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My Chat with Cecila Peck

by Danny Fisher on January 6, 2010

Tonight I chatted on Facebook with the beautiful Cecilia Peck, who starred in the first movie I produced, “Torn Apart,” a Middle Eastern Romeo and Juliet story about a Palestinian girl (Cecilia Peck) in love with an Israeli soldier (“Heroes” star Adrian Pasdar). Cecilia has gone on to direct and produce a number of acclaimed documentaries, including “Shut Up & Sing.” She is currently directing and producing another important film – the Linor Documentary Project. Linor was raped six weeks before being crowned Miss World, and she is reaching out to the world to help rape victims, and Cecilia is documenting.

Cecilia Peck

cecilia

Linor Abargil – Miss World

Linor picture

My chat with Cecilia was for me like a mini-version of one of my favorite films, My Dinner With Andre, as in the course of an hour we covered so many things, so many topics, bringing back so many deep memories. I grew very close to Cecilia and also her wonderful parents Vernonique and Greg during the making of “Torn Apart.” We spent time together in Israel, NY, LA and Cannes. My brother Jack directed Torn Apart, and Cecilia, Adrian, Jack and I remain immensely proud of the film, which I always felt was way ahead of its time during its release in 1990. Reviews were mixed when it was released, which baffled me more than it disappointed me. When the film was released on DVD last year, it received four star reviews and it made me think, “yeah, that makes a lot more sense.” Like the times caught up with the film (and like my previous post below about another film, “We Can’t Go Home Again,” that is now being restored and revived).

“Torn Apart” trailer

You only meet a few class acts in your life, and Cecilia and her family are class acts. I treasure the moments we spent together throughout the production and release of our film. We made the movie not for glory and not for commercial gain and not for career advancement but because we all believed we were communicating something important and meaningful – a metaphor for what could be. I conceived of the movie, which was based on the Chayym Zeldis novel “A Forbidden Love,” as exactly that – a metaphor, a parable, a poem, a ballad – about a world that could be, if only… When the movie was released, I was astonished that most critics saw the movie as an attempt at a realistic portrayal of events – and I never felt anyone ever really got my intent – a love ballad, meant to be seen symbolically – as metaphor.

I am flattered and happy that Cecilia told me tonight that “Torn Apart” inspired her to continue to do work that counts. She is really awesome in the movie, by the way, as is Adrian Pasdar. Cecilia’s new film about Linor has taken her to Israel, where some of the film is being produced, and being back in Israel brought back to Cecilia a lot of intense memories of being there years ago for the “Torn Apart” filming. Israel is an amazing place – the most wondrous place I have ever been to. I was born there, and came to the U.S. at the age of four. My parents survived the Holocaust – my mother was in Auschwitz – and they moved from the ghettos of Eastern Europe, through the concentration camps, which they miraculously survived – although most of their siblings and other family did not – through the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 – to several blocks from Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx.

There was a blizzard in the Bronx that winter. I did not know what snow was, and I exclaimed to my mother: “White sand is falling from the sky!”

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Happy New Year!

by Danny Fisher on December 30, 2009

While 2009 was undoubtedly the most challenging year of my life, I choose to remember the good things, the things I am thankful for, the awareness that any and all of my difficulties pale in comparison to what others around the world are experiencing right now. The truly wonderful and liberating thing about being at the bottom is that the view is actually much better from there – as by necessity and definition there is only one direction in which to look – and that is up.

danny picture

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from…

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time…

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

from “Little Gidding,” No. 4 of “Four Quartets” by T.S. Eliot

My best wishes to everyone for a wonderful and bright New Year!

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Rebuilding

by Danny Fisher on December 24, 2009

There is something exciting about the process of rebuilding. I have thought of shooting a documentary or reality show of me and my brother Jack, our colleagues including Joel Dovev, Phil Michas and my son Aaron as we gather in my brownstone garden floor pitching ideas to each other. When we get news of some developments we all become excited and motivated – like little children. It’s just a few of us, and we have no departments, no hierarchy, no committees.

In the past few weeks I have been reassembling a distribution operation, and have already been entering into deals for distribution with Amazon, iTunes, Sony Play Station, X Box, and international sales. While I am also discussing arrangements for theatrical distribution and other traditional distribution platforms, I am focusing my efforts on digital distribution. Why? Because my business model is: “it’s the internet, stupid.” Each day I am approached with exciting film projects for production and there are some in which I am beginning to become involved.

I am very saddened by the recent death of Rose Kaufman, wife of director Phil Kaufman, who I have always considered the most underrated American director and one of its very best.  Phil Kaufman plans to direct a movie I wrote together with my brother Jack and Oren Moverman called “Interrupted.”  It is the story of the last few years in the life of my mentor, director Nicholas Ray. I worked with Nick Ray on his last unfinished movie, “We Can’t Go Home Again,” a highly experimental film he made while teaching at Binghamton University, where I met him. I always considered “We Can’t Go Home Again” an unacknowledged masterpiece, and for so many years the movie was generally dismissed. I was thrilled to learn last week that the Venice Film Festival is investing $500,000 to restore and complete the movie for showing in Venice in 2011. The Venice Film Festival speaks of the movie as a masterpiece, and so I feel a sense of personal vindication – I was not crazy all these years after all. What a nice feeling. I also appear in the film – the very first dialogue, in fact. I contributed to the shooting and editing, and the experience of working with Nick was an unforgettable experience.

NICK RAY EYEPATCH

Nicholas Ray

I learned yesterday that at least two television networks are seriously interested in a television series I am developing with John Waters and created by Lauren Merrill. John Waters is a class act – I worked with John Waters on his most recent movie, “A Dirty Shame,” which I executive produced – and produced by my wonderful colleagues Ted Hope and Christine Vachon.

Oh, and I finally got an iPhone, installed iTunes and listening to BB King, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan and Brahms Piano Concerto #2.

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In Search of Lost Time

by Danny Fisher on December 21, 2009

I have reached a major crossroad in my life. For the past 27 years, I was the CEO of City Lights Media, a film and television company I founded with my brother Jack, and to which my brother Joe joined a number of years later.  With the recent downturn in the economy, great upheaval in the independent film industry and other factors, City Lights Media has shut its doors.  Barry Diller’s IAC bought the remnants of City Lights and is operating it as a company called Notional, run and staffed entirely by people who used to work at the company I built.

In 2008, there were 400 people working for me.  Today I operate out of my Park Slope, Brooklyn brownstone with my brother Jack and a handful of associates.  I am very happy – most days.  I am working on rebuilding my career, and pursuing a number of ventures in film, television and the internet, as well as general business ventures outside of  media.  At the same time, I seek to define, focus and develop on all levels – professional, personal, spiritual – the remaining years of my life.

I have been summoning the numerous influences on my life – my family, the people I have met, the art, literature, film and music that has inspired me, the memories of experiences both joyous and challenging – and mostly the art of fully appreciating each day as a gift and a blessing.

From Marcel Proust at the moment he sipped his famous cup of tea:

And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory–this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?

 

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