(Sneak peek of the Nike/UNDFTD billboard on La Brea and 1st St. Design by Keith Scharwath)
On Friday August 29th, Beautiful Losers makes it’s Los Angeles premiere at Landmark’s Nuart Theater. To date, the response to our little film has been overwhelmingly positive and audiences have eagerly embraced our message of inspiration and creativity with open arms. With no major film distribution company behind us, we’ve been fortunate enough to have gained the support and good will from audiences who have seen the film and have continued to spread the good word amongst friends, family, and something called the “internets”. Hopefully this grass roots approach can continue to bring our film to more and more cities as we have just added Boston to our tour which already includes San Francisco, Portland, and Chicago.
The 7:30 and 10pm shows on opening night will feature Q&A sessions with myself, Aaron Rose, and Money Mark. Tickets for the L.A. premiere and theatrical run are now on sale and can be purchased at Landmark’s website here(Make sure you’re purchasing tickets for the correct shows. Dates are listed in the pull down menu above the showtimes!)
Fresh from Tokyo, Japan after our official theatrical world premiere (much more on the Japan trip coming soon), Beautiful Losers makes it’s homecoming with the U.S. theatrical premiere on August 8th at the IFC Center in New York city. This release has been a long while coming as we’ve been on the festival road for over a year now, even capturing a documentary jury prize along the way. Select showings of this weekend’s special release will feature Q&A sessions with several artists from the film. The lineup goes as follows:
Friday, Aug.8th @ 8:20 - Aaron Rose, Steve Powers (ESPO), Chris Johanson, and Cheryl Dunn
Tickets can be bought right here. (Make sure you’re purchasing tickets for the correct shows. Dates are listed in the pull down menu above the showtimes!)
The New York theatrical release at the IFC Center will run from August 8th through the 28th before shifting to the West Coast with runs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and finally end in Chicago (the film may have a longer run depending on the success of this initial roll out).
In addition to the the film’s U.S. launch, Nike Sportswear has partnered with us to give back to the people. “Make Something!!” is a series of D.I.Y. creative art-based workshops taught by some of today’s best creators aimed at inspiring and educating young people. The first set starts in New York and runs from August 8th through the 22nd and then moves to Los Angeles and goes from August 29th through September 8th. The workshops range from sign painting, photography, skateboard graphic design, toy design, filmmaking, tattoo art, footwear design and zine making. Classes will be taught by the likes of Aaron Rose, KAWS, Todd James, Tobin Yelland, Cheryl Dunn, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton, Money Mark, and yours truly to name a few. Come by my class August 30th where I’ll be teaching kids the dark arts of film editing! More on the workshops to come as they happen.
The paint is still drying and the time is almost upon us. The highly anticipated show will open tomorrow night at the Laforet Museum at 6pm! Like the sign says…
ESPO vs. Valentino? Find out what it’s about in a few days!
Steve Powers, a.k.a. ESPO, has long been one of my favorite artists for both his sarcastic signs and clean lines. Along with the rest of the artists putting together the show, the studio gangster is currently holed up in the exhibition space cooking up punchline after punchline. When he’s not perusing the aisles of Tokyo Hands of course. Here’s the hand made myth himself along with Jo Jackson, Aaron Rose, and Yours Truly.
Last Tuesday June 17th, Beautiful Losers screened at the 10th annual CineVegas Film Festival. The burgeoning Las Vegas festival which “annually presents work by innovative, uninhibited, and renegade artists to an audience of local and national film lovers, journalists, and film industry representatives” was home to some of Hollywood’s biggest stars over the past week and a half. With honorees James Caan, Don Cheadle, Rosario Dawson and Viggo Mortensen, in town as well as fellow actors Dennis Hopper, Anjelica Huston, and Sam Rockwell in the mix, we were honored just to be a part of such a prestigious event.
We felt even more honored when we were asked back to accept one of the festival’s awards at a luncheon ceremony on Saturday. Not knowing what we were fortunate enough to win, Jon Barlow (the film’s producer) and I headed to the City of Sin with modest expectations for a brief 6 hour stay, just enough time to collect our wares and avoid any real Vegas trouble. We were hoping for an award like the Documentary Audience Award where the winner is chosen by votes the audience casts after screenings, but much to our surprise we were handed the Documentary Jury Award which is determined by a panel of fellow filmmakers! To be honored in this way is extremely special for us and has exceeded all our expectations.
