Andrew Bujalski Honored with the Turning Leaf Someone to Watch Award at the 2004 IFP Independent Spirit Awards
Sunday February 29, 12:42 am ET

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Feb. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Turning Leaf Vineyards proudly announces Andrew Bujalski as the winner of the coveted Turning Leaf Someone to Watch Award at the 2004 IFP Independent Spirit Awards, which took place today on the Santa Monica beach. Bujalski's extraordinary work on Funny Ha Ha earned him this prestigious industry honor.
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The Turning Leaf Someone to Watch Award recognizes a talented filmmaker with remarkable vision, who has not yet received fitting acknowledgment in the industry. Additionally, the award provides a $20,000 unrestricted grant funded by Turning Leaf Vineyards to help the artist fund future projects and film studies, allowing him to bring his artistic vision to life.

This year's Turning Leaf Someone to Watch Award nominees included: Andrew Bujalski, director of Funny Ha Ha, Ben Coccio, director of Zero Day and Ryan Eslinger, director of Madness and Genius. The nominating committee included: Ryan Werner (Chair), Scott Foundas, Jytte Jensen, Wesley Morris and Maud Nadler.

"Turning Leaf Vineyards is thrilled to honor this outstanding filmmaker," remarked Stephanie Gallo, Marketing Director for Turning Leaf Vineyards. "Andrew has transformed his vision into an exceptional piece of art that will delight all film-lovers. This talent echoes our philosophy of creating wines meant to bring pleasure to wine aficionados everywhere."

Hosted annually on the Saturday before the Oscars, the IFP Independent Spirit Awards ceremony is the independent film counterpart to the Oscars. The vanguard event in independent film, the Spirit Awards program recognizes the achievements of independent filmmakers and promotes their films to a wider audience. The nominated films are judged on originality, insight and, most importantly, success against budget and compensation. This year's sponsors include: IFC, Entertainment Weekly, DIRECTV, Bravo, Turning Leaf Vineyards, Starbucks Coffee Company and Hewlett-Packard Company. On 3 Productions will produce the Official 2004 IFP Independent Spirit Awards General Attendee Gift Bag and Presenter Gift Lounge.

With passion and patience as a guide, the winemakers at Turning Leaf Vineyards craft excellent wines from the grapes of California's prime wine growing regions. Wines served at this year's ceremony included the Turning Leaf Coastal Reserve 2001 Central Coast Chardonnay and Turning Leaf Coastal Reserve 2001 North Coast Pinot Noir. The Turning Leaf Coastal Reserve portfolio includes: North Coast Chardonnay, North Coast Pinot Noir, Sonoma County Merlot and Central Coast Cabernet Sauvignon. The Turning Leaf California portfolio includes: Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. For more information, please visit www.turningleaf.com.

IFP/Los Angeles, a nonprofit membership organization, champions the cause of independent film and supports a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation, and uniqueness of vision. IFP/LA provides its members with professional advice, educational programs, affordable camera and equipment rentals, and discounts to hundreds of industry-related businesses. IFP/LA also offers Filmmaker Labs, giving filmmakers the opportunity to develop their projects, and Project:Involve, a mentorship and job placement program that pairs filmmakers from culturally diverse communities with film industry professionals. To promote independent film to a wider audience, IFP/LA produces the IFP Los Angeles Film Festival and the nationally televised IFP Independent Spirit Awards. With more than 6,000 members, IFP/Los Angeles is Southern California's largest non-profit organization for independent filmmakers. For more information, visit www.ifp.org.

Translation captures Spirit awards

By Keily Oakes
BBC News Online in Los Angeles

Quirky comedy Lost in Translation was the big winner at the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, which honours films funded outside the traditional studio system.

Bill Murray celebrates his Independent Spirit Success
Despite the first impression that the Spirit awards are a low-key affair, intended only to recognise smaller films, in reality some of the biggest box office films of the year took centre stage.

And this was a rare ceremony where The Lord of the Rings was ineligible to win any awards.

Hollywood stars were in abundance with Sir Ian McKellen, Naomi Watts, Jennifer Aniston and Sean Penn in attendance.

Set against the backdrop of the beautiful, yet blustery, beach in a tent in Santa Monica the traditional red carpet was present but designer dresses and tuxedos were not on show as the majority of guests opted for casual attire.

Sofia Coppola picked up three awards for her small budget Lost in Translation - best director, best screenplay and best feature which she also co-produced.

Backstage she acknowledged the support she had received from her father, the distinguished writer and director Francis Ford Coppola, in guiding her in screenwriting, which she also confessed she found an extremely difficult process.

The film, about two strangers meeting in Tokyo, also saw Bill Murray add to his award season haul by winning best actor.

'Monkey suit'

His role has earned him his first Academy Award nomination in a career that has spanned nearly three decades.

But the ever-laid back Murray does not seem phased by the idea of the Oscars, seeing it only as one big long wait "in a monkey suit" for it to be over.

He added that it was the film that was the reason he was receiving so much attention, not just his acting.

Keisha Castle-Hughes, who saw her movie Whale Rider pick up best foreign language film, was not fazed about being the youngest person to be nominated for a best actress Oscar.

Asked what advice she had been given in advance of the ceremony, the 13-year-old New Zealander said she had been told "to take some food along in my bag" because it was such a long event.

International awards

Director Niki Caro with the Whale Rider cast, including Keisha Castle-Hughes (front left)
The ceremony was a truly international affair, with three of the four main acting categories going to non-Americans.

South African Charlize Theron was honoured for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, a woman killed on death row for the murder of eight men.

The film also won best first feature, with writer and director Patty Jenkins collecting the accolades.

The best supporting actor title was won by Djimon Hounsou, who hails from the African country of Benin, for In America.

A former model, he said the film was a mirror of his life because he able to go to the US and live the American dream like the movie's characters.

Oscar lunch

The red carpet fits into a universal platform where my peers are acknowledged by their peers - and I'm not going to ruin it with a political message

Shohreh Aghdashloo
And Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo collected the best supporting actress for her role in the powerful House of Sand and Fog.

She revealed fellow Oscar nominee Holly Hunter had invited all the women in the best supporting actress Academy Award category to lunch, although Renee Zellweger was absent from the party.

Aghdashloo also wanted to send a message to the people of Iran to fight for human rights, especially for children and women in the country.

Although a dedicated activist against Iran's government, she said after much discussion she had decided she would not be using the Oscars to air her political views.

"The red carpet fits into a universal platform where all my peers are going to be acknowledged by their peers and it is purely artistic, and I'm not going to ruin it with a political message." she said.

"Obviously my presence here is political because I came to this country in search of freedom and democracy and thank god everyone has been extremely supportive."

Casual winner: Djimon Hounsou
Writer and director Thomas McCarthy was rewarded for making his tiny budget stretch as far as possible as he won the special John Cassavetes Award for a movie costing under $500,000, as well as best first screenplay.

Now all of Hollywood's eyes turn to the Oscars, where the size of the budget is no bar to picking up the awards.

Oscar's hip year
Academy's nominees are a diverse delight: Is there hope the Oscars have finally changed?


By Michael Sragow
Sun Movie Critic
Originally published February 29, 2004
This year's Oscars offer hope that Hollywood may be crumbling - in a good way, with barriers to creativity hurtling down as the tried-and-true models of class and commerce come apart.

For most of Oscar history, overweight big-star epics, tasteful family-life tearjerkers, stultifying high-toned adaptations, and elephantine biopics or costume pictures have dominated nominees and winners.

