"The Last Word"

[CHRIS B]

MSN video will follow ‘The Last Word’ Director Geoffrey Haley through his first Sundance expirence. There will be 4 videos during his Sundance journey. So keep checking back and look for Winona!  

** If you click the link for the video at the bottom of the page it stats off with a clip from the film and Winona is in it!!!**

http://movies.msn.com/movies/2007wintermov...ndance/lastword
 

The Road to Sundance: ‘The Last Word’
If you're a first time, independent filmmaker, the word "Sundance" is the equivalent of saying "dream come true." Getting your movie into the film festival represents the goal of any aspiring director, as it offers them a huge stage to showcase their chops to audiences and, perhaps more importantly, studio bosses looking to acquire new talent. Ask the makers of "Little Miss Sunshine," or Steven Soderbergh, who launched his career back in 1989 with "sex, lies and videotape."

But Sundance is also a gamble, an industry crap shoot. For each "Little Miss Sunshine," there are hundreds of movies that play Sundance and never again, and whose makers simply disappear.

But we're getting ahead of the story.

This year, MSN Video and MSN Movies have decided to take you on the Sundance journey, to give you a front-row-seat view into the crazy, snow-filled world of America's biggest, most important film festival. We've chosen a first-time writer/director who has agreed to let us follow him to Sundance, where he'll be premiering his debut film in the Dramatic Competition, and hopefully starting a bidding war to get the film bought. The filmmaker is writer/director Geoffrey Haley. His film is called "The Last Word." It's a dark comedy starring Wes Bentley ("American Beauty") as a young man who writes suicide notes for others, and stumbles into a romance with one of client's sister (Winona Ryder). (At left, Haley, Ryder and Bentley confer on set.) Ray Romano also stars.

Over the next week, we'll follow Geoffrey, in four video installments, on his Sundance journey. Below you'll find the first of these videos. You'll meet Geoffrey, hear a bit about his film and find out about getting into Sundance. Next week, you'll hear from the cast, attend the premiere, hear exit interviews from audiences and perhaps see Geoffrey wheel and deal and get his film picked up for distribution.

Enjoy the trip, and welcome aboard!

Also, here is the first review of the film:

THE LAST WORD

by Jeremy Mathews
(2008-01-18)
2007, Un-rated, 94 minutes

There aren't many movies about people who write other people's suicide letters for a living. "The Last Word" may have the market cornered. So it's a shame that the romantic comedy flounders so deeply in uninspired tedium when it could have taken the concept in all kinds of more interesting directions.

Wes Bentley stars as the writer, an awkward, self-conscious fellow whose eyes dart in all directions other than that of the people he converses with. Writer/director Geoffrey Haley succeeds in capturing the muted mood of its character, but fails to adequately explore his personality.

Winona Ryder plays the sister of one of his now-deceased clients. She sees him at the funeral, asks him his name, then calls him up for a date. Next thing you know, she strips naked on a rooftop for him. There is no chemistry or tension before this display of affection, and no signs of connection after it. The romance, and all the conflict that comes with it, feels perfunctory—as if it were only written so as not to waste such a clever idea.

Of course, Bentley doesn't want his lover to know that he wrote her brother's suicide note, so he doesn't tell her how he knew her brother or about his day job. You can tell this relationship will go well. Haley generates more and more frustration by putting Bentley's character into situations in which his only way out is to tell the truth, but not letting him tell it. The plot developments make it more and more obvious that our hero must come clean, yet the dweeb continues to delay his confession. While Haley may be trying to portray a man who can't tell the truth, there is a threshold for the amount of time an audience can put up with this kind of bull@#$%, and "The Last Word" surpasses it twice over.

The main bright spot comes in the unexpected form of Ray Romano, who plays one of the suicidal clients. The depressed man forges a friendship with the introverted writer, and the two find meaning within one another. But when a film only shines while deviating from its main plot, it's time to write a new film.

