White Lightnin’: The Jesco White Murders

Headlining the slate is the debut feature of commercials whiz Dominic Murphy, White Lightnin’: The Jesco White Murders, which has begun pre-production and is set to start shooting in North Carolina on July 30th.

Supported by the UK Film Council and picked up for UK distribution by Momentum, the film is being sold worldwide by Lumina Films and is set to star newcomer Ed Hogg in the role of legendary Appalachian mountain dancer Jesco White.

Written by Vice Magazine founders Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti and co-produced in association with Vice Films, White Lightnin’: The Jesco White Murders tells the story of mountain dancer Jesco White and his uphill battle against abject poverty, drug abuse, petty crime and mental instability. In his struggle to live up to his father’s legacy as the finest mountain dancer in Appalachia and beyond, he leans on memories of his father (D. Ray White), Elvis Presley, Jesus, and Norma Jean (his wife).

"Despite the brutality of his experience," says F&ME managing director and producer Mike Downey, "Jesco’s humour survives and his charisma pervades the film. In a surreal world where life is cheap, the insanity of Jesco’s behaviour makes total sense. Dominic Murphy is one of the leading contemporary British directors of commercials and his take on the life of Jesco is not only visually thrilling but also narratively compelling."

Casting is continuing in Los Angeles via Baddely/Davis casting the people responsible for Being John Malkovich, Little Miss Sunshine, and gary the Tennis Coach.

Budgetted at $2 million the film has already selected locations in and around Ashe ville, North Carolina and will shoot with a mixed British/American crew.

The Turtle's Song

Shooting has already got underway on Emmy Award winning nature documentarist Nick Stringer’s The Turtle's Song. A feature length documentary in the mould of March of the Penguins and Winged Migration, this first foray by F&ME into the world of documentaries has pre-sold its way into production, via its sales agency Sola Media the company responsible for the phenomenal worldwide sales success of The Story of the Weeping Camel.

Born on a beach in Florida, she rides the Gulf Stream all the way to the frozen north and ultimately swims around the entire North Atlantic to Africa and back to the beach where she was born. But the odds are stacked against her; just one in a thousand turtles survive the journey.
 
"The Turtle’s Song has all the elements of a great epic - suspense, adventures, despair and hope," says Film and Music Entertainment's Sam Taylor, "Nick is a highly talented and gifted director and the first footage for the shoot is already fulfilling its promise."

Partnering with Stringer’s documentary outfit Big Wave to form a new feature doc production entity, Big Fame Ltd, filming takes place around Boca Raton, Florida, before moving on to the open sea, the Azores, Newfoundland, the Arctic Circle and back again down to the warm Florida seas.

The Turtle’s Song will be delivered in summer 2008 and casting is currently underway.

Buick Riviera

Just completed the first part of its shoot in Minnesota is Buick Riviera, a project that was first picked up when it was in the prestigious Cannes Cinefondation last year. A co-production between Zagreb based Propeler Film and F&ME in association with New York’s Group Entertainment and Bosnia’s Refresh it is directed by Croatia’s leading director Goran Rusinovic. Buick Riviera is a story of two lonely, isolated and miserable characters living far from their homeland.

Based on the novel by Miljenko Jergovic the film is produced by Boris T Matic and Mike Downey.

The story of Buick Riviera is told through fates of two men, from the same country of ex Yugoslavia, belonging to the two different religious groups that fought for the city of Sarajevo. Hasan Hujdur, a Muslim, came to America at the beginning of the civil war in Yugoslavia, as a young and prospective director of photography, dreaming of a Hollywood career. With time Hasan realizes such a dream is hardly obtainable but he decides not to return to his homeland. Hasan gets married and settles in a small town, "middle of America", but the marriage had long gone sour and his only salvation and escape from reality is found in driving and admiring his 1963 silver Buick Rivera.
The other man is Vuko Salipur, a Serbian orthodox, escaped from Bosnia to America after the war had ended, in fear of being caught and tried as a war criminal at the international court in Hague. One fateful night, these two emigrants meet on a deserted road in the middle of America, with some unexplainable force bringing them together.

After the shoot in Fargo, Minnesota, the film will begin filming in the snowscapes of Bosnia in December 2007.

FAKE!

Finally, casting continues on FAKE!, the true story of Elmyr de Hory as written by veteran hoax-author Clifford Irving. Irving came to our screens this year played by Richard Gere in Lasse Hallstrom’s The Hoax an adaptation of Irving’s account of the writing of and his eventual incarceration for writing a hoax official biography of legendary recluse Howard Hughes.

Giovanni Ribisi has been cast as Elmyr and the film is headed for an October shoot starting in Vancouver before moving on to Spain and Hungary. The story was the inspiration for Orson Welles’ final film F is For Fake.

The incredible but true tale of Elmyr de Hory, the most notorious art forger of the twentieth century. A story of audacious con artistry and high stakes excess, FAKE! tracks Elmyr and his two partners in crime from Paris to New York to Ibiza as this flamboyant Hungarian refugee dupes the art world into parting with hundreds of millions of dollars. But when they plan the ultimate scam, our three anti-heroes discover their undoing - a compulsive need to trick and cheat the others. This fatal flaw leads to a scandal that threatens to destroy the art world.