Last year signs of life emerged when Chicago, a sassy revival of the movie musical, and The Pianist, an unsparing depiction of World War II survival, split the major awards. This year, the odds-on favorite for best picture is Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, a made-in-New Zealand fantasy that combines literary brilliance with spectacular filmmaking elan.

Then there's a Tokyo-set mood piece from a young female director (Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation); a grueling tale of misguided revenge in blue-collar Boston (Clint Eastwood's Mystic River); an inspirational horse-race saga that dares to keep three main characters separate for an hour (Gary Ross' Seabiscuit); and a Napoleonic-era seafaring saga without a tacked-on love interest or demonized enemy in sight (Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.)

No matter what you think of them individually, they constitute one of the most varied and eclectic best-picture rosters in Oscar history. (I'm a big fan of Return of the King, Master and Commander and Seabiscuit; I dislike Mystic River and I'm so-so on Lost in Translation.) Add major showings in diverse categories for off-Hollywood films such as Jim Sheridan's In America (next to Return of the King, my favorite), Fernando Meirelles' City of God, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 21 Grams, and you've got a group that would look at home at the independent movie ceremony, the Independent Spirit Awards.

Clout over quality

Once upon a time, from the 1930s to the 1950s, you could chalk up Oscar's predictability to studios that swayed their massive talent stables into lockstep voting. Winners were awarded more for their prestige and industry clout than for their entertainment value or quality.

After the studios waned in power and influence, the force of cultural inertia kept these traditions going. Despite the air-clearing tumult of the 1960s and early 1970s, the last quarter-century of Oscar choices have often been dismayingly routine, including deluxe soap operas like Ordinary People, Kramer vs. Kramer and Terms of Endearment, and soporific uplifting films like Chariots of Fire and Gandhi.

In the 1990s, Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Pictures, the company that put the box-office oomph into independent pictures with Pulp Fiction, began dominating the awards. But Weinstein mostly did it with movies that reflected the Academy's long-held respect for plush pedigrees. By the end of the decade, Miramax's Oscar movies at their best were like Oscar-winners of old, only more irreverent and hip (Shakespeare in Love), or more socially and politically up-to-date (The Cider House Rules). At their worst, they were just as sentimental and fuzzy-minded (The English Patient) as anything put out at Louis B. Mayer's MGM.

Happily, this year it looks as if voters may have decided to blow up the staid Oscar universe for good. Chalk it up to a younger and more diverse Academy electorate, to an industry-wide crusade against overweening promotional campaigns, or just to diligent members who judge from the film in front of them.

No matter what the reasons, the usual verities have disappeared into a black hole, and fresh paradigms have emerged in a movie-land Big Bang.

Just when Peter Biskind in his gossip-ridden new book, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film, proclaims that independent film is spiritually dead, indies have made some of their most vigorous inroads into the mainstream; Lost in Translation is merely the most prominent example.

Just when Americans are supposed to be turning their backs on foreign-language movies, the Hollywood elite has showered honors on Brazil's City of God, nominating it for four awards outside the best foreign film category. Widespread attention on this category, which often overlooks movies that the Academy lauds elsewhere (such as City of God), has catalyzed calls for revamping its voting rules. A similar tumult shook up the best documentary nominators several years ago - and now the once-stodgy best documentary nominees have turned cutting-edge, with controversial provocations like Capturing the Friedmans and intimate poetic achievements like My Architect.

Comedy gets its due

Even within the bounds of commercial American moviemaking, the old Oscar rules don't apply. Entertainment for its own sake - even comedy - has suddenly become au courant.

Diane Keaton's astonishing characterization of a 57-year-old playwright finding love, a performance that deepens and sharpens everything that was appealing back in her Annie Hall days, has given her a good shot at the best actress Oscar. Johnny Depp's highly amusing performance with no redeeming social value in Pirates of the Caribbean won him a best actor nomination. His recent best actor win at the Screen Actors Guild awards marks him as a contender - a fitting tour de force for a year in which the only honorary Academy Award will go to director Blake Edwards, a creator of classic slapstick in The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark.

The delightful Finding Nemo, the most popular movie of 2003, is up for four awards, including best animated feature and best original script. Finding Nemo, hatched at the Pixar animators' headquarters in the San Francisco Bay area, is also at heart an independent picture - a fact brought home by the company's recent decision to disengage from its distributor, Disney. And then there are glorious oddities like Finding Nemo's closest animated-feature competitor, the even more eccentric French-Belgian-Canadian production, The Triplets of Belleville, whose exhilarating nonsense theme notched a place on the best song list.

Hollywood has finally acknowledged that the boldest glitter often covers junk and that treasures can be found in the sideshows off the circus midway. In today's movie world, traces of pop-culture electricity most often course through imports, disreputable genres and grunge.

Not all this is for the good: For my money, nothing can compare with the thrill of big-audience movies that are also original and prescient and true, like Oscar-winners On the Waterfront and The Godfather Parts I and II. And such movies may (we can all hope) rise again.

But in the meantime, the Academy has connected to reality. And that may push Miramax's Weinstein back into more adventurous directions.

Over the last decade, Weinstein's mimicry of the studio system tried to transform Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman into luminaries as bright and magnetic as Greta Garbo and Audrey or Katharine Hepburn, and guilt-trip members into honoring projects for their gloss, even when they were as flimsy as, say, Chocolat.

This year, Weinstein appeared to have his dream Oscar project with Cold Mountain, written and directed by Anthony Minghella (a previous Miramax Oscar-winner for The English Patient), from another acclaimed novel, with a cast of Miramax house goddesses Kidman and Renee Zellweger and perennial up-and-comer Jude Law.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Kodak Theater.

Weinstein's influence

Cold Mountain, a misconceived, lumpy and romantic antiwar epic, garnered eight Golden Globe nominations. From the Academy it got only seven, and was absent from the best picture, best director or best writer ranks. Writing and directing nominations did go to Meirelles' apocalyptic Brazilian update of Little Caesar, City of God - also released by Miramax and kept in theaters largely because of Weinstein's faith. That last fact illustrates how central Weinstein and Miramax have become to the American film scene - as crucial as the studios in Hollywood's Golden Age.

Back then, major "dream factories" operated like monopolies, keeping talent of every kind under long-term contract and entire theater chains at their disposal. Moviemakers and critics alike bemoaned the hegemony of moguls who haggled over money and cut movies capriciously and said "No!" to auteur projects.

But when the studios' founding fathers gave way to glorified bureaucrats and financiers, many of the same directors and writers, stars and critics waxed nostalgic for the moguls' one saving grace: their visceral connection to celluloid.

Weinstein has done the moguls one better: He's simultaneously made himself a figure of scorn, admiration and nostalgia. Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures would have no point or narrative without him. It chronicles Weinstein's volatile attempts to play the executive genius and his realization that small movie companies could both champion offbeat fare and beat the studios at their own game. Miramax may not boast a full-fledged best picture nominee, but it owns pieces of Master and Commander and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

If Cold Mountain represents Miramax at its nadir, then City of God is Miramax at its peak. As Miramax social-protest movies go, I prefer the more emotional and compassionate The Magdalene Sisters, but City of God, a razzle-dazzle muckraker set in a slum ironically called "City of God," is a real live-wire movie. Entries like these, Fox Searchlight's exhilarating In America, Focus Features' Lost in Translation and that honorable misfire 21 Grams (which grabbed acting nominations for Benicio del Toro and Naomi Watts) testify to the benign impact Miramax has had in opening up the American film community to unexpected possibilities.

