I’m happy to report that the terrific producers Celine Rattray and Cathy Schulman are helping a bunch of Oscar winners and nominees seek Salvation.
That is, they are getting ready to shoot “Salvation Boulevard” with an all-star cast that includes Oscar winners Jennifer Connelly and Marisa Tomei, and nominees Donald Sutherland, Greg Kinnear, and Ed Harris. If you think that’s a good group, just add former Bond Pierce Brosnan, who’s so good right now in “The Ghost Writer.” (If you haven’t seen the Roman Polanski thriller, you are missing great movie making.)
The indie production is budgeted at $5.5 million. I’m told these intrepid women have raised all but the last $250,000. “Salvation Boulevard” seems like a sound investment. Between the producers and the cast, and director George Ratliff, they have the combined credentials to make a hit. Ratliff adapted his script from a novel by Larry Beinhart, author of the book that became one of my favorite movies, “Wag the Dog.”
Schulman, meantime, was the driving force behind the Oscar winning “Crash.” She has dozens of credits including one of my guilty pleasure Sundance movies, “Thumbsucker.” Rattray is the founder of Plum Pictures, a plucky indie company with its own set of impressive titles including one of this past Sundance’s best films, :Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are Alright.” The latter film will get a big Oscar push, I hope, from Focus Features.
So the indie film world lives. I can’t wait to see “Salvation Boulevard” turn out to be one of the happy surprises of 2011.
