If it seems like we’ve been waiting forever to see Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret,” that’s because we’ve been waiting forever to see Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret.” Featuring a pre-“True Blood” Anna Paquin and Matt Damon, among an eclectic cast, the film has sat on a shelf for, what, six years? It’s finally getting a release this year from Fox Searchlight, and the trailer recently debuted at Apple. Check it out by clicking the image below or watch an embed after the jump.
And you thought “The Tree of Life” had a protracted journey to its eventual release. It’s well over two years since I first wrote about the woes of Kenneth Lonergan’s chronically delayed sophomore feature, “Margaret,” and even then, it was a stale issue. The film was shot in 2005 — long before co-producers Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella passed on, long before leading lady Anna Paquin’s career was transformed by “True Blood” — and has languished in post-production purgatory (with occasional trips into legal hell) ever since.
Indeed, the wait for “Margaret” simply to travel from set to screen has now exceeded the already frustrating five-year gap between Lonergan’s marvelous, Oscar-nominated debut, “You Can Count on Me,” and the production of his follow-up. Some blamed Lonergan’s perfectionism in the editing room, others an unruly, 168-page shooting script; whispered reports from test screenings weren’t overly encouraging. For better or worse, I had assumed by now, the film was lost to us.
Happily, I was wrong. Making good on a brief but firm promise made a year ago, distributor Fox Searchlight has named a September 30 release date for the film.
Last year, I dedicated a couple of posts to the mysterious case of “Margaret,” Kenneth Lonergan’s seemingly terminally delayed follow-up to his 2000 directorial debut “You Can Count on Me.” The film, a character drama starring Anna Paquin as a traumatised witness to a bus accident, with Mark Ruffalo and Matt Damon in support, was shot in 2005 — but has been stuck in the editing suite ever since.
Working from a vast, ambitious 168-page script, Lonergan has reportedly been unable in four years to complete a cut of the film that pleases him. (This extensive LA Times report details the financial and legal consequences of his creative blockage.) However, just as the issue had slipped from memory — with many assuming the film would never be released at all — Anne Thompson dropped this brief but encouraging update from distributor Fox Searchlight a few days ago:
Searchlight states: “we do have a finished cut by Lonergan and we plan to release the film sometime in 2011.”
Last month, I discussed my frustration over the terminally delayed status of Kenneth Lonergan’s sophomore feature “Margaret,” while sharing a slender hope that linking of composer Nico Muhly to the project might bode well for its eventual completion.
Unfortunately, an extended LA Times investigation into the matter suggests that “Margaret” is a long way from seeing the light of day — if that ever happens at all. John Horn’s interesting piece provides by far the most comprehensive breakdown to date of the factors delaying the film, and it doesn’t make for encouraging reading. With Lonergan apparently incapable of completing an edit that satisfies him and/or the film’s backers, “Margaret” is now deeply tangled in legal limbo.
A number of producers and editors — including (Scott) Rudin, (Sydney) Pollack and Martin Scorsese’s legendary editor, Thelma Schoonmaker — have tried but failed to help Lonergan complete his movie, court documents and interviews show. With his financing from (Gary) Gilbert and Fox Searchlight cut off, Lonergan borrowed more than $1 million from actor and close friend Matthew Broderick (who has a small part in “Margaret”) in an attempt to complete the editing of the movie, according to a person close to the production.
The film’s lengthy post-production sparked two lawsuits, which are scheduled to be tried in June and September. Last July, Fox Searchlight sued Gilbert and his production company, claiming he failed to pay the studio half of the film’s production costs. Two months later, Gilbert’s Camelot Pictures sued Fox Searchlight and Lonergan, alleging that the studio and Lonergan thwarted Gilbert’s many attempts to finish the movie, forcing Camelot to pay for “a clearly inferior and unmarketable film” that Lonergan, several people say, will not support.
There’s a lot more messy detail where that came from, and the article lays it out better than I can. Horn also offers the bittersweet revelation that the troubled film buried beneath these unfortunate circumstances may well be worth saving.
I have to say, I’ve all but given up hope that Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret” will ever see the light of day. For years now, I’ve kept an optimistic eye out for the film, kept putting it on my early Oscar prediction lists, kept checking the Fox Searchlight release schedule — only for the film, originally shot in 2005, to fall further and further beneath the radar.
There’s talk of an unruly, wildly overlong shooting script as being to blame, while chronic perfectionism on Lonergan’s part has also been rumoured. I’m not sure what to believe — but as someone who thinks that “You Can Count on Me” is looking to remain one of the decade’s finest American films (yeah, we have to start thinking about such things, don’t we?), it’s certainly a frustrating state of affairs.
It’s certainly hard to imagine a film of “Margaret’s” pedigree — to jog your memory, the cast includes Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo, while Scott Rudin and the late duo of Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack all have producer credits — just falling by the wayside.
So I was intrigued to stumble upon this news tidbit that suggests the film hasn’t been entirely forgotten — and that it doesn’t only share a trio of producers with last year’s “The Reader.” It would appear that prodigious young composer Nico Muhly has taken on the job of scoring the film, which may or may not mean anything. Searchlight’s website offers no helpful information, for one thing. Still, it’s nice to hear that “Margaret” hasn’t completely vanished off the face of the earth.
(Coincidentally, this is the second time Muhly has cropped up in my thoughts today. This morning, I was checking out the lineup for the ATP UK Weekend, a music fest I’m attending in May — and lo and behold, there he was, alongside the likes of The Jesus Lizard and Spiritualized. Dude’s got it going on.)