The abbreviated voting schedule (the Oscars used to be awarded a month later) and the last-minute nature of the compromise that let studios mail out DVDs or tapes for voting members was supposed to stack the deck against smaller movies. Instead, the bias went the other way. A movie like Tim Burton's Big Fish, a father-and-son drama rendered on a mammoth imaginative scale, must be seen on the big screen to be appreciated. Screeners only hurt it; so did a rocky opening that led stay-at-home Academy members to tune out.

Weinstein made one mistake with Cold Mountain, apart from over-valuing the film. He arrogantly presumed that he could impose an alternate orthodoxy on an expansive Academy. If this roster proves anything, it's that moviemakers here and internationally are discovering their own routes to creating films and finding audiences.

Year of the Family

This brave new movie cosmos relies on the oldest of all creative units: the family. The nominations are strewn with husbands and wives and parents and children. With In America, director/co-writer Sheridan found the key to making a semi-autobiographical film about his journey from Ireland to America when he asked his daughters, Naomi and Kirsten, to collaborate with him on the script.

Sofia Coppola, of course, is the granddaughter of Oscar-winning composer Carmine Coppola and the daughter of Oscar-winning producer-director-writer Francis Ford Coppola. Francis is an executive producer on Lost In Translation, and also a recipient of "special thanks," along with Sofia's brilliant mother, Eleanor Coppola (co-creator of the documentary Hearts of Darkness).

Sofia's brother, Roman, did second-unit work for the movie, just as Sofia made a guest appearance in Roman's wild 2001 coming-of-age comedy, CQ - a story about a film editor finding himself in circa-1969 Paris that had more life in it than his sister's latest movie. A win for Sofia would make the Coppolas the second family in Oscar history to win in three generations - the first was Walter, John and Anjelica Huston.

Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman, nominated for the script of American Splendor, are a husband-and-wife team, as are Annette O'Toole and Michael McKean, who penned the nominated song from A Mighty Wind - "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow."

Of course, the most acclaimed husband-and-wife team are Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who share producing credit with Barrie M. Osborne and writing credit with Philippa Boyens for The Return of the King. Jackson is also up for best director, and Walsh is in the running as part of the team for best song.

If they win, Jackson and Walsh will share a bit of history with the Coppolas, since their movie and Coppola's The Godfather Part II would be the only sequels to win best picture. Jackson and company have made their New Zealand-based WingNut Films a hotbed of creativity away from Tinseltown, the way Coppola once did with American Zoetrope in San Francisco.

A few years ago, it became chic to say that the adventurous maverick spirit Coppola embodied in the '70s was moribund or dead. The moral of Oscar 2003 may be that this spirit never went away. It passed to rising generations and spread across the seven seas, to continents on the far side of the world.

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun

Backstage Reactions at the Spirit Awards
Sat, Feb 28, 2004, 10:02 PM PT
By Vanessa Sibbald

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Perhaps the most surprising thing about the 19th annual IFP Spirit Awards was that they weren't very surprising at all. Instead of smaller films like "Raising Victor Vargas" or "Pieces of April" winning awards, or Oscar-ignored films like "American Splendor" sweeping, the film that earned the most awards Saturday night (Feb. 28) was "Lost in Translation," a film nominated for four Oscars, including best picture, that has already won a handful of awards, including three Golden Globes. Meanwhile, "American Splendor," "Pieces of April" and "Raising Victor Vargas" walked away empty handed.

Sure independent films are still alive, but the difference between the Spirit Awards and the Oscars seems to be getting a little blurred. But that doesn't mean that "Lost in Translation," which is an independent film, shouldn't celebrate.

"We're just going to have a party among the group of people who made the movie," best actor winner Bill Murray told Zap2it backstage about his plans for later that night. "This is the last day before the Oscar, so everything is great. It's sort of like the last day before grades come out, everybody's in a pretty optimistic mood."

As for the Oscars, Murray didn't sound as optimistic: "I just know it's going to be a long time sitting in a monkey suit," he says of Sunday's (Feb. 29) ceremony.

For her part, writer-director Sofia Coppola seemed overwhelmed by the attention, and the four awards the film raked in, including best picture, best screenplay, best actor and best director.

"When I was making the movie I never expected that it would ever get out there, or as many people would see it. We were just out there making this low budget project. It's been an exciting surprise," she said backstage.

But whether or not the Spirit Awards are starting to resemble all the other award shows or not, it was clear that a clear anti-establishment mood had energized the groups, no matter how part of the establishment some of them are.

"Well I think today is very special because independent film is where our industry grows. It grows from the inside out, not from the outside in," said Sir Ben Kingsley, who was nominated for his performance in "House of Sand and Fog," explaining the difference between the two award shows.

Perhaps host John Waters voiced the mood best by his sign-off at the end of the night: "When you see a commercial in a film, boo."

Red Carpet and Backstage Thoughts at the Spirit Awards

"I'm sort of overloaded -- I'm years and years behind on the mail and I'm years and years behind on phone calls. I'm never going to catch up and I've sort of dealt with that so I don't fake it anymore. Well, I'm losing my mind, really. I can't remember names or what I'm supposed to do, I can only focus on certain things; my house and my home, my family and my job when I do it -- but only when I do it," Bill Murray on why he's reclusive from the industry.

"I think what would surprise people is that it was 75 percent behavior. She could do it right now and send chills down people's spines," "Monster" director Patty Jenkins, downplaying the role of makeup in Charlize Theron's performance in the film.

"The thing about Eileen was she gave me a lot of room because she was very animated. I guess the subtlies are harder to play and I got lucky because she wasn't that subtle -- she let everybody know when she was in the room," best actress winner Charlize Theron on playing Aileen Wuornos in "Monster.'

"I wouldn't be here, and this wouldn't be in my hands, if it were not for those two little girls because they obviously enhanced my performance," best supporting actor winner Djimon Hounsou about his "In America" co-stars, Emma and Sarah Bolger.

"Because most the big studio films are really boring, actually. So you don't want to be bored to death for the rest of your life, do you? That's why it's good to support independent films. There's has to be some alternative to the mainstream gobbley-gook," "In America's" Jim Sheridan on the important of indies.

"I think films inside the studio films, in the last 25 years, there's been enough classics to count on one hand. I think the system, the way it's controlled, is basically bogus," Francis Ford Coppola on the same topic.

"In any indigenous community you will find the most astonishing stories because, in our case in the Maori culture, these are stories that have been told for a thousand years. Something like the Whale Rider has been around that long, it's inevitable that it's going to work for an audience, it's been working for a thousand years at least," "Whale Rider" director Niki Caro on the success of the film.

"The independent Spirit Awards, we're so casual that we wear our jeans as if we just came from our houses -- oh bulls**t, we've had our hair done from 8 a.m. We had had makeup people come over, but we act as if we just rolled out of bed," presenter Nia Vardalos.

Taking Big Risks Out of Small Films
By ERIC DASH

Published: February 29, 2004

ITH a total of four nominations at the Academy Awards tonight, for "The Girl With a Pearl Earring" and "The Cooler," Lions Gate Entertainment has captured the attention of Hollywood.

But Lions Gate, an independent studio based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has also caught the eye of Wall Street. Its shares have soared 251 percent over the last year and now trade at $6.50, a new high, on the American Stock Exchange. Some analysts suggest that the shares could be worth much more.

While its movies have garnered considerable critical acclaim, they have generally not been smash hits at the box office. The studio has not posted an annual profit since 2001. But the company expects better commercial success later this year, when it releases separate movies starring Robert DeNiro and Nicole Kidman, as well as "The Punisher," an action film based on the Marvel comic book character.

