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Update -
8/21/07:
 RESURRECTING THE CHAMP
opened last weekend grossing about $1.8 million. Of
course, it had tough competition with "The Bourne
Ultimatum" (great film!) and "Superbad". On Wednesday
night Peter, along with his wife Stefanie, joined many
celebrities in Los Angeles for the film's premiere.
Click here for
several photos from that evening and
check out this link for video coverage of the
event. Peter comments on his role as Ike Epstein, "He's
a 75-year-old Jewish fight promoter and my Dad was a
boxer and grew up in that world of gyms... Old fight
guys. And I knew them. I know them in my bone marrow."
His role was minimal, but it made an impression on some
critics:
"The cast member who gave me
the biggest surprise and delight, however, was Peter
Coyote, whose turn as an old, crusty, insistently
methodical preserver of the historical archive of
boxing, could have stolen the entire show had he
been given a chance to do it. Watch for him but
don't be surprised if he fools you." ..Cinema
Signals
"Peter Coyote, as seedy boxing
manager Epstein, turns a cameo into a showstopper."
...John Mulderig, Catholic News Service
"In the supporting cast, the
stand out is Peter Coyote as a cigar-chomping gym
owner who knows all about the past. It's a fine
acting moment." ...Mal Vincent, The
Virginian-Pilot
"Peter Coyote is marvelous and
unrecognizable in a Miami beach tan and Lew
Wasserman maxi-frame glasses as a fight manager from
the champ's past." ...Bruce Bennett,
The New York Sun
"Your eyes, hearts and minds gravitate to the
older, more seasoned characters, like Alan Alda...
and Peter Coyote as Ike Epstein, an old-time
fight-ring manager with a fetid, uproarious air of
authority." ...Michael Sragow, Baltimore
Sun
"Combined with some stellar
supporting characters - namely Peter Coyote as a
former fight promoter with big square glasses, and
Kathryn Morris as Erik's ex-wife - director Rod
Lurie creates some wonderful small moments for his
cast to sink their teeth into." ...Katherine
Monk, Montreal Gazette
"There’s also a great cameo by
an almost unrecognizable Peter Coyote as an elderly
boxing promoter named Epstein" ...Frank
Swietek, One Guy's Opinion
"Well-grounded in manly realms - Peter Coyote's
cameo as an old-school gym owner is so sharp you can
smell his rancid cigar."
...Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"The character actors,
particularly Peter Coyote as an ancient trainer,
luxuriate in Lurie’s seemingly insignificant
details." ...Dan Moore, Movie Columnist
Update -
8/13/07:
Peter
recently directed his first film! Yes, a 20-minute drama
called RACE, written and produced by Hira
Ambrosino, one of his co-stars on "Commander in Chief".
The short film, starring Jason George, Hira Ambrosino
and Nicolas Coster, is about a firm where two VP's are
set against one another by an unscrupulous boss, who
promises each of them a promotion for which they're
competing. It was shot in LA over four days and later
this month Peter will go back to edit the film. He says,
"It was a completely wonderful experience." His
assistant was Danielle Shamash, writer/director of
THE SUNDAY MAN, a 15-minute documentary he recently
narrated.
Right
now Peter is filming ADOPT A
SAILOR over the course of two six-day weeks. Peter
explains, "It's very much like a play with pages and
pages of dialogue. The entire budget is $200,000. It's a
juicy, wonderful part with two great co-stars." Here are
some photos taken at the UC Riverside Palm Desert
Graduate Center where the cast and crew met with the
public on August 2nd.
Peter
has also had the good fortune to be picked up by a great
literary agent named Gayla Nethercott at Buchwald and
Associates in Los Angeles. Having loved the screenplay
he wrote based on his book,
SLEEPING WHERE I FALL, Gayla asked to see
everything else he's written. She's now moving his other
scripts around and has sent him out on several meetings
to "pitch" pilots for TV that he and his partner, Silvia
Peto, would write. Great news!
 You'll have the chance to hear
Peter's voice in Kamala Lopez-Dawson's new film, A
SINGLE WOMAN, based on the play by Jeanmarie
Simpson. The film is a distinct, lively portrait of
Jeannette Rankin (the first American woman elected to
Congress) that takes us from her childhood in 1880's
Montana, to her last television interview in 1972.
Deliciously political, occasionally chilling, ironic and
idiosyncratic, the film illuminates the role of the
individual in the American legislative process with a
whimsical amalgamation of storytelling, high-powered
discourse and communion. Produced by the Nevada
Shakespeare Company in association with Heroica Films
and Peace Path Pictures, the film also features the
voices of Patricia Arquette, Karen Black, Elizabeth
Peña, Margot Kidder and Cindy Sheehan.
This
fall Peter will be back in France doing a film called
NO PASARAN, directed by Emanuel Causee and Eric
Martin. The story takes place near the Spanish French
border with Peter playing an old and drunk American record
producer who helps a young farmer block a super-highway
from coming through his farm. Peter says, "It's a
charming, funny, very French story."