[CHRIS B]

Sundance: Sign on the dotted line
The fim festival's real winners

Other films screened for quite a few days before garnering any interest. Geoff Haley's "The Last Word," featuring the clout of Ray Romano, Winona Ryder and Wes Bentley, didn't exactly incite a bidding war, but was ultimately picked up.

I wonder what distributor bought it?


http://media.www.dailyutahchronicle.com/media/storage/paper244/news/2008/01/31/Redux/Sundance.Sign.On.The.Dotted.Line-3179933.shtml

[s18]

link to videos

<a href="http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf?c=v&v=37b01c01-bd47-4066-b2b7-29288f59c04b" target="_blank">http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf?c=v&v=37b01c01-bd47-4066-b2b7-29288f59c04b</a>

Clip: "Stirring Text"
<a href="http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf?c=v&v=bc644079-3870-4881-ae5b-3917cb9665ea" target="_blank">http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf?c=v&v=bc644079-3870-4881-ae5b-3917cb9665ea</a>

Clip: "Is It Nice?"
<a href="http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf?c=v&v=f7f57db5-6c43-4177-91c1-96ea2cfca4ad" target="_blank">http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf?c=v&v=f7f57db5-6c43-4177-91c1-96ea2cfca4ad</a>

[CHRIS B]

The Last Word
Bottom Line: Romantic comedy features a surprising performance by Winona Ryder but lacks credibility.

By James Greenberg
Feb 2, 2008

 Starring Wes Bentley and Winona Ryder, this comedy is likely to find its place as a cult item on home video.
Sundance Film Festival

PARK CITY -- The reason there are so few successful screwball comedies anymore is that it's nearly impossible to create the right balance of goofiness and reality. Writer-director Geoffrey Haley's "The Last Word" is no exception.

The story of a sullen writer (Wes Bentley) who composes poetic epitaphs for people planning suicides and his ditzy girlfriend (Winona Ryder), the film pushes the eccentric without creating believable characters. Ryder's surprising flair for comedy and a few laughs along the way could give ThinkFilm some modest boxoffice returns, but "Word" is more likely to find its place as a cult item on home video.

As creepy movie professions go, Evan Merck's (Bentley) job as a poet for desperate souls looking for an exit poem before they check out is right up there. Evan clearly is a gifted writer but apparently has been bruised by life and prefers dealing with other people's suffering to his own. Other than a childhood in foster homes, Haley offers few details or backstory.

While Evan is paying his respects at the funeral of one of his clients, he meets the departed's sister, Charlotte (Ryder). When she contacts him, it's less complicated for him to say that he knew her brother from college than to try and explain what he really does.
But Charlotte is insistent and starts calling and showing up at his apartment, taking him to dinner and dancing. When Evan tells her he isn't funny, he really isn't kidding. Stiff as a board and pasty-faced, Bentley's Evan is a study in comatose; he's as emotionally dead as some of his clients.

The paring of these two unlikely partners is the kind of match that could only happen in movies. Evan is not vaguely appealing, and what Charlotte sees in him is the film's big mystery. For her part, Charlotte is a handful, but Ryder at least makes her sexy and likable -- in a manic way.

While Evan is spending much of his energy covering his tracks and creating lies so Charlotte doesn't discover how he really knew her brother, he is neglecting his other clients. Ray Romano, in a wry dramatic role, plays Abel, a serious music composer whose career hasn't gone well and has reduced him to recording jingles for phone messages. Abel is almost as morose as Evan, and the two form a kind of bond of futility. It's mildly amusing to see someone as ill-equipped as Abel giving Evan advice about love.

Unfortunately, the pieces don't really add up, and even the surprise ending with Evan enabling Abel's fondest wish isn't particularly satisfying. Haley and his team give the film a professional sheen, but less quirky and more reality would have made for a better picture.