The studio also produces television shows and has assembled a large film library, diversifying its revenue so it does not need a blockbuster to be profitable, said Jon Feltheimer, the chief executive.

"We have no desire to be No. 1 when we release a picture," he said. "Our overriding concern on each picture is to make money - and certainly not lose money." By keeping costs low and having a more predictable revenue stream, he said, "I do not have to pray for a film to succeed."

Still, the company has set some ambitious financial targets. Although it lost $30 million in the third quarter, Mr. Feltheimer said that it would soon turn a profit. In the next fiscal year, which begins in April, he said that Lions Gate would generate more than $80 million in free cash flow and would begin to pay down $150 million in debt.

Lowell J. Singer, an analyst at SG Cowen Securities, said that the company's goals should be attainable. "Execution is a very prominent driver here," he said, though "it's certainly not in the bag."

Though small by Hollywood standards, Lions Gate has grown substantially since its initial stock offering in 1999. It received considerable notice when Halle Berry won the 2001 Oscar for best actress for her performance in the Lions Gate film "Monster's Ball."

Most of the company's operations are in Los Angeles, but its official base is in Vancouver, where it also owns a sound stage. The company's stock trades on both the American and Toronto exchanges; Peter Wilkes, a spokesman for Lions Gate, said that the company had attracted several prominent investors, including Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft; James L. Dimon, the chairman of Bank One; and Mark Cuban, an Internet billionaire who owns the Dallas Mavericks basketball team.

Lions Gate has snapped up several smaller companies - most recently, Artisan Entertainment, based in New York - to create Hollywood's largest independent studio, part of a strategy of consolidation that Mr. Feltheimer said he developed four years ago with Michael Burns, the studio's vice chairman.

The company's stock has surged 59 percent since mid-December, when it acquired Artisan, which owned a big film library and had distributed films including "The Blair Witch Project" and "Buena Vista Social Club."

"Artisan was the big kahuna out there," Mr. Singer said.

Today, Lions Gate's biggest and steadiest revenue stream comes from its film library, Mr. Feltheimer said. Lions Gate's expanded collection of more than 8,000 titles - including fitness videos, children's programs, classic films like "It's a Wonderful Life" and action hits like "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" - should prove popular with cable television channels and retail customers at chains like Best Buy and Wal-Mart, Mr. Feltheimer said.

He projected that the library would generate more than $200 million in distribution revenue in the next fiscal year, up from $46 million this year, which does not reflect the contribution of the big Artisan film library. Mr. Feltheimer also said that the film library would supply content for CinemaNow - a fledgling video-on-demand business that the studio controls. Among other shareholders in CinemaNow are Microsoft; UPC Global, a European cable company; and the Blockbuster unit of Viacom.

The film library gives the company some stability, but Mr. Feltheimer says Lions Gate's most crucial growth component is "the success of our feature films and television products." He acknowledged that its production arm made the studio a riskier investment but said that it also allowed the company to offer investors potentially more attractive returns.

Dennis McAlpine, an analyst at McAlpine Associates, an investment research firm based in Scarsdale, N.Y., warned that while Lions Gate has diversified, independent movie production is inherently risky. "It's a tough business," he said. "You have got to get movies that make money."

Mr. Feltheimer said that Lions Gate had been unprofitable because of the expense of buying and digesting other companies and, recently, the cost of marketing its Oscar-nominated films, but that it had kept production costs down. All but one of the last 29 films it has released have been profitable, he said.

THE company finds creative ways to sign the stars for its movies, he said, often negotiating smaller salaries in exchange for a more flexible and shorter production schedule, the opportunity to work with a particular director or part of the film's potential profit. It also tries to keep marketing budgets in check. "The Girl With a Pearl Earring" initially opened in just eight theaters, he said, and moved only gradually into 400 nationwide. By contrast, "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" opened in 28 countries in its first five days, incurring enormous marketing costs while racking up big sales at the box office.

So far, Lions Gate has been careful to rein in its appetite, Mr. McAlpine said.

"As long as they keep the formula of doing relatively low-cost films and not overspending on marketing and distribution, then they should survive and do pretty well," he said.

Still, the risks are substantial. Investing in Lions Gate, Mr. McAlpine added, "is one step better than investing in films directly - becoming an angel for an independent film, which I certainly don't recommend."

More precious than gold

'Rings' may dominate Oscars tonight, but small films offer lasting impact

Sunday, February 29, 2004

BY JENN MCKEE
News Special Writer

Each year we complain about the Academy Awards show. Its cheesy production numbers. Its dull, prepackaged banter. Its languorous pace. And its longer-than-"Dances with Wolves" running time.


But then we stop grousing just long enough to gather our friends, pop popcorn and watch the ceremony - in all its bloated, glamorous pomposity - all over again.

Chrisstina Hamilton, director of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, said, "I watch it every year, but it doesn't mean much to me. I'm not interested in mainstream narrative work - it overshadows everything else (that's produced), and the awards are so bloody political. But that's the nature of any competition."

Russ Collins, manager of the Michigan Theater, thinks the competitive aspect is part of what makes the show so fun. "It's not too much different from the Super Bowl in some ways," he said. "You're probably watching the best teams compete with each other, and even if they're not the best, they're still probably very good."

"(Oscar night)'s the only religious holiday we celebrate in my house each year," said Hubert Cohen, a film and comparative literature professor at the University of Michigan's Residential College. "We usually have a party and serve blintzes and champagne."

But one actor Cohen would toast this year didn't even receive a nomination: "Master and Commander"'s Russell Crowe. "Crowe makes that role his," Cohen said. "You don't see him at all in it. He just disappears. It's a terrific performance, and a marvelous film."

Others in the Ann Arbor film community disagree with Cohen's last statement, however, questioning the sea adventure's place among the nominees.

"I was surprised 'Master and Commander' got so many nominations," said Collins. "It's a well-executed film, but it seems to just be a boy's war story. I enjoyed it just fine, and clearly it was a hard movie to make - filming in water is expensive and difficult - but it seemed more of a feat than compelling filmmaking."

Morrie Warshawski, an independent film consultant and author of "Shaking the Money Tree: How to Get Grants and Donations for Film and Television," agreed. "I don't know what 'Master and Commander' is doing on the list at all," he said.

And although Warshawski's a great fan and proponent of independent films, he feels the hype for "Lost in Translation" has been exaggerated. "I love Bill Murray, and Sofia Coppola's got the glitz factor, but too much has been made of (it). Don't get me wrong, I liked it a lot -it's a good film - but it's received more attention than it deserves."

Cohen's views on this year's big indie smash are far more critical. "I think (the film)'s insensitive to Japanese culture, I don't think Coppola cares about Japanese culture, and there are parts of it that just don't make sense - it's sloppy," he said. "But I liked Murray's performance."

Many critics agree, but Murray is nonetheless the dark horse in a Best Actor race that seems already won by the odds-on favorite, Sean Penn.

Jennifer Hardacker, an experimental filmmaker and a lecturer in the University of Michigan's Film and Video Studies Department, believes that the reasons for Penn's likely win aren't limited to his performance as the grieving, angry father in "Mystic River."

"The Academy seems to award people on a career merit basis sometimes, like they're looking for an excuse to give the award to certain actors," she said. "Charlize Theron has it in aces with the Golden Globe win, but then you have Diane Keaton. She'd be a person the Academy would love to see get an award."

Keaton's role, though, was in a comedy, a genre that the Academy notoriously undervalues. "If anything gets overlooked, its comedy," said Collins. "'Barbershop' has controversial aspects to it, so it's got that covered, but it wouldn't even be considered because of the perceived seriousness of the Oscars. That sense that it's about doing something artistic."

