE: Harry Knowles really seemed to take to it.
GP: Yes we showed the film at South by Southwest and he really loved it. He plugs it on his site whenever he can.
DRE: I think Dummy holds up really well on DVD. What was your budget?
GP: It was just under a million. The industry expression is high six figures.
DRE: How did you get those actors?
GP: An unknown Hollywood is that because there are so many bad scripts out there if there is a script that is mediocre or better the actors will respond provided it is financed and has a shooting date. A lot of people just have a screenplay and just try to get it to movie stars. That doesnt work. If you have a little bit of money and can make an offer they will read your script. Its a secret so we shouldnt tell too many people. Even famous actors want to do interesting work and there isnt a lot of interesting work out there. The illusion is that if someone is famous they dont need the work. They all need the work.
DRE: Is Adrien Brody just the perfect Jew?
GP: Well according to Jews hes not a Jew because his mother is not Jewish.
DRE: Look at the nose on that guy!
GP: Thats a hearty Hungarian nose. He wasnt even raised Jewish and no one in his family even looks Jewish. Hes not the perfect Jew. Hes a fallen Jew.
DRE: Barry Levinson and Roman Polanski are experts on Jews and they cast him.
GP: I guess we escape our preconceived notions on what a Jew should look like. Steven Spielberg is a Jew but to me he looks like he would playing golf at a restricted club.
DRE: You got to see his face without the beard.
GP: I was never thinking, Lets get that Jew actor Brody. I was thinking that Adrien Brody has this intense vulnerability and innocence that I havent seen in many other actors his age.
DRE: What was the movie you saw him in that made you want cast him?
GP: I saw him in probably all of his stuff. The first movie I saw him was a movie a friend of mine produced called Six Ways to Sunday. I remember being blown away by Adrien because he was so good that I didnt think he was an actor. I just thought he was some funny character they decided to put in the movie. Thats a great achievement.
DRE: With Dummy you had a great script but how much of a vision did you have for the way the movie was supposed to look?
GP: I thought it was important that the film look as real as possible and as unstylized as possible. I did not want the characters and script to be overshadowed by the heavy hand of the directors style so I wanted things very natural and low key.
DRE: How autobiographical is Dummy?
GP: Im not a ventriloquist.
DRE: Did you live in your parents house until you were in your 30s?
GP: No I moved out after high school. What is autobiographical is the universal theme of having a family that gets on your nerves and being in a family that doesnt always listen to each other. I was lucky enough to not grow up in a family like that, not that bad anyway.
DRE: Why was it important for them to be that way?
GP: If the parents are too normal then how do you explain why the kids are so dysfunctional? Adriens character is very dysfunctional. Hes living at home and cant communicate. It wouldnt make sense if his parents were June and Ward Cleaver. Then it would become a different movie. It wouldnt be a character driven comedy but a movie about a psycho.
DRE: What about certain incidents? Like when he painted the note on the womans door.
GP: Maybe that would work on some of the SuicideGirls. I get the feeling they might like it.
None of those specifics are autobiographical. I did have a girlfriend at the time that I almost married, goddamn girl! She sang in a Klezmer band and thats where that came from. One of my closest friends is an amateur ventriloquist and is probably the worst at it. You could see his lips moving if he was wearing a paper bag on his head. His entire routine consists of the dummy insulting him and hes not able to come up with a comeback fast enough. I would marvel at their relationship. Its amazing that the minute you give someone a dummy the first thing they do is insult themselves. I thought that was an interesting concept. The first chance you have to talk to yourself you criticize yourself. I thought there was a story in there. How could someone become a better person through this process?
DRE: Did the movie get picked up because of the Oscar win?
GP: This probably the worst time for independent film. They say that every year and its true because it gets worse and worse. The reason its getting worse is because there are fewer theatre and the screens that are in those theatres are taken up by the same movies. So there are fewer movies needed. Nobody picks up anything. You go to a festival, see brilliant movies and nothing gets bought. They cant figure out how to market them. When Adrien won the Oscar it really didnt help things. We still didnt get picked up until two months after he won.
GP: Richard Kelly [writer/director of Donnie Darko] is a friend of mine and his film was a huge hit at Sundance. It had Drew Barrymore in it and is really interesting but for six months nobody picked it up. For six months they were going from door to door looking for someone to release it.
There is a warped view about movies being discovered at Sundance but no they usually rejected at Sundance. Very few things get picked up right off the bat. You are trying to sell them a bag of goods.
DRE: Did Artisan tell you why they picked it up?
GP: I didnt have anything to do with the sale. It was the producer and his rep. I just sit back and ask if I got any money. Then I get lied to and screwed again. No Im kidding, Im not that bitter. I have no idea what the logistics of the deal. They usually dont let the filmmaker in on that unless the filmmaker is also a producer.
