ASK THE DUST

DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ROBERT TOWNE
Writer & Director: Without Limits; Tequila Sunrise
Writer: Oscar and Golden Globe winner for Chinatown
Oscar nominee for Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan; Lord of the Apes, Shampoo and The Last Detail.
Mission Impossible 1, 2 +3; The Firm; Days Of Thunder; Marathon Man.

PRODUCERS: TOM CRUISE, PAULA WAGNER, JONAS MCCORD

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CALEB DESCHANEL
Oscar nominee for The Passion of Christ; Patriot; Fly Away Home; The Natural and The Right Stuff.
National Treasure; Anna and the King; The Hunted

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: DENNIS GASSNER
Oscar winner for Bugsy. Oscar nominee for Road to Perdition and Barton Fink. Big Fish; The Man Who Wasn't There; O Brother Where Art Thou; The Truman Show
 

PRINCIPAL CAST

COLIN FARRELL
Alexander; Terence Malick's upcoming The New World; S.W.A.T.; Phone Booth; Minority Report; The Recruit; Daredevil

SALMA HAYEK
Oscar and Golden Globe nominee for Frida.
After the Sunset; Once Upon a Time in Mexico; Spy Kids 3-D; Traffic; Wild Wild West; Dogma; 54; From Dusk Till Dawn; Desperado

DONALD SUTHERLAND
A Time to Kill; Without Limits; The Italian Job; Cold Mountain; Six Degrees of Separation

DAME EILEEN ATKINS
Vanioty Fair; Cold Mountain; upcoming Mission Impossible 3; What a Girl Wants; The Hours; GOSFORD PARK
 

GENRE: DRAMA
YEAR OF PRODUCTION: 2005
COUNTRY: USA
US DISTRIBUTOR: PARAMOUNT
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
RUNNING TIME: TBA
 

SYNOPSIS

Passion and ambition drive two dreamers in 1930s LA. Their love affair is ferocious and hot-blooded as they fight the city and themselves to make their dreams come true.
 

PRESS

VARIETY Nov. 19, 2003
Hayek going to Towne
Thesp to play Mexican beauty Camilla in 'Dust'
By MICHAEL FLEMING
Salma Hayek will star with Colin Farrell for DreamWorks in "ASK THE DUST," the Robert Towne-directed adaptation of John Fante's Depression Era novel.
Towne has been trying to make the film for 30 years, and spoke long ago with Hayek about playing the fiery Mexican beauty Camilla, who hopes to rise above her station by marrying a wealthy American. That is complicated by meeting Arturo Bandini (Farrell), a first-generation Italian hoping to land a writing career and a blue-eyed blonde on his arm.
Shooting begins early next year in South Africa. The film is being produced by C/W partners Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner, and Jonas McCord.
The WMA-repped Hayek will start work after she completes starring alongside Pierce Brosnan in the Brett Ratner-directed New Line romantic caper movie "After the Sunset." Farrell's playing Alexander the Great in the Oliver Stone-directed untitled epic being financed by Intermedia and Warner Bros.
 

VARIETY Sep. 18, 2003
DreamWorks dusts off Towne project
By MICHAEL FLEMING
PROJECT DUSTED OFF:
DreamWorks has closed a deal to distribute "ASK THE DUST," the Robert Towne-directed film based on the John Fante novel that will star Colin Farrell and Eva Mendes as immigrants whose plans to climb the social ladder is dashed when they fall in love in 1930s L.A.
"ASK THE DUST" is one of several hot scripts that were gathering dust until the stars aligned. Consider that Peter Jackson was dropped from Universal's "King Kong" remake when "Frighteners" scared up scant opening weekend grosses. Seven years later, that same guy's directing the same script, but he's getting $20 million against 20% of the gross.
Oliver Stone's $150 million Intermedia-backed "Alexander" starts shooting Monday with Farrell, but Stone's ordeal goes back to 1979, when California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger was ready to conquer the world. "This was right after 'Conan the Barbarian,' and the film heated up again in 1995 with Tom Cruise," Stone said. The adversity was worthwhile, he feels, because it wasn't until the last year that he licked the script.
"Collateral" has Michael Mann directing and Cruise playing a charismatic hit man who traps a cabbie to escort him on a night of contract killings in L.A. Pic began 11 years ago when scribe Stuart Beattie was home in Australia, paying his cab fare. "We'd been chatting like best mates, and I thought, I could be some friendly homicidal maniac, and this driver has his back to me." It went nowhere and he waited tables, until a producer named Julie Richardson took it to Frank Darabont, Rob Fried and Chuck Russell when the trio set a deal to make low budget pics for HBO. Then the payweb dumped it. Salvation came when DreamWorks optioned it and Russell Crowe loved it. Mann followed, then enlisted Cruise after Crowe backed out.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are set to play married assassins in the Doug Liman-directed "Mr. And Mrs. Smith," but only after the pic nearly got rubbed out several times in the years since neophyte scribe Simon Kinberg first pitched it to producer Akiva Goldsman. "It was husband and wife assassins living false lives," Goldsman said. "It was a great metaphor for marriage and I thought an easy sale. Every studio passed. People were intrigued, but Simon was new and they all said this was 'execution dependent,' to come back with a script. At the last moment, Patrick Wachsberger paid Simon to write it." Goldsman, who won an Oscar writing the execution-dependent "A Beautiful Mind," still bristles at the rationale behind the early rejections: "The promise of material with risk has the most reward. Execution dependent, if executed well, will always be better than high concept."
YEARS IN THE MAKING: Robert Towne has got all of those hardship stories beat.
"I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but I started 'ASK THE DUST' in 1970," he said. "I was researching 'Chinatown,' and it was the only book I found that suggested how people really talked in the time period." Towne enlisted Al Pacino and had Peter Sellers locked to play a role. Even though Towne followed "Chinatown" with "Shampoo" and Pacino did "The Godfather," they couldn't get a "Dust" deal.
Towne tried again in 1993: "Johnny Depp was desperate to do it. If my mother could have turned me down, she would have. Every studio sure did." Producers Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise and Jonas McCord shaved the budget by setting it in South Africa, but the key was simple: Towne bet on Farrell, and the Irish thesp got hot and Towne made a deal for a script he wrote 10 years ago.
"Some pictures are jobs but others become obsessions you cannot not think about," Towne said. "I grew up in L.A. and Fante's story affects me in ways impossible to articulate. John gave me a first edition of his book way back and wrote, 'To Bob Towne, in the hope he will take this to far places.' I never expected it to be 30 years later and in South Africa, but that is certainly a far place."
 

VARIETY Nov. 6, 2003
Capitol picks up 'Dust,' 'NOEL'
Prod'n co. bolsters Mifed slate
By ADAM DAWTREY
LONDON -- Capitol Films has taken international sales rights to Robert Towne's "ASK THE DUST" and Chazz Palminteri's directorial debut "NOEL."
"ASK THE DUST," to be distributed domestically by DreamWorks, will star Colin Farrell. Adapted from John Fante's novel, it's the story of two immigrants whose plans to claw their way up the social ladder in 1930s Los Angeles are dashed when they fall in love with each other. It's produced by Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner and Jonas McCord, and starts shooting next spring.
"NOEL," starring Penelope Cruz, Susan Sarandon, Paul Walker and Alan Arkin, follows a group of lonely people as their lives magically intertwine one Christmas Eve in New York City. It starts shooting Nov. 10.
These two projects join a typically packed Capitol slate at Mifed, which also includes Joel Zwick's "ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING," Robert Altman's untitled New York art project starring Salma Hayek and Brit horror pic "CREEP."


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