The other day, I had an excellent phone conversation with Cindy, namesake for Cindy Cowan Entertainment. She is executive producing Red Lights, a paranormal thriller written and directed by Buried helmer Rodrigo Cortés. The film stars Cillian Murphy, Robert DeNiro, Sigourney Weaver, Elizabeth Olsen, and Toby Jones. From the Sundance film guide, here is the film summary:
Two investigators of paranormal hoaxes, the veteran Dr. Margaret Matheson and her young assistant, Tom Buckley, study the most varied metaphysical phenomena with the aim of proving their fraudulent origins. Simon Silver, a legendary blind psychic, reappears after an enigmatic absence of 30 years to become the greatest international challenge to both orthodox science and professional sceptics. Tom starts to develop an intense obsession with Silver, whose magnetism becomes stronger with each new manifestation of inexplicable events. As Tom gets closer to Silver, tension mounts, and his worldview is threatened to its core.
Here is our conversation:
Ethan: So how did the film start?
Cindy: The film came to me through UTA. I’ve known Rena Ronson over there for a long time, and she said would I look at something. She sent me the script, which I thought was great, and layered, and had a lot of depth to it. Right after that, she asked me if I would screen this movie called Buried, and I thought “a movie about a guy buried in a box for two hours, ohmygod I’m going to KILL myself” and I walked out of there thinking “I have to be involved with this filmmaker.” So I ended up calling them and saying, “when can I meet Rodrigo,” and about three weeks later, we got together, got along famously, shook hands over lunch and said let’s do this thing. Three months later, we were in Barcelona shooting.
E: Rodrigo obviously attracted some A-List casting with Sigourney Weaver and Robert Deniro. Was that brought about by UTA as well?
C: Anyone who saw Buried really wanted to work with Rodrigo; his work spoke for itself. This was put together by a number of different agencies, and yes UTA was at the point, but we also got really lucky with hiring a great casting director who brought us these actors as well as Elizabeth Olsen. She’s a dream to work with and a phenomenal actor. We took Lizzy right before Mary Martha May Marlene screened at Sundance and she became this starlet overnight, so we luckily had great timing all the way around.
E: This film sounds like a real poster-child of the Sundance success story, what with Cortés screening Buried at the fest last year and then gaining this talented actress right before she has a break out performance at the same festival.
C: Yeah, it really is. We got really lucky all the way around with this one. We snagged Robert right after he gained the Lifetime Achievement award, and Sigourney Weaver who was just about to jump on Avatar and is just an amazing woman, and Cillian is just one of the most amazing actors I’ve ever worked with. He’s unbelievable; there’s an Oscar somewhere in his career down the line. And like I said, Elizabeth was amazing timing, and I have to give our casting director all the props for that one. Even our smaller roles ended up with amazing actors, like Toby Jones, who will be in the Hunger Games Trilogy, and Jolie Richardson who’s in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Every part of this movie became special, from the biggest role to the smallest.
E: Let’s move on to the film. What can we expect thematically, what will it feel like? I saw the brief teaser online and it gave nothing away!
C: That’s the beauty of this film: literally only 6 or 7 people have seen this film. We’ve kept it VERY under wraps, which includes the full trailer that will not be released till its big premiere at Sundance. It’s a psychological thriller that we hope will get people thinking. We’re not going for this found footage type of horror film, we’re aiming more for a Sixth Sense type of film that we hope you’ll watch in the theaters and enjoy and keep thinking about as you leave the show.
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