Madonna puts ‘Filth’ up for download
While her directorial debut “Filth and Wisdom” bowed to mixed reviews at the Berlin film fest last week, Madonna isn’t one to miss a trick when it comes to getting her work to the masses.
The low-budget comedy about three struggling flatmates in London could be made available first via download in the U.S. and U.K. and released theatrically elsewhere.
“I’ve been speaking to iTunes about releasing it through them,” the popstar turned scribe-helmer tells Variety. “I want the most amount of people to see it as possible. … I don’t like to do anything conventionally.”
While her music career is marked by the constant glare of publicity, “Filth and Wisdom” made it to the bigscreen with an uncharacteristic lack of hype. She fully financed the pic – which stars Eugene Hutz, Holly Weston, Vicky McClure and Richard E. Grant – with her own coin through her Semtex Films shingle. She co-wrote the script in two weeks with Dan Cadan, a frequent collaborator of hubby Guy Ritchie. Lensing took 16 days, with Nicola Doring produced.
She even pushed to get the film into Berlin’s Panorama sidebar rather than its glitzier main competition or Cannes.
“I’m a beginner, so I think I should start off in an understated way,” she says. “Just because I’m established in one field doesn’t mean that’s how I should approach anything else I do.”
And in a career marked by constant reinvention, the Material Girl is already lining up her next film projects.
She’s producing Nathan Rissman’s doc “I Am Because We Are,” about Malawi orphans, and writing the script for her soph helming effort.
“It’s based on a true story and involves two historical figures and a young girl’s obsession with their story,” she says. “Ultimately it’s a story about the cult of celebrity.”
They do say to write what you know.
From an article by Ali Jaafar, Variety.