The thing on which nearly all the experts agree is that "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" strikes Hollywood's perfect balance for a Best Picture Oscar: huge box office success, an epic scale and critical acclaim. Both Jackson and the film, they believe, have earned the big awards this year by virtue of the stunning achievement of the whole trilogy, rather than simply for the last film in isolation.

"Whenever there's a big, epic movie like 'Lord of the Rings,' you just know it's going to be nominated," Hamilton said.

Added Cohen, "'The Lord of the Rings' is an incredible series, but the smaller films -'21 Grams,' 'The Station Agent,' 'The Cooler' -were the ones that really stayed with me this year."

Especially "The Station Agent," a film about a dwarf who inherits an old, abandoned train station and befriends an eccentric hot dog vendor and a grieving divorcee. "That's the film that stands out for me," Cohen said. "I didn't want it to be over. Everyone I've talked to has said the same thing. They just wanted to stay with those four people longer. It's a rich little gem."

Collins, too, called it "my personal favorite for 2003."

Hardacker and Warshawski, however, believe the most overlooked film of the year is "American Splendor," a film based on Harvey Pekar's unremarkable life, as told through his own series of comics. Hardacker said of the film, "It was full of unique characters who were the opposite of glamorous ... 'American Splendor' took risks with style, and it did some really interesting things."

The media, meanwhile, has lately focused on why the Academy gave "Cold Mountain" the cold shoulder. Miramax's Harvey Weinstein faults the film's late release date for its absence from the Best Picture list, but Ann Arbor's film experts tend to think the film shouldn't even have received the nominations it did. Cohen, for one, believes that Jude Law's slot in the Best Actor category would be better served by "The Cooler"'s William H. Macy or "Owning Mahowney"'s Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Warshawski simply said, "If Renee Zellweger wins (Best Supporting Actress), it will be a mistake."

And while Collins is generally less critical of the film, he nonetheless understands "Cold Mountain"'s absence from the academy's final cut. "It's a compelling story that's well-paced," he said, "but it seemed too well made. It sounds weird to say that, but a certain kind of humanity got lost in the extreme skill used to make that movie. There was a lot of brainwork behind it, but that little piece of magic was missing."

What wasn't missing this past year were worthy documentaries. Warshawski, in fact, thought at least three more films earned a place in the Best Documentary category: "Spellbound," "Bus 174," and "Winged Migration." Despite these omissions, though, Warshawski believes that strong work is nonetheless well-represented in the category. He just knows that the best of them may not necessarily win.

"It's an interesting list of nominees, but the Academy's usually very conservative," he said. "Last year (Michael Moore's win) was an anomaly, and look what happened. So my guess is that they'll play it safe. Both 'The Fog of War' and 'Capturing the Friedmans' were great films, but I think their subject matter will throw off the Academy members too much."

Regardless of all such misgivings, though, Collins thinks movie fans should maintain a sense of perspective about the awards. "It's good to remember that the film that's considered by many to be one of the best of all time, 'Citizen Kane,' didn't do too well at the Oscars," he said.

It's true, and this fact does make the whole Academy Award thing seem silly and pointless. Stupid Oscars.

What time are they on again?

Voting for the golden one

Penn or Murray? Theron or Keaton? A blockbuster slate of candidates ... It'll be a win-win night

By Lisa Kennedy
Denver Post Movie Critic

You know the moment. Call it scripted grace.

The winner of the coveted 8 1/2-pound statuette known as Oscar stands at the Academy Awards podium, clock a-ticking and commercial break looming and says: "First, what an honor it is to be in such good company."

Cameras do their cruel pans of the fellow nominees who - earning their keep as actors - look appreciative of the winner's words.

Those in the gargantuan television audience who enjoy the discomfort of strangers, even the Hollywood denizens we feel overly familiar with, search for the cracked smile, the barely concealed wound.

But tonight, when the winners of the acting categories pay tribute to their competition, they will speak the truth.

When Sean (or Bill) looks out over the Kodak Theatre, he might well say, "Sir Ben, this should have been yours." Or, "Johnny, what an indelibly idiosyncratic performance." If they say it, they'll mean it - or should.

The year 2003 provided a delicious taste of what American film acting can be - or rather, is becoming. And this year's awards seem ready to honor that fact.

Work and craft have triumphed over star turns.

One reason Tom and Nicole are presenting instead of vying for the gold tonight is that they were too much themselves in "The Last Samurai" and "Cold Mountain." Not to say each of these stars wasn't working. Cruise bore down hard on his disenchanted Civil War hero.

And the woman who last year won by a nose and a tremendous performance as Virginia Woolf in "The Hours," didn't make the cut. This year, Kidman delivered a fine performance in "Cold Mountain," though a better one in "The Human Stain." Still, those characters had lived a harder life than Kidman seemed willing to physically acknowledge. Did she have written into her contracts that she'd gotten her Oscar for doing ugly and wouldn't be doing it again?

What's behind the role

If you went to "Mystic River," "Lost in Translation," "21 Grams" - to name just three worthy films - you were forced to ponder not what makes a star but what fuels a commanding performance. How does that idiosyncratic sliver of human meaning happen?

This year's nominees performed cinema's shamanic rites for their audiences. Performers weren't exorcising our demons so much as making it clear that they are ours.

Case in point: The two front-runners for best actor and actress. "Mystic River's" Sean Penn and "Monster's" Charlize Theron inhabit two sorts of beast. Certainly Jimmy Markum, the father of a murdered daughter, makes more empathic sense to us than the serial killer Aileen Wuornos. But Penn and Theron, using different styles, make "monstrous" into an act, not a miserable enigma.

Some outbreaks of creativity come to us as complete mysteries, an inexplicable harmonic convergence. This boom in bold performances isn't one of those puzzles. Independent films have made the American actor better. And indie film continues its incursion into Hollywood's really big show. Four of the nominees for best actress come from indie pictures.

"At first the supporting (nominees) came up, and there was nothing on Keisha (Castle-Hughes), then wow," said Bob Berney, president of Newmarket Films the day nominations were announced. Two Newmarket actresses were honored, 13-year-old Castle-Hughes in "Whale Rider" and Theron.

Actresses are shaking off their physical magnificence to locate something essential and raw. Witness Naomi Watts in "21 Grams." These women seem eager to shake off their attachment to beauty (on screen if not on the red carpet). And audiences and the Academy seem more willing than ever to let them.

Consumed by the craft

As for the men, they too seem to be disappearing into the embrace of craft. There are some who argue that Bill Murray is just being himself in "Lost in Translation." I disagree.

In "House of Sand and Fog," Ben Kingsley's proud patriarch makes every hubris-stoked error he can, yet we summon surprising sympathy for him. There is little in Massoud Amir Behrani which warrants that tenderness, but here in the alchemy of celluloid and light, Kingsley makes us feel his character's interior the way a novel might, no voice-over required.

And 2003 was the year that bestowed on us two outstanding Sean Penn performances, "21 Grams" and "Mystic River." Either could have garnered him the nod, but he was nominated for the one that should give him the win.

Yes, there are years when the winners gall you beyond reason - and not just because you lose the office pool. This year's slate of nominees resists that furious disappointment.

If Penn loses to Murray, so be it. If Theron loses to Diane Keaton - and she won't - it won't be merely because of a fever of Hollywood sentimentality.