THE LAST WORD
ThinkFilm
ThinkFilm, Deviant Films
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Geoffrey Haley
Producers: Bonnie Timmermann, Alexandra Milchan, David Bergstein, David Hillary, Timothy Wayne Peternel, Jack Utsick
Executive producers: Lawrence Davis, Jeff Rice, Gary Walters, Diego Matamoros
Director of photography: Kees Van Oostrum
Production designer: Erin Smith
Music: John Swihart
Costume designer: Bonnie Stauch
Editor: Fabienne Rawley
Cast:
Evan Merck: Wes Bentley
Charlotte Morris: Winona Ryder
Abel: Ray Romano
Francis: Alan Rich
Hilde Morris: Gina Hecht
Running time -- 94 minutes
No MPAA rating

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/awards_festivals/fest_reviews/article_display.jsp?JSESSIONID=yLWLHjzDhZ8nRyrJTh0dk2MVWSDYfSjNt1DJf3WlpZTvhhsXnhyF!-432860399&&rid=10582

[CHRIS B]

 
The Last Word
Mike Goodridge in Los Angeles
07 Feb 2008 17:31

Dir: Geoffrey Haley. US. 2008. 94 mins.
Geoffrey Haley, a DP and editor perhaps best known for shooting the floating plastic bag sequence in American Beauty, makes his feature debut with The Last Word, a dark comedy about a man who makes a living writing other people's suicide notes. In dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January, the film is one of those US independents which relies on the crazy morbid quirks of its concept while jettisoning standard human behaviour or narrative sense.

Enhanced by the star pairing of Wes Bentley, a fine actor who himself broke through in American Beauty nine years ago and is only now enjoying a renaissance, and Winona Ryder, also in renaissance mode, The Last Word is marketable as a DVD and pay-TV title, but its theatrical value is limited. The young adult audiences to whom the film is targeted will find it hard to sustain their interest in a theatre, but might be more forgiving on a small screen.

Bentley plays Evan Merck, a solitary man living in downtown Los Angeles who is running a healthy internet business with his website thelastword.com which offers its clients a month-long collaboration process on an eloquent and poetic suicide note.

He even attends the funerals of his late clients to see if the note is read aloud by the graveside, and at one such event, he meets the sister Charlotte (Ryder) of the deceased and claims in a panic that he went to college with her brother – the first of many lies which he will tell Charlotte.

The two are clearly attracted to each other and, although he is a loner, she persuades him to come on a few dates with her. Before long they are an item, and he is telling her more lies by the week including deceiving her about what he does for a living.
Meanwhile Evan is working on a note with a depressive composer called Abel (Romano) who is coming out of a divorce and determined to end it all. The two become friends and Evan starts to care about him.

As his lies start to unravel his relationship with Charlotte, he is too preoccupied to deal with Abel. Both relationships come to crisis point, leading to a sea change in the lives of all three.

Haley worked on Six Feet Under for five seasons and he evidently hasn't shaken off a fixation on death. But the death in The Last Word is never real as it was in that mordantly clever series. Here Haley portrays suicide as a carefully planned ritual where the soon-to-be departed gush everything about their lives to Evan and leave overly-poetic exit notes to their unsuspecting families. The sun-drenched setting of affluent Los Angeles neighbourhoods only underlines the insincerity of the conceit.

Bentley takes it all seriously, frowning his way through the drama with the same brooding intensity for which he earned his stripes in American Beauty, but it's hard to sympathise with his character's irritating inability to come clean about himself to Charlotte. It's a relief when she finally learns the truth about her boyfriend and a relief that she doesn't forgive him for being so weird

Production companies
Deviant Films
North American distributor
THINKFilm
International sales
THINKFilm International
Executive producers
Lawrence Davis
Jeff Rice
Gary Walters
Diego Matamoros

Producers
Bonnie Timmermann
Alexandra Milchan
David Bergstein
David Hillary
Timothy Wayne Peternel
Jack Utsick

Director of photography
Kees Van Oostrum

Production designer
Erin Smith

Editor
Fabienne Rawley

Music
John Swihart

Main cast
Wes Bentley
Winona Ryder
Ray Romano
 

http://www.screendaily.com/ScreenDailyArticle.aspx?intStoryID=37093

[vulcannonibird]

On youtube they've clip with the Exec Producer. He sys the movie will be released "sometime this year"...

