<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt really is a fairy tale, an Oldenburg fairy tale,\u201d says Torsten Ruether, speaking about his new movie Uppercut<\/em>, \u201chow this movie came together feels magical, somehow.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTwo years ago, Ruether was in Oldenburg, Germany\u2019s leading indie film festival, presenting his debut feature, Leberhaken<\/em>, a low-budget boxing movie with a distinctly Million Dollar Baby <\/em>vibe: Newcomer Luise Gro\u00dfmann stars as a promising young pugilist who tries to persuade a disillusioned trainer (Hardy Daniel Krueger) to take her on as a pupil.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe had the premiere, opening night, and at the party afterward a number of U.S. producers came up to me and said: \u2018This is the kind of story American love. It\u2019s been nearly 20 years since Million Dollar Baby<\/em>. We want to redo this for the U.S.’\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPromises made over a few gin and tonics at an international film festival party aren\u2019t usually the kind you can take to the bank but Ruether went to work on a script. He kept the basic plot but transferred the action from Berlin to New York, turned Luise Gro\u00dfmann\u2019s character Toni (she reprises her Leberhaken<\/em> role in Uppercut<\/em>) into a first-generation German immigrant, and made the trainer character an African-American. The U.S. version also included a second timeline: Years later, we see Toni has become one of the very few successful managers in professional boxing.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSo we can see, even if we do compare the film to Million Dollar Baby<\/em>, ours ends up in a completely different corner,\u201d says Ruether. \u201cAt first, my American partners were very irritated because I was taking a very different approach. Instead of making the racial and social conflicts between this privileged, white girl and this working-class African American man the center of the story, I wanted to create an integrative story, where the main driving force was curiosity from both sides about the other.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe script got sent around and famed casting director Michelle Lewitt (Transformers<\/em>, Angels and Demons<\/em>) set up a meeting to pitch a name for the role of Elliott Duffond, the African-American trainer.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe were at Soho House and she said: \u2018What do you think of Ving Rhames\u2019? Ruether recalls. \u201cI started to laugh. I told her I wanted a big name but I wasn\u2019t thinking about a superstar.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA quick conversation with his backers \u2014 Uppercut<\/em>, like Leberhaken<\/em>, was financed entirely independently, with no pre-sales, subsidy funding or studio money involved \u2014 and Ruether had the Mission: Impossible<\/em> and Pulp Fiction<\/em> star in a pay-or-play deal for a nine-day shoot in L.A.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe did all the scenes with Ving and Luise there, in an old L.A. warehouse we did up to be the New York gym,\u201d says Ruether. \u201cVing was nervous at first. After 20 years of shooting blockbusters, he was used to doing two lines a day. Here we did eight pages a day. It was a monster. He got out of his comfort zone. And I think he liked it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRuether set up with two cameras, shooting dialog \u201ctheater style\u201d and improvising elements like the training sessions between Toni and Elliott. The chemistry between the two leads, he says, was immediate.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere was a real curiosity between the two that transferred to the screen,\u201d he says, \u201con one take we were shooting a boxing session with the heavy bag. I was set to do a 30-40 second take but they were so into it, it was so mesmerizing, it was 40 minutes before I yelled cut.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRuether took the material from the first shoot back to Berlin to edit while he prepared for the second U.S. shoot, in the section, without Rhames, where Toni\u2019s character is a successful boxing manager.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere was so much material from the shoot with Ving and it was all so good,\u201d says Ruether. \u201cMy editor, Nora L\u00fcders, said: \u2018I can make you a whole film from this.\u2019 Which got me thinking: In music, you have the idea of Plugged