The lovely Jo Jackson on the red carpet of the Beautiful Losers CineVegas premiere.
The Festival also screened The Cool School, a documentary similar to our film in that it follows the careers of artists who came together in a small LA gallery in the 50’s and 60’s. A panel discussion between the screenings of our films entitled Marginal: Art for its Own Sake featured a live conversation with a group of artists from both films, including Billy Al Bengston, Dave Hickey, Jo Jackson, Geoff McFetridge, Ed Moses, Stephen Powers (ESPO) and CineVegas chairman Dennis Hopper.
Just as the flux capacitor was the driving force behind Doc Brown’s time traveling Delorean from “Back to the Future”, the Flux festival is Jonathan Wells (creator of the globe trotting digital pioneer RESFest and last year’s feel good hit of the summer the Swerve Festival) latest powerful creation celebrating the communities of film, art, music, design and culture. The debut of this new screening series last March sold out the Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater bringing out hundreds to view the world premiere of Bjork’s 3-D music video for “Wanderlust” by Encyclopedia Pictura, as well as new works by Geoff McFetridge, Cat Solen, Amautalab. Also featured in that premiere screening was the seizure-enducing music video for Gnarls Barkley’s “Run” edited by our post house pals at Therapy in conjunction with the mad people of Central Office (the video horribly failed the Harding Test which measures weather or not images on UK television can cause epileptic seizures). And I’m going to give myself a shout out as well (with no apologies to Gelatobaby) as the Adele “Chasing Pavements” music video I edited for Motion Theory also was screened at the inaugural Flux festival.
Which finally brings me to next Tuesday’s May screening sure to be another great night at the museum.
From the fine Flux folk:
“Our May event features an exclusive presentation by special guests Syd Garon and Sam Spiegel, who will discuss their artist/animation collaboration for the band NASA. Participating artists include Sage Vaughn, The Date Farmers, and Shepard Fairey. The evening will feature the world premiere of their latest work with artist Marcel Dzama. Plus new work by Dougal Wilson, Jonnie Ross and much more followed by a courtyard after-party.”
And just to do another bit of promoting, Syd and Sam both added their personal touches to Beautiful Losers as Syd worked on the opening title sequence and Sam co-scored the “commercialization” scene of the film.
Flux Screening Series
Tuesday May 13th, 7-11PM
Hammer Museum
Billy Wilder Theater
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
UPDATE:The hotel accommodations I’ve been given have also made the whole airline debacle somewhat less painful. Check the room I’m staying in at the Sofitel Hotel. Ridiculous.
You’ve heard those nightmare airline travel stories from one friend or another at some point. You’ve heard how they aimlessly wandered around airports for hours on end waiting for their connecting flight. You’ve heard how they barely missed that connecting flight because their incredibly stupid credit card company put a freeze on their account because it was used overseas even though they told them before they left the U.S. that they were going to be using the card in a different country. Yeah, well add me to that list. Here’s my visual account of 5 airports over the past 2 days.
Aeroporto G. Marconi di Bologna (Bologna, Italy to Frankfurt, Germany): With hours to kill and hundreds of Beautiful Losers stickers handy, I decided to do some International promotion. Boredom=vandalism.
Frankfurt Airport (Frankfurt, Germany to Toronto, Canada): More of the same.
Pearson International Airport (Toronto, Canada to Washington D.C.): At least I got to see the Lakers win game one of their series while enjoying the most delicious Canadian beer I’ve ever had.
Dulles International Airport (Washington D.C. to Beijing, China): Barack Obama is my homeboy.
Beijing Capital International Airport (Beijing, China): A cute smiling Chinese girl waiting for you at the gate while holding up a sign with your name on it makes it all worth while.
We’re not 100% certain yet when the film will be making it’s theatrical premieres across the country so this may be your last chance to see the film in Southern California for a while. Unfortunately I’ll still be out of the country but I hope you can make it as this is a homecoming of sorts and sure to be good times.