The actresses vying for the "best supporting" prizes are even more impressive. Holly Hunter has seldom been better than she is as the mom of an adolescent girl gone wild in "Thirteen." Patricia Clarkson is all acid and suppressed fear in "Pieces of April." Marcia Gay Harden gave a tender portrait of a wife as wounded bird plunging toward the hard pavement of a tough South Boston neighborhood in "Mystic River."

And these are the actresses who won't win.

'Rings' about chemistry

All this talk about acting provides a strange counterpoint to the debate about which movie will claim the Oscar for best picture.

It is an irony worth mulling that the likely winner of this year's Academy Award for best picture, "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," doesn't have a single nominee in the acting categories.

Peter Jackson's film is a collaborative extravaganza right down to its performances. The "Ring" trilogy thrives not on great acting (though there are some excellent performances) so much as on the fine chemistry among its actors.

In fact, the final installment of "The Lord of the Rings" could have pushed Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn into contention. His soulful heft in "The Two Towers" offered that possibility. But Jackson resisted this in the name of the trilogy's tale of fellowship.

Two weeks before the Oscar nominations were announced and "The Return of the King" became a gambler's bum bet, "LOTR" producer Barrie M. Osborne said, "Well you never know, I would be surprised if we were not nominated.

"But winning is always something of a crapshoot," he added. "You get into a situation where the actual winning depends on what's happening with the world and whether a film has a resonance with what's happening with the world.

"And those things affect the Academy. Some of that is unpredictable and has nothing to do with your film. But they're understandable because they have everything to do with how people feel and their emotional attachment to things."

Controversies wane

With the show just hours away, the controversies surrounding last year's Academy Awards ring hollow.

In late September, Jack Valenti and the Motion Picture Association of America tried to ban studios from shipping screeners to Academy members and critics associations as part of an anti-piracy campaign. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the MPAA struck a compromise. At the time, the pervasive worry was that a screener ban would hurt indie films. Indies not only prevailed, the Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles was nominated for "City of God," a film that was released last January.

One reason the awards show was moved up a month was to cut down on the over-the-top campaigning the studios and indies had been doing.

If not for DreamWorks, this year's Oscar jockeying would have been the most decorous and disciplined in years; the studio is being chastised for an ad it took out last week in "Daily Variety" supporting the wonderful work of Shohreh Aghdashloo. The Iranian-born actress stars as Ben Kingley's wife, Nadi, in "House of Sand and Fog."

The ad didn't merely sing the praises of its actress. It dissed front-runner Renée Zellweger.

Hardly a golden moment. But once the festivities start, it's likely to be a forgotten one.

Victims break their silence

BY VÍCTOR MANUEL RAMOS
Staff Writer

All these years later, he can still close his eyes and feel the haunting stare of the wiry young man who he said started fondling him a few weeks into computer classes when he was 10 years old.

Jesse Friedman, then 17 or 18, was supposed to be teaching the boy -- assigned the name "Gregory Doe" by law enforcement officials -- how to convert the basic binary language of the Commodore 64 computer for use on his own Apple IIc. "Uncle Jesse" -- as Gregory was told to call him -- was showing him other things as well, he recounted.

Right there in the middle of the class, out among the other students in the basement room of Arnold Friedman's Great Neck home, Gregory Doe said the abuse started when Jesse Friedman slid his hand onto his thighs and started rubbing. He told Gregory to relax then groped him some before reaching inside his pants.

All the while, Jesse's blue eyes were staring into his own.

"He touched me, you know, the wrong way ... " said Gregory, omitting some of the more embarrassing details of a story he told long ago to Nassau County law enforcement and now finds himself compelled to tell all over again. Sitting in a restaurant booth near his home, he described what he endured during those computer classes. Speaking of specific sexual acts, Gregory gagged, as if to vomit.

One of 17 boys

Today, he is a 27-year-old business manager, engaged to his girlfriend, hoping to build a life untainted by a past he would prefer to forget. He said he remains plagued by a persistent physical injury that has never healed. He asked not to be identified. And he moved more than 400 miles away from his family in Great Neck to put distance between himself and these crimes.

"The glassy eyes, I'd always remember," Gregory said. "You know, he had very glassy eyes."

In 1987, Gregory was one of the 17 boys who told Nassau law enforcement officials that they had been abused at the Friedmans' home on Piccadilly Road. Of these, 13 would later testify before a grand jury to substantiate criminal charges against Jesse Friedman, his father, Arnold, and another teenager, Ross Goldstein, 17. As their separate trials approached in 1988, father and son both changed their pleas from not guilty to guilty. So did Goldstein.

Now, in a turn of events none of the young men who testified would have foreseen, "Capturing the Friedmans," a controversial documentary about the case that has already won critical and commercial acclaim, makes them feel as if they're portrayed as liars.

Tonight, the film will compete for an Oscar for best documentary film. Many critics were enamored with the intensely intimate yet ultimately ambiguous look at the case and the voyeuristic pleasures it afforded viewers, by showing the Friedmans' turmoil through the family's own home videos. Director and co-producer Andrew Jarecki has been criticized by law enforcement officials, the boys who testified, and those close to them for allegedly manipulating crucial facts and leaving others out entirely to enhance the dramatic effect of the film. Goldstein isn't mentioned, and the accusers appear only briefly in the film.

Along with the success of the film has come a renewed effort to throw out the conviction of Jesse Friedman. Now 34, and after serving 13 years in prison, he has gone back to Nassau County Court asking that his conviction be overturned. Arnold Friedman died in state prison of an apparent suicide in 1995, after serving about 8 years of a 10- to 30-year sentence.

The film and the court challenge have brought pain and outrage to the young men in their 20s trying to rebuild their lives. It has reluctantly brought them out of their silence. And, for the first time since the case surfaced, many of them are commenting on the documentary and the court motion -- one in his own voice, one through an interview with his parents and his own written statement, and four through a lawyer hired to speak on their behalf and protect their privacy. The six reached by Newsday say the film is misleading, and they want Jesse Friedman's conviction to stand.

"My testimony was twisted in the movie, and I am here to set the record straight that this did happen and I am not afraid," said Gregory.

His main complaint with Jarecki's documentary -- which he cooperated with by sitting for extensive filmed questioning -- was that he came across as if he had not remembered any of the abuse until after hypnosis. In it, his face is in shadows, he is sloppily reclining on a couch and waving his arms as he speaks.

Two men who refer to themselves as victims -- Gregory and a man who is now 24 -- have written the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to say the film does not deserve an Oscar. "We were abused, tortured, and humiliated by Arnold and Jesse Friedman," the letter states, while complaining that Jesse Friedman "is being paraded like a celebrity while we have been left in the shadows, powerless and voiceless once again."

The retired detective who led the investigation, and appears in the film, now wishes she had never cooperated with Jarecki. "I regret the effect on the victims," Frances Galasso said.

"To call Jarecki's work an investigation is ridiculous because he didn't speak to most victims. How can you interview two victims ... to say it didn't happen," said retired Judge Abbey Boklan, who heard the original case.

Director's take

By all accounts, the documentary, which is the first full-length film by Jarecki, a multimillionaire entrepreneur, has been a critical and financial success. "Capturing the Friedmans" took the Sundance Film Festival's grand jury prize in January 2003.

In the documentary, the truth of what happened on Piccadilly Road is left to the viewer. And that is something Jarecki is proud of: "Unlike some documentaries that underscore a point of view, 'Capturing the Friedmans' presents a variety of perspectives and allows room for audience members to draw their own conclusions," Jarecki wrote in an e-mail sent to Newsday on Thursday.

