Three-year-old film production company Redwood Palms Pictures is flying high, but in a way that illustrates just how badly its home state needs help from Governor Schwarzenegger.
By FilmStew Staff, FilmStew.com
Tonight's U.S. premiere of When a Man Falls in the Forest at the Sacramento International Film and Music Festival will be an event filled with irony. On the one hand, it is a homecoming of sorts for producers Mike DiManno and R. Scott Reid, former local insurance executives making a profitable go of it in Hollywood. On the other hand, the Sharon Stone-Timothy Hutton drama was, like all of their recent efforts, shot on the cheap out of state.
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"It makes no sense filming in California," DiManno tells the Sacramento Bee, "when I can go to Pennsylvania and they're giving me 25 percent of my budget." The pair apparently discovered this the hard way, having shot their first film, the 2005 romantic comedy Her Minor Thing, entirely in Sacramento.
Since then, it's been nothing but British Columbia (When a Man Falls in the Forest, the upcoming Matthew Perry comedy-drama Numb), the aforementioned Pennsylvania (the Lou Gossett Jr.-Viveca Fox thriller Cover, the upcoming The Fulfillment) and Washington State (the Charlize Theron-Woody Harrelson action drama Back in Seattle, also partially shot in B.C.). Governor Schwarzenegger will no doubt be at the kickoff of this year's festival event, which runs August 8th through the 12th; there could be no more a symbolic California-friendly move than to corner our boys on the red carpet and promise them greener California pastures.
In the meantime, DiManno and Reid can raise a glass knowing that their cocktail of low budgets, pre-sold distribution rights and runaway locales has already put their company in the black. "We have a spot at Burbank Airport where we meet [after doing business in L.A.], throw back a beer or two and say, 'Can you believe this?'"
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