Update -
7/27/07:
 I
have some film news to report. Peter has been cast in
ADOPT A SAILOR, written and directed by noted
playwright, Charles Evered, who premiered it in
short-play form in 2002 at New York City's Town Hall.
The cast also includes Bebe Neuwirth and Ethan Peck, the
21-year-old grandson of Gregory Peck. Peter and Bebe
will play a dysfunctional Upper West Side couple who
inadvertently takes in Peck for a day during the U.S.
Navy's celebration of Fleet Week. Their interaction
ultimately transforms the lives of the couple and the
young sailor.
Segments of the film have already been shot in sectors
of Manhattan and on board the USS Wasp during Fleet Week
in May. The remaining scenes will be shot in a Coachella
Valley home decorated to resemble a posh New York
apartment.
Peter told Evered that the script hit home. He said
it was the first time he'd laughed out loud while
reading a script in a long time and he planned on doing everything
in his power to make the film work.
Evered, an assistant professor in the theater department
at the University of California, Riverside and Palm
Desert campuses, has written screenplays for Dreamworks,
Universal and Paramount Pictures. Expanding the play, he
has shifted the focus to a more universal theme about
the sacrifices of men and women in the armed forces.
“This is about three very different people who on paper
should not get along,” Evered said. “When they find
themselves in the same apartment for dinner, politics
becomes less important, war becomes less important. It’s
about how they find a commonality. We’re living in a
very divisive time. This film, in its own little way,
could be a tonic for that.”
The public is invited to meet the
cast and crew from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Thursday, Aug.
2, in the theater at the UC Riverside Palm Desert
Graduate Center. Evered, producer Kim Waltrip of
WonderStar Productions, and the cast members will speak.
The low-budget film will appear first at international
film festivals before it is released for general
distribution.
ALL
ROADS LEAD HOME (aka Shadows of Atticus) now has a
release date of March 10, 2008. After several test
screenings between February and May, the film was
re-edited and the final cut should be finished over the
next month. Though the feedback from the screenings was
positive, director Dennis Fallon chose to dis-assemble
the film in order to improve the final version.
Update -
6/26/07:
 Last
month "The Jukebox:
From Edison to iPod" was an official selection
of the Cannes Festival where it was screened in the
Short Film Corner. It was also shown at the Swansea Bay
Film Festival in Wales, where it was nominated for the
"Tinny" award for "Best American Documentary." The
47-minute film, narrated by Peter, fondly recalls the nostalgic past
and neglected history of one of America's most treasured
forms of entertainment - the jukebox. The trailer is
available at
this link.
 Among
the films to hit theatres this summer will be
RESURRECTING THE CHAMP, directed by Rod Lurie. The
boxing drama, which premieres on August 24th, stars Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Hartnett.
Peter plays a fight manager named Epstein. Alan Alda,
David Paymer, Teri Hatcher and Rachel Nichols also
co-star. When up-and-coming sports writer Erik Kernan
(Hartnett) saves a homeless man from a scrape with a
group of rowdy college kids, he unwittingly finds
himself face to face with no ordinary bum, but Champ,
the one-time boxing great Bob Satterfield (Jackson).
What begins as a story resurrecting a once-great man
turns into an incredible journey, and an opportunity for
Erik to reexamine his own life, his relationship with
his young son and his recently separated wife.
Here's
one of my favorite photos of Peter strumming on his
guitar.
Update -
6/4/07:
 A
15-minute short, narrated by Peter, called THE SUNDAY MAN will be
shown at the Jackson Hole Film Festival this weekend.
The film, written and directed by Danielle Shamash, is
about the misadventures of a remarkably peculiar man who
has some very unusual ideas about who he is. Shot in
Gower Studios in Hollywood and on the Universal Studios
back lot in the spring and summer of 2006 as part of
American Film Institute’s directing workshop for women,
it stars Annie Potts and Ted Ronney with Peter providing
the role of "The Voice." It was previously shown in
March in LA and at the AFI Showcase Festival and a month
later at the Worldfest International Film Festival. The
misadventures of a remarkably peculiar man, who has some
very unusual ideas about who he is.
Markos
Kounalakis has directed and produced a video rendition
of Mark Twain's war protest poem, "The War Prayer".
In 1904, disgusted by the aftermath of the
Spanish-American War and the subsequent
Philippine-American War, Twain wrote a short anti-war
prose poem. Kounalakis, publisher of the Washington
Monthly, says he discovered a copy of the poem
inside the library of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow when he
was a correspondent in the early 1990s. The video
interpretation is recited by Peter and scored by Polish
composer Wieslaw Pogorzelski. You can view the 14-minute
video
at this link.
 National
pundits and actors talked politics in Manchester on
Monday morning, about 13 hours after Democratic
Presidential candidates concluded their first New
Hampshire debate. The Creative Coalition, a
nonprofit, nonpartisan arm of the entertainment and arts
industry hosted a panel discussion as part of "Talking
the Talk: The Creative Coalition's 21st Century Debate
Dialogue.'' The above photo taken at the Radisson Hotel
shows some of the participants, which included Peter,
Tim Daly, Wendy Malick, Tim Daly and Joe Pantoliano.
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