A new casting call went out today for “Mania Days,” which starts shooting April 1st. Paul Dalio, son of Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, directs. Spike Lee is producing. Financing is likely in place.
From March 21, 2012: Remember Ray Dalio? The man who runs the $80 billion Bridgewater Hedge Fund was recently profiled in Forbes. And I told you that Dalio is also a fan of Jennifer Lopez–he funds her charity–and a heavy contributor to director David Lynch’s Transcendental Meditation charity. (And you thought his mantra was just ‘money, money money’.)
Now Dalio’s son, Paul, a TV producer at the David Lynch Foundation, is now getting ready to make his debut as a feature director with a film called “Mania Days.” And the producer of the film is, of all people, Spike Lee. ‘Producer’ is not executive producer–Spike isn’t coming up with the money. But according to a production sheet that went out on Friday, Spike is going to be overseeing Dalio’s film on a hands-on basis, which he rarely does for films other than his own. Dalio, like Lee, is a graduate of the NYU Film School.
Dalio wrote and will direct the film about a manic depressive rapper who gets involved with a manic depressive poet in a passionate affair that results in a pregnancy. There’s no word on who’s financing “Mania Days,” but all things considered, it shouldn’t be hard to find the money. His mom is loaded, too–she’s a direct descendant of the Vanderbilt-Whitney families, making Paul a cousin, by the way, of Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt.
Paul Dalio’s previous credits include a short film called “The Order” about “Sam, a major driver behind economic policy, devises a plan to get the country out of a depression by harnessing the power behind people’s desires for conflict.” He also co-wrote a feature called “Faith, Love and Whiskey,” that was shot in Bulgaria and shown in January at the alternative Slamdance Film Festival. In February, Dalio married the director-star of the film, Kristina Nikolova.