[CHRIS B]

On youtube they've clip with the Exec Producer. He sys the movie will be released "sometime this year"...

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/igV1-UFw-PA" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/igV1-UFw-PA</a>

[lainy]

On youtube they've clip with the Exec Producer. He sys the movie will be released "sometime this year"...

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/igV1-UFw-PA" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/igV1-UFw-PA</a>

nice

[CHRIS B]

IMDB has the film's release date listed as April 4th 2008!!! However, they also have the runtime as 7 mins!!!! I hope this information is not accurate and the film will remain a 90 min feature!!

[vulcannonibird]

maybe they turn it into a cartoon running in front of a another movie....

with the marketing "sucess" of Winona's last movies I'd not be surprised....

[s18]

Sundance Film Festival 2008 One-on-One With Ray Romano
<a href="http://www.livevideo.com/flvplayer/embed/DD8646CC165144CFB0FFB98F43A32DB2" target="_blank">http://www.livevideo.com/flvplayer/embed/DD8646CC165144CFB0FFB98F43A32DB2</a>

[CHRIS B]

IMDB has the film's release date listed as April 4th 2008!!! However, they also have the runtime as 7 mins!!!! I hope this information is not accurate and the film will remain a 90 min feature!!

IMDB now has the film listed as Genre:Short / Comedy!!! I just don't get this! I really hope it's a mistake!

[CHRIS B]

I e-mailed THINKFilm about the status of this film. I asked when we will get to see the film released to theaters. This is what they told me:

Hi Chris,

We have nothing currently planned for this project. I believe our international department might be working on it, but we're not confirmed to domestically distribute this title, and therefore we don't have any further information. Sorry we couldn't be of more help.

 

[CHRIS B]

Image Entertainment Announces Exclusive North American Distribution Agreement for the Romantic Comedy ``The Last Word''
Film Stars Two-Time Academy Award Nominated Actress Winona Ryder, Wes Bentley and Emmy Award Winning Actor Ray Romano

CHATSWORTH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Image Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ:DISK), a leading independent licensee, producer and distributor of home entertainment programming in North America, announced today that it has entered into a North American distribution agreement with The Last Word LLC to acquire the North American home video and digital rights to the romantic comedy “The Last Word.” The deal was announced at the Cannes Film Festival.

The film stars two-time Academy Award nominated Actress Winona Ryder (“Little Women,” “The Age of Innocence,” “Edward Scissorhands,”), Wes Bentley (“Ghost Rider,” “American Beauty”) and Emmy Award winning actor Ray Romano (“Everybody Loves Raymond,” “ Ice Age: The Meltdown”). Geoffrey Haley (“The Parlor”) wrote and directed.

“The Last Word” is a romantic comedy about a reclusive writer played by Bentley who makes his living composing eloquent suicide notes for people contemplating ending it all. His life gets turned upside down after he is romantically seduced by one of his recently deceased client’s relatives played by Ryder. Romano plays a client of Bentley’s character, who is a failed classical composer living in Los Angeles, making a living writing telephone on-hold music and trying to find peace in his life.

David Borshell, Image’s President, stated, “We’re proud of the caliber of talent associated with this project. ‘The Last Word’ fits perfectly into our line-up of high quality cast driven films.”

“The Last Word” was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

About Image Entertainment:

Image Entertainment, Inc. is a leading independent licensee, producer and distributor of home entertainment programming in North America, with approximately 3,000 exclusive DVD titles and approximately 250 exclusive CD titles in domestic release and approximately 450 programs internationally via sublicense agreements. For many of its titles, the Company has exclusive audio and broadcast rights and, through its subsidiary Egami Media, Inc., has digital download rights to approximately 2,000 video programs and over 300 audio programs containing more than 4,500 tracks. The Company is headquartered in Chatsworth, California. For more information about Image Entertainment, Inc., please go to www.image-entertainment.com.

[vulcannonibird]

Any news about The Last Word???

Hopefully it will hit the screen someday....