Life During Wartime: Coming Eventually... Maybe.

In an interview with MTVnews.com, Paul Reubens, who was cast to play a role in Life During Wartime, said the film's been pushed back three times now because there've been problems financing on the film. "If it gets made, I’m doing it - but I’m not sure. It’s gotten pushed three times,” he said. “To me it’s such a sad state of events that he can’t get that movie made. He’s such a talented guy.”

He describes the film as: "it’s characters from Welcome To the Dollhouse and Happiness whose paths converge. It’s all different people playing the same roles... I’m playing a role someone else played in one of those movies.” Sounds good to me. Let's hope he can pull this off.

Van der Beek's Lost Storytelling Role

An article was just posted on IFC.com about some interesting parts being cut out of films... and one of the actors they talked to was James Van der Beek, about his role cut from Storytelling. It says how, in the original NC-17 cut which ran for two and a half hours (!! this really needs to get out to the public somehow), he played a sexually confused jock who wound up having, "an explicit Brown Bunny-esque scene with another man." Unfortunately, the article doesn't tell us much more about what was cut than that - casually mentioning that Heather Matarazzo and Emmanuelle Chriqui were also cut out of the film - but there IS a quote from Van der Beek and all, so check it out here. Maybe this will help drum up enough interest to get the full version released.

Thanks to Stephen for pointing this one out to me.

Life During Wartime: SOLD!

According to a Variety by Patrick Frater, Todd Solondz's latest film, Life During Wartime, was picked up already at the Cannes film festival. The film was not playing in the festival (in fact, I'm pretty certain it's not complete), but it, along with a mockumentary about a Russian roulette reality TV show, was just purchased by D Prods. It might be worth noting that the Variety piece refers to it as the "upcoming untitled Todd Solondz picture," which suggests either that Mr. Frater doesn't check out my site often enough, or that Life During Wartime may no longer be the film's working title.

5/24 UPDATE: Today's Variety reports that, "Todd Solondz's 'Life During Wartime' [note: they're using the title now] was sold to Village Roadshow for Australia and New Zealand, Svensk Filmindustri for Scandinavia, Imagem for Brazil, Monolith for Poland, Tuck Film for Ex-Yugoslavia and D Production for Turkey."

All About Life During Wartime

A casting notice posted on the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau website (http://www.visittampabay.com/) contains a big scoop on the new Solondz film. Apparently it's a sequel to Happiness, set to star Emma Thompson, Demi Moore and Faye Dunnaway? The full notice reads:

"LIFE DURING WARTIME is a $4.5 million low budget feature by Indie maverick Todd Solondz....the film picks up with characters that we last saw in Todd's film "Happiness".....the film will star Emma Thompson, Demi Moore, Faye Dunnaway, Dennis Franz, Hope Davis...amongst many others. The film will shoot for 35 days starting May 15. Production will bring a production designer and wardrobe designer but all other positions are open. The film will be made under the IA national agreement, but will not be DGA. The film will be shot by DP Anthony Dodd Mantle (King of Scotland).

The film will be produced by Mike S Ryan, Derrick Tseng and Ted Hope."

Thanks to EJ for pointing this one out to us!