Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival: Producer Edward R. Pressman & Half A Century Making Movies

The first ever Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival was held in the charming town in New York State from October 11th through October 13th. There’s some debate over whether or not Sleepy Hollow, and its neighbor Tarrytown qualifies as “Upstate New York.” There’s a lot of New York north of Sleepy Hollow, but to residents of New York City, everything north of Yonkers is “upstate,” and that include the town where Washington Irving penned the immortal tale “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Film Inquiry had all-access to the Festival, which the organizers hope will be an annual event.

A highlight of Friday’s full program was an exclusive talk by legendary producer Edward R. Pressman at the Tarrytown Music Hall. The presentation started off as any retrospective of a major moviemaker should—with a trailer. Charlie Sheen’s face filled the screen — not from Two and a Half Men or a tabloid TV feature, but from Wall Street, which following as it did Platoon, established Sheen as an up-and-coming movie star.

Other clips follow — Michael Douglas in his Academy Award-winning performance as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in Badlands, Sylvester Stallone in Paradise Alley, Judge Dredd and F.I.S.T., Jack Nicholson in Hoffa, Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian, Ron Silver and Jeremy Irons in Reversal of Fortune, Meryl Streep in Plenty, Aaron Eckhard in Thank You for Smoking, Brandon Lee in The Crow, Christian Bale in American Psycho, Nicholas Cage in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons in The Man Who Knew Infinity.

The directors represented are as diverse, and awe-inspiring — Terrence Malick, Brian De Palma, Oliver Stone, John Milius, Kathryn Bigelow, Alex Proyas, Wolfgang Petersen — especially when you notice that many of them were making their feature directorial debuts or where very early in their luminous careers. The presentation was moderated by author Douglas Winter, a former winner of the International Horror Award, and biographer of both Clive Barker and Stephen King.

From the London School of Economics to Hollywood

Producer Edward R. Pressman didn’t go to film school or grow up in the movie industry. He went to private schools in New York City growing up, received a BA in Philosophy at Stanford and went to graduate studies at the London School of Economics. There he met his lifelong friend and collaborator, writer/director Paul Williams. The confident, outgoing Williams had made a short film at Harvard, and the two of them spent days talking about movies. The inevitable result was that the two decided to form a partnership, and that was the beginning of a mold-breaking output of cutting-edge, low-budget cinema.

Terrence Malick and Badlands

Badlands launched the career of iconoclastic director Terrence Malick, as well giving two exciting young actors, Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, leads in a feature. Pressman admitted he did not foresee the film’s lasting impact. It didn’t perform well at the box office, and reviews were mixed. “We were happy to get it to the New York Film Festival,” Pressman mused. “The reviews were mixed. The New York Times rescued us.” What attracts Pressman to a project? “What attracts me to a film or directors is what catalyzes everyone—the charisma of the director—what is reflected in the film,” he said. “It’s the director and I against the world.”

Pressman noted the stress that often accompanies the production of a film—particularly a challenging one. That led him back to the subject of his relationship with the director of the film: “What gets me going is the personal relationship with him or her on a difficult film.”

The Crow and the Tragic Death of Brandon Lee

Pressman has certainly never shied away from popular or genre subject matter. This is the man who made Arnold Schwarzenegger a genuine movie star, after all. He also produced Brandon Lee‘s last movie, The Crow, which was Lee‘s biggest movie to date. Lee‘s tragic death, late in the production, in an 0n-set firearms accident, generated a media frenzy, but was a personal tragedy to the cast and crew of the movie. It was a shattering experience for Pressman as well, who had foreseen a bright future for the young and fast-rising son of the late Bruce Lee.

Noting that Pressman has worked with a number of notable German directors—Fassbender, Petersen, Herzog—Winters asked if Pressman had a particular affinity for German filmmakers. Pressman admitted to a longstanding affection for a number of German authors, particularly Hermann Hesse.

Certainly, as producer of the German point of view, World War II naval epic Das Boot, Pressman did a lot to launch Wolfgang Petersen’s career, and brought actor Jürgen Prochnow to the attention of American audiences. Perhaps not surprisingly, there were unanticipated challenges that went beyond construction of the solid steel, 3-dimensional, self-contained U-Boat mock-up. The author of the source novel, Lothar G. Buchheim, objected to the screenplay, feeling it was “anti-German.” And, it turned out, unlike in Hollywood, novelists in Europe typically retain “moral rights” to their novels when they sell movie rights, and Buchheim tied the movie up in litigation for months.

Filming the unfilmable American Psycho

Pressman catalyzed Mary Harron’s career when he signed her to direct the film adaptation of the generally (and deservedly) reviled Brett Easton Ellis novel, “American Psycho”. Even the title of Ellis’ sadistic, carnographic and two-dimensional novel attests to both his own delusions of grandeur and utter lack of imagination— Robert Bloch’s earlier (and vastly superior) pulp novel “Psycho” was set in middle America and was inspired by the real-life gruesome crimes of Wisconsin native Ed Gein. Given the utter lack of merit of the novel, it’s a wonder Pressman had any interest in the project at all.

He admits that by signing a woman to direct the blood-soaked saga of a Wall Street yuppie/serial killer, he evaded much of the outcry of misogyny that inevitably attached itself to the project. But Harron, and her co-writer Guinevere Turner, also performed something little short of alchemy on Ellis’ genuinely sickening book, and found a core of black comedy that, while not sugar-coating the violence, did provide an element of social commentary that elevated the movie to heights readers of the novel could not possibly have imagined.

Christian Bale was always interested in playing the lead in American Psycho, and had signed on when Lionsgate, in the wake of the success of Titanic, offered Leonardo DiCaprio the role, without Harron’s knowledge. DiCaprio said yes and approved a press release announcing his casting. Harron counseled Pressman to sit back and wait for it to blow over. And she was right. Gloria Steinem led the charge on a wave of public outcry against the still-unmade film about its violence towards women, and DiCaprio eventually quietly disassociated himself from the project. Bale was back on board. The movie was released in April of 2000.

Five months later, Gloria Steinem married Christian Bale’s father. Without her, Leonardo DiCaprio might well have ended up playing the lead. You can’t make this kind of stuff up.

Pressman noted that the marketing of movies has changed substantially over the years he’s made them, and that isn’t necessarily for the better. He noted that a movie like The Man Who Knew Infinity, which tested very well with audiences, is nonetheless difficult to market in the current environment. Studios don’t necessarily know what to do with a movie that’s difficult to pigeonhole.

Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Trump…?

Film Inquiry asked Pressman: “We’ve recently seen studios subjected to intense pressure regarding movies that haven’t even been released yet—Universal actually shelved The Hunt, largely due to political pressure, and Warner Brothers’ Joker was heavily criticized prior to its release, although virtually no one had seen the film. As someone who has certainly produced your share of controversial movies, are you concerned that studios are going to start backing off movies with meat on them?”

“You’re right to be concerned,” Pressman answered, adding that the climate referred to goes all the way up to the White House, to murmurs of assent from the live audience.

From a man whose bread and butter for half a century has been controversial films, that’s an opinion to be taken seriously.