indie film premieres!

Screenwriter and Cornell alum Howard A. Rodman ‘71 will be present for the Sept. 13 screening of Savage Grace. Rodman is a screenwriter, novelist, and educator whose credits include Savage Grace, August and Joe Gould’s Secret. He is a professor and former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts; a member of the board of directors of the Writers Guild of America, west; and an artistic director of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting Labs. He has worked with David Lynch, John McTiernan, Errol Morris, Clive Barker, Peter Bogdanovich, Maurice Sendak and Stephen Soderbergh both on the big screen and on television. Savage Grace is the true and tragic story of Barbara Daly (Julianne Moore), who married above her class to Brooks Bakeland (Stephen Dillane), heir to the Bakelite fortune, and led a decadent and incestuous life as she and her husband and son moved in rarified social circles from the 1940s to the early 1970s. The stylish film traces the Bakelands’ travels from New York to Paris to Majorca and London with a dark humor and an eye for lascivious detail. This program is part of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts 20th Anniversary Celebration.

The Go-Getter, the first film from director Martin Hynes, follows 19-year-old Mercer on an epic West Coast road trip as he tries to find his estranged brother Arlen and tell him of their mother’s death. Mercer begins his journey by stealing a car from a Eugene, Oregon car wash, but does not know that the owner’s (Zooey Deschanel) cell phone is still in the car. “The right—flickering—mixture of loneliness and enchantment, and with jokes that come at you from just around the bend.” (New York Magazine) Deschanel hooked up with the composer of the lively score, M. Ward, to create the pop duo She & Him.