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Paramount Dumping Todd Louiso's Marc Pease Experience

by Alex Billington
August 11, 2009
Source: The Playlist

Never heard of The Marc Pease Experience? Exactly. The Playlist caught up with director Todd Louiso recently and got an altogether discouraging update about the expected release of his latest film. The Marc Pease Experience is an indie comedy that stars Jason Schwartzman, Ben Stiller, and Anna Kendrick. It was produced by Paramount Vantage and was ready to be released in 2008. Unfortunately that studio was shut down and merged into Paramount proper last year, leaving the film gasping for air. And now after a year of waiting, it's being dumped into 10 cities in late August, not including New York or Los Angeles.

Schwartzman plays Marc Pease, a man 10 years out of high school and still living in the past when he was the star in his high school's musicals. During the course of one day, as Pease's former teacher/mentor Mr. Gribble (Stiller) oversees the opening night of another show, Pease finally exorcises his demons and realizes there's more to life than Broadway artistry. Sounds a bit like a mix of Rushmore and Hamlet 2, but not necessarily in a good way. Schwartzman is good, but he's no Steve Coogan. I'd love to see it, but apparently it's just "too expensive" to promote this in NY and LA and they don't want to spend any money on it.

"It's been really hard to accept that role [of just waiting helplessly for the thing to come out]. To have complete control over it and then to have no control, and give it over, it's been tough," Louiso said. The small handful cities in which The Marc Pease Experience will debut in on August 21st are: San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, Dallas, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Seattle, Sacramento, and "maybe" Boston. Paramount hasn't released any photos, posters, or even a trailer (besides a few on The Playlist). It's baffling that they can release a film with almost no marketing at all, but that's the exact definition of "dumping."

It also never made it into any film festivals (although I'm not sure if they even tried to get in anyway). For all we know, it could be terrible and not even worth seeing. But considering I like to give every film the benefit of the doubt, especially an indie comedy like this, I'm remaining optimistic until I hear otherwise.

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Angry Chief

UGH!!! That picture erks me! It's like an homage to Tom Cruise in Magnolia or whatever. Ugola. Just delete this and put up another 'Where the Wild Things Are' trailer. For some reason, after viewing the trailer constantly here (to no extreme emotional effect), when I went to see HP, I almost bawled out of nowhere when I saw WTWTA trailer there. What the hell?!
d1rEct

Whenever I see Jason Schwartzman i see a man who is riding of the success of his famous family.
phlewf

Don't Know what to think.
jcyo

Schwartzman is no Steve Coogan? Really? Really?
Korm

I read the script when i was interning for the American Humane film and TV unit in LA, and the script was hilarious. The scenes were wonderfully written and there were so many great moments! I was looking forward to this moving coming out, I'm glad it's coming to Chicago, at least I can see it there. Maybe if it gets a good reception, it will get a better release.
http://www.chelariu.de Paul

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Dan

Hamlet 2 was exactly what I was thinking before I got to that line in your article. I enjoyed that movie, but feel like I'll probably skip this one. Don't want to leave the theater feeling like I've been raped in the face.
Kieran

I saw this twice at test screenings. It wasn't incredible but I dug it. Shame it won't see a wide release.
http://www.firstshowing.net Alex Billington

^ Damn, man, I'm hoping they screen it at least once in LA even though it's not coming out here... I really want to see it, even if it's bad, agh!!
EMA

"Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. " ~Stella Adler. In a summer (actually now, endless summers) full of mind-numbing, craftless "action flicks" (i.e. GI Doh) aimed a "dumbing down" (like we can go much further) the minds of teenagers (& sadly adults alike), along comes a film like The Marc Pease Experience: a film which could obviously appeal to both. A wonderful, "coming of age" story which aims at reminding us that we have a "soul." But in this age of corporate greed (i.e. read "soul-less, artistic-less studio heads"), a film like this isn't even given the respect of finding an audience...oh yeah, and it has Ben Stiller in it...only one of the top grossing comedy film stars out there! Well, 10 cities isn't much but hopefully the people that do see this film in those ten cities will spread what I am sure will be good news. I'm lucky, being in Philadelphia, at least I get to see it.
Chris

I've looked around online for two days trying to find the Minneapolis theater showing this, and have found nothing. Anyone know how to find this info?
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Paramount Dumping Todd Louiso's Marc Pease Experience - First Showing /FILMParamount Dumping Todd Louiso's Marc Pease ExperienceFirst ShowingThe Playlist