We just did another film called Surviving Eden that were showing at South by Southwest. Illeana Douglas was supposed to be in it but she couldnt. We keep talking about doing something else. I am actually in a short film she directed.
DRE: Right in that show she was supposed to have that might never get to air.
GP: Its so crazy and what they decide to show is crap.
DRE: Was it hard to get this new movie made?
GP: This one happened ridiculously fast. I got a call from a friend of mine who is an actor. He said they just fired the director of the new movie hes on and they hate the script. They had the money to make it though. It was weird. I met with the producers, we hit it off and I wrote the script in three days. We immediately started casting, ten days of preproduction then we shot it in 20 days. Its got a great cast, Cheri Oteri, Jane Lynch, Sam Robards and Peter Dinklage. Its also got one of my favorite character actors in it, Conchata Ferrell. Shes in everything from Network to Mr. Deeds.
DRE: Who is she in Mr. Deeds?
GP: Its a terrible movie but she works at the pizza parlor in the town where Adam Sandler is from.
I think Surviving Eden is a very funny movie much better than Dummy.
DRE: Have you gotten much response from people who have seen Dummy on DVD?
GP: I got an email from one of the video sales people. They wrote to tell me the movie is renting in Arkansas.
DRE: Thats kind of cool.
GP: Yeah its every state and every town. Its a good feeling.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Dummy tells the story of a young man [Adrien Brody] who struggles to express his feelings, learns to communicate with the world as a ventriloquist, through his dummy. Milla Jovovich plays his best friend, an aspiring Yiddish folk singer.
I had an amazing time talking with Greg Pritikin. He was eager to get his SuicideGirls password and to talk about his new film, Surviving Eden, which premiered at South by Southwest film festival.
Buy Dummy on DVD.
Daniel Robert Epstein:watched the DVD for Dummy but I didnt get a chance to listen to the commentary track by Jeff Dunham.
Greg Pritikin: Well gee. Too bad.
DRE: Did I miss out?
GP: I dont know I never heard it.
DRE: Whos idea was that?
GP: That was the brilliant idea of someones over at Artisan or Lions Gate. Thats what happens in this business. People do things in your name and you have no idea how or why it happened. The problem is that right in the middle of Dummys theatrical run Artisan was taken over by Lions Gate. They pulled a bunch of their movies out of the theatre and it was just a bad deal for all the filmmakers involved with Artisan at the time. Dummy played for about a month then it was shut down.
DRE: How did it do when it was playing?
GP: I think it would have done really well if it had been allowed to go. Our opening weekend we were number four of the top ten indie films that were out and our box office average was the same as Once Upon a Time in Mexico, especially considering we were competing with Lost in Translation which had cleaned up everything. We think it did well considering it was terribly marketed and terribly promoted.
DRE: Harry Knowles really seemed to take to it.
GP: Yes we showed the film at South by Southwest and he really loved it. He plugs it on his site whenever he can.
DRE: I think Dummy holds up really well on DVD. What was your budget?
GP: It was just under a million. The industry expression is high six figures.
DRE: How did you get those actors?
GP: An unknown Hollywood is that because there are so many bad scripts out there if there is a script that is mediocre or better the actors will respond provided it is financed and has a shooting date. A lot of people just have a screenplay and just try to get it to movie stars. That doesnt work. If you have a little bit of money and can make an offer they will read your script. Its a secret so we shouldnt tell too many people. Even famous actors want to do interesting work and there isnt a lot of interesting work out there. The illusion is that if someone is famous they dont need the work. They all need the work.
DRE: Is Adrien Brody just the perfect Jew?
GP: Well according to Jews hes not a Jew because his mother is not Jewish.
DRE: Look at the nose on that guy!
GP: Thats a hearty Hungarian nose. He wasnt even raised Jewish and no one in his family even looks Jewish. Hes not the perfect Jew. Hes a fallen Jew.
DRE: Barry Levinson and Roman Polanski are experts on Jews and they cast him.
GP: I guess we escape our preconceived notions on what a Jew should look like. Steven Spielberg is a Jew but to me he looks like he would playing golf at a restricted club.
DRE: You got to see his face without the beard.
GP: I was never thinking, Lets get that Jew actor Brody. I was thinking that Adrien Brody has this intense vulnerability and innocence that I havent seen in many other actors his age.
DRE: What was the movie you saw him in that made you want cast him?
GP: I saw him in probably all of his stuff. The first movie I saw him was a movie a friend of mine produced called Six Ways to Sunday. I remember being blown away by Adrien because he was so good that I didnt think he was an actor. I just thought he was some funny character they decided to put in the movie. Thats a great achievement.