At times, the documentary seems to strongly suggest the Friedmans are guilty. For example, Arnold Friedman is shown to collect child pornography, and the film tells of his admission that he was a pedophile. The film states that he had sexual relations with his brother when he was a child. The elder Friedman also states that he was worried when his sons were young that he would have difficulty keeping his hands off them. The film shows both Friedmans before the judge pleading guilty to the charges.

Then the point of view shifts, making suggestions that they weren't guilty. For example, the film shows the statements of some of the students saying they were not abused and did not witness abuse. A detective is shown saying he approached children by telling them he knew the abuse had taken place and asking leading questions. It shows the judge saying she "never" had a doubt about the Friedmans' guilt.

Jarecki strongly defended his documentary in this statement sent by e-mail Feb. 14. He said that "a man went to jail based on embarrassingly bad police work, and now Newsday continues to give [the police and the judge] credence. I worry for Jesse and I continue to do so."

The documentary also brings to light the use of hypnosis and group therapy techniques and how those practices could have created false memories in children. Jarecki uses a clip of Gregory Doe saying he underwent hypnosis to remember the abuse more clearly and then includes an expert who characterizes such methods as unreliable.

Released in May of last year, the film has attracted nonstop publicity with Jarecki's many media interviews and film-discussion appearances and his advocacy for the re-examination of Jesse Friedman's conviction. Industry reports put the documentary's box office sales at more than $3 million, not counting DVD proceeds.

Last month, Friedman filed a motion in Nassau County Court seeking "to vacate his conviction" -- which, if successful, would eventually clear him from his highest Level 3 violent sex offender status and the strict parole conditions he lives under. He filed a second motion last month in state appellate court in Brooklyn asking for a change of venue because Friedman and his legal team don't think he can get a fair hearing in Nassau County.

A student at Hunter College, Friedman must remain home between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m.; he cannot be around children without permission from his parole officer; his neighbors could be notified of his criminal history; and he isn't allowed beyond the five boroughs of New York City. He will be on the state sex offender registry until parole officials decide he is no longer a threat to children.

In his motion, Friedman's attorneys argue that prosecutors "violated his rights" by withholding exculpatory information.

The filing says that police prompted impressionable boys with suggestive questioning and that the children's therapists misused hypnosis, memory recovery and visualization techniques.

"We have presented a detailed 77-page legal motion to the Nassau County Court, with approximately 900 pages of exhibits, that provides compelling evidence that Jesse Friedman pled guilty to a crime he did not commit," Friedman attorney Mark Gimpel wrote in a statement sent to Newsday Friday. "The only way to resolve the conflicting claims is to have an open hearing before an impartial court."

Nassau District Attorney Denis Dillon said through a spokesman that his office would respond to all of the motion's allegations -- including the alleged use of hypnosis -- in court. His office's appeals bureau is preparing a written response.

Friedman did not respond to repeated requests for an interview for this story. In a short interview last month, he called for more former computer students to come forward and confirm that nothing inappropriate went on when they were in class. "I am not a child molester," he said.

For the DVD release of "Capturing the Friedmans" last month, Jarecki added new material. There is an option available on the DVD whereby you can hear Jarecki explain how he made his editing decisions as you watch the documentary. In all-new footage, he sits with Jesse Friedman, speaking about Jesse's new motion, the film and the original case.

"Who do you believe?" asks the film's promotional materials, seen plastered on the inside of New York City subway cars.

The case against them

It all started by mail.

Sometime around the mid-1980s, U.S. customs officials intercepted a child pornography publication from overseas addressed to Arnold Friedman in Great Neck. The incident triggered a U.S. Postal Inspection Service sting operation. Arnold Friedman, then the 56-year-old father of three boys who had recently retired from his Bayside High School teaching job, answered the requests of an investigator posing as a pedophile in 1987. Friedman was arrested and charged with sending and receiving child pornography by mail.

"I dressed up as a mail carrier, had him sign his name, then I went back in after half an hour, to execute the search warrant," recalled John McDermott, who currently heads the agency's Long Island fraud team. Assorted pornography and erotic computer games were found at the home, according to court records. Inspectors referred the case to the Nassau Police Department when they realized that Arnold Friedman taught mostly school age and preadolescent boys how to use computers from a makeshift lab in his basement.

Sex squad detectives conducted their own search of the house and spread throughout Great Neck in teams of two, interviewing boys who would eventually say enough for police to amass 343 charges ranging from child endangerment, sexual abuse, attempted sodomy and sodomy against Arnold Friedman and his youngest son, Jesse Friedman, who was 18. A neighbor, Goldstein, then 17, was charged with 118 counts of various sexual abuse charges and later pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree sodomy, and one count of using a child in a sexual performance, receiving a 2- to 6-year sentence. His willingness to testify against Jesse Friedman helped to break the case. Goldstein did not answer repeated requests for an interview.

The Friedmans' arrests came the day before Thanksgiving in 1987, unleashing one of the largest child sex abuse investigations to date in Nassau County. Initially, the accused pleaded not guilty. By the following March, Arnold Friedman had changed his plea to guilty, admitting before the court that he abused the children.

When he pleaded guilty against his attorney's advice the following December, Jesse Friedman made a short statement admitting his guilt and saying he too was a victim of his father's abuse.

Jesse Friedman spoke to Newsday and to then-talk show host Geraldo Rivera in separate interviews while incarcerated in 1989. He said some children were abused while others witnessed the abuse. He said his father started abusing him by fondling him while reading him bedtime stories and then escalated to outright incest by the time Jesse hit puberty. In the interviews, Jesse admitted he later became the abuser, forcing children to assume sexual positions and to perform oral sex.

Before the year was out, Jesse Friedman had recanted everything. In a later interview with Newsday, he said he lied about his father abusing him, and said he did not abuse any of the children. He said he lied to manipulate the media so people would feel sorry for him.

Documentary

Jarecki did not set out to make "Capturing the Friedmans." He said he just wanted to return to his first love of filmmaking after making millions of dollars as a businessman.

The 1985 English graduate from Princeton University said he had directed plays in school but went into business instead in 1989. Jarecki and two friends co-founded Moviefone, the movie listings company.

The company went public in 1994 and was later sold to AOL for $388 million. Jarecki was the largest shareholder and thus netted the largest sum. Before the business was sold, he made his first attempt at making a film -- a short called "Swimming" -- about children in a Harlem swimming group.

The project he started in early 2000 -- on the lives of birthday party clowns -- was to be his first full-length documentary. Working on that idea, he met Arnold Friedman's oldest son, David Friedman, a clown known on the Manhattan birthday party circuit by the stage names Silly Billy and Doctor Blood. Jarecki said David Friedman hinted at his family's problems just enough to trigger his curiosity. Jarecki began researching the Friedmans' sexual abuse case and dropped the clown project when David Friedman handed over a treasure trove of family home videos taken throughout the time of the case. Soon after, Jarecki had the first of many interviews with Jesse Friedman, in an upstate prison.

The documentary that resulted is largely the Friedman family's story, as told by their own family video history. In the film, Jarecki focuses on the idea that several of the accusers had been hypnotized or had participated in group therapy, a practice he criticizes as unreliable. Law enforcement officials said those techniques were not used in the gathering of evidence or grand jury testimony for the case against the three co-defendants. Instead, they said some of the methods were used by mental health experts in therapy after the children had provided their statements of abuse.

Last year, Jarecki told Newsday that he started believing Jesse Friedman because of his openness during the making of the documentary: "Many people made an effort to obfuscate in this case and in the end I found Jesse Friedman was the most open with me," Jarecki said.