DRE: With Dummy you had a great script but how much of a vision did you have for the way the movie was supposed to look?
GP: I thought it was important that the film look as real as possible and as unstylized as possible. I did not want the characters and script to be overshadowed by the heavy hand of the directors style so I wanted things very natural and low key.
DRE: How autobiographical is Dummy?
GP: Im not a ventriloquist.
DRE: Did you live in your parents house until you were in your 30s?
GP: No I moved out after high school. What is autobiographical is the universal theme of having a family that gets on your nerves and being in a family that doesnt always listen to each other. I was lucky enough to not grow up in a family like that, not that bad anyway.
DRE: Why was it important for them to be that way?
GP: If the parents are too normal then how do you explain why the kids are so dysfunctional? Adriens character is very dysfunctional. Hes living at home and cant communicate. It wouldnt make sense if his parents were June and Ward Cleaver. Then it would become a different movie. It wouldnt be a character driven comedy but a movie about a psycho.
DRE: What about certain incidents? Like when he painted the note on the womans door.
GP: Maybe that would work on some of the SuicideGirls. I get the feeling they might like it.
None of those specifics are autobiographical. I did have a girlfriend at the time that I almost married, goddamn girl! She sang in a Klezmer band and thats where that came from. One of my closest friends is an amateur ventriloquist and is probably the worst at it. You could see his lips moving if he was wearing a paper bag on his head. His entire routine consists of the dummy insulting him and hes not able to come up with a comeback fast enough. I would marvel at their relationship. Its amazing that the minute you give someone a dummy the first thing they do is insult themselves. I thought that was an interesting concept. The first chance you have to talk to yourself you criticize yourself. I thought there was a story in there. How could someone become a better person through this process?
DRE: Did the movie get picked up because of the Oscar win?
GP: This probably the worst time for independent film. They say that every year and its true because it gets worse and worse. The reason its getting worse is because there are fewer theatre and the screens that are in those theatres are taken up by the same movies. So there are fewer movies needed. Nobody picks up anything. You go to a festival, see brilliant movies and nothing gets bought. They cant figure out how to market them. When Adrien won the Oscar it really didnt help things. We still didnt get picked up until two months after he won.
GP: Richard Kelly [writer/director of Donnie Darko] is a friend of mine and his film was a huge hit at Sundance. It had Drew Barrymore in it and is really interesting but for six months nobody picked it up. For six months they were going from door to door looking for someone to release it.
There is a warped view about movies being discovered at Sundance but no they usually rejected at Sundance. Very few things get picked up right off the bat. You are trying to sell them a bag of goods.
DRE: Did Artisan tell you why they picked it up?
GP: I didnt have anything to do with the sale. It was the producer and his rep. I just sit back and ask if I got any money. Then I get lied to and screwed again. No Im kidding, Im not that bitter. I have no idea what the logistics of the deal. They usually dont let the filmmaker in on that unless the filmmaker is also a producer.
We just did another film called Surviving Eden that were showing at South by Southwest. Illeana Douglas was supposed to be in it but she couldnt. We keep talking about doing something else. I am actually in a short film she directed.
DRE: Right in that show she was supposed to have that might never get to air.
GP: Its so crazy and what they decide to show is crap.
DRE: Was it hard to get this new movie made?
GP: This one happened ridiculously fast. I got a call from a friend of mine who is an actor. He said they just fired the director of the new movie hes on and they hate the script. They had the money to make it though. It was weird. I met with the producers, we hit it off and I wrote the script in three days. We immediately started casting, ten days of preproduction then we shot it in 20 days. Its got a great cast, Cheri Oteri, Jane Lynch, Sam Robards and Peter Dinklage. Its also got one of my favorite character actors in it, Conchata Ferrell. Shes in everything from Network to Mr. Deeds.
DRE: Who is she in Mr. Deeds?
GP: Its a terrible movie but she works at the pizza parlor in the town where Adam Sandler is from.
I think Surviving Eden is a very funny movie much better than Dummy.
DRE: Have you gotten much response from people who have seen Dummy on DVD?
GP: I got an email from one of the video sales people. They wrote to tell me the movie is renting in Arkansas.
DRE: Thats kind of cool.
GP: Yeah its every state and every town. Its a good feeling.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
fentopal:
I quite liked Dummy. Can't wait to see Surviving Eden.
adenwilliam:
Dummy is a great movie, I highly recommend it. But Milla Jovovich does not play an aspiring Yiddish singer in the movie, I dont know what the hell that dude is talking about. Watch the movie you'll know what I'm talking about.