At his many appearances promoting the film, Jarecki has stopped short of saying that Jesse Friedman is innocent, but he has clearly taken his side.

"It is a sensitive time for the case because it is pending in front of the court, so I'm not sure if it's smart for me to be commenting," Jarecki wrote in an e-mail response to questions Newsday posed earlier this month. "I have no agenda -- the motion is Jesse's and speaks for itself." In another e-mail, Jarecki said that "unnamed alleged victims" should not get to make anonymous claims against Jesse Friedman, even though this is common treatment for victims in child sex abuse cases. Jarecki himself gave them and other sources anonymity in his film and in the outtakes included in the DVD. Thirteen boys testified before the grand jury. One of the 13 is featured recanting in the documentary.

Ross Cheit, a political science professor at Brown University who studies the media's portrayal of sexual abuse cases and has researched court documents in the Friedmans' case, said "Capturing the Friedmans" follows a pattern of journalism where complicated abuse cases are oversimplified for the sake of telling a good story.

"The actual facts are far more complicated than what Jarecki explains in the film. It is clear that he leaves out a whole lot of important evidence," Cheit said. "I think it makes a very compelling story. The wrongful conviction story is very compelling and more so than saying a convicted man is guilty as charged. That's not a good story."

A family nightmare

Just the mention of his name can bring back nightmares.

"Jesse was the scariest of all of them to my son," one Long Island mother of a then-7-year-old boy told Newsday. She and her husband both asked that their identity be withheld to protect their son's privacy. "Jesse is the bogeyman in the covers, the bogeyman under the bed. Even when he is fifty years old, Jesse will be the bogeyman under the bed."

She said the popularity of the documentary and Friedman's return to court asking that his conviction be overturned was "disgusting" and "nauseating."

Innocence was what her son lost, she said.

"I see this media circus that Jarecki has generated to promote this film as an unjustified and cynical attack on the defenders of these children and therefore supportive of those who would victimize them," she said.

'I only understood fear'

She and her husband enrolled their son in the computer class for several months in early 1987 after her husband attended the adult program and met Arnold Friedman. Looking back, she said she remembers thinking it was odd that parents were never allowed inside the classroom.

Soon after enrolling in the class, she said, her son's behavior changed. He began drawing sharks and believed they were swimming in his bedroom floor's blue rug. Once, when she asked her son what he was learning in the class, he and a classmate looked at each other with "sheepish grins on their faces" and giggled.

At the end, she said, it was Jesse Friedman's suspicious behavior, and her son's unwillingness to return for another season, that led her and her husband to pull him out of the school before the scandal broke.

All these years later, she still has vivid images of Friedman. "You know, Jesse had this hair," she said. "It was all greasy hair, black hair. He had it always over his eyes. He would never look at you. I just have this picture flashing in my head of Jesse opening the door. ... He would look to one side, he would open the door and he'd look over here and he'd say, 'Oh, we'll be done soon.' And I'd say, 'Well, can I wait inside?' and he'd say, 'No, no, no, no, no. ... ' Never would let me in."

When the case broke, her son told detectives that he witnessed when another child, who was overweight and reportedly the frequent target of humiliation, was sodomized in front of the class -- an event supported by that other child's detailed statement to police. Her son told of being taken to the bathroom, where Arnold Friedman attempted undressing him but had trouble taking off the belt he was wearing.

Eventually, he told detectives and his parents that he was photographed urinating and was subjected to sexual abuse. The way her son described it at the time was that "they did things to him that made him feel like he was going to go to the bathroom," his mother said.

Their son freely volunteered information without any pressure from detectives, with both parents nearby, she said.

The years have not diminished the horror, the father said in an interview with Newsday. Because of the case, he said he still has trouble communicating with his son and sometimes blames himself for enrolling him in the classes.

"I saw a huge, huge amount of anger that was harbored inside his heart towards Arnold Friedman and his son Jesse, and to Ross Goldstein," said the father. Finally, when his son told him what had happened, he came to understand his son's anger. Now a law student, the son declined to be interviewed for this story. But he provided a written statement saying that the documentary, and the resulting flurry of interest in the case, is cruel and unfair to him and the others who said they suffered abuse.

"Arnold and Jesse Friedman violated my trust for them as educators by sexually abusing my classmates and I at their home," he wrote. " ... I was seven years old when I was in the custody of Arnold and Jesse Friedman. At that time I did not understand the dynamics of human sexuality. I only understood fear."

To ensure secrecy, Arnold and Jesse Friedman told some of the boys who testified they suffered abuse that they would burn down their houses, kill them, and hurt their parents if they revealed the abuse, according them, investigators and some parents.

If Friedman's effort to have his conviction thrown out proceeds, the man said he does not want to have to testify, and once again relive the horror of the abuse. He has rebuilt his life, he said, adding that the "victims are entitled to closure."

To the father, the uncovering of what had happened to his son has shattered any illusions of the innocence of youth.

It "taught me that life was . .. not pristine, people were not pristine, and there are people out there who would willingly violate the privacy of a child and the innocence of a child. That was a very, very difficult pill to swallow as a parent, that our children could be so vulnerable."

A possible return to court

Others who testified in the first case aren't looking forward to the possibility of having to relive the abuse in court. It is unclear whether Friedman's motion to overturn will come to that.

Sal Marinello, the Mineola lawyer who says he represents "four victims," said his clients do not want to step backward to a time they have tried to forget. He said it was the responsibility of Friedman's attorneys to demonstrate that they have compelling new evidence to justify calling witnesses.

"Why should members of the public, their colleagues, family members, friends, hear about this now?" Marinello said. According to the recent motion, one of the 13 victims who testified of abuse before the grand jury has recanted. Friedman's lawyers have used transcripts from the documentary as evidence in the motion. Identified in court records as Dennis Doe, the witness appears in the movie saying police pressured him to speak up.

"I kind of broke down. I started crying," a voice attributed to Dennis Doe says in the film. "And when I started to tell them things, I was telling myself it was not true. I was telling myself, 'Just say this to them to get them off your back.' "

Friedman's motion includes eight people somehow connected to the computer classes who say they never witnessed any abuse at the Friedman house.

The joint letter of the two young men to the Academy Awards panel said, in part, "We did not lie. We did not exaggerate. We were never hypnotized to tell our stories. The director twisted the facts in the film to make it appear that way."

Gregory Doe said he does not need hypnosis to remind him of what the Friedmans did to him. His family sent him to a private therapist after he provided his statement to police but prior to his appearance before the grand jury. The therapist used hypnosis, he said, to try and get him to the point where he could talk about what had been done to him without throwing up.

He said Jesse Friedman abused him first, followed by Arnold and Goldstein, and that he was made to undress, assume sexual positions and perform and receive oral sex.

The most horrid abuse took place during one-on-one makeup sessions when he was left alone with Arnold Friedman. He said both father and son committed forcible sodomy on him multiple times. He said Arnold and Jesse made him and others play leapfrog naked.

Galasso, the retired chief detective on the case, said Gregory's interview with Newsday was consistent with his original statement to police.

For Gregory, the hullabaloo over Jarecki's film -- and whether the director will pick up an Oscar tonight -- is a sideshow to the legacy of the abuse. Even now, Gregory said he sometimes wakes up at night shaking, especially after hearing of other child abuse cases on the news or elsewhere. What would be passing news to others, hits home for him.

Diagnosed in his preteen years, Gregory said he has persistent rectal bleeding from the abuse. Memories aside, the physical scar will never let him forget. "This is the constant reminder I live with every day," Gregory said, "that I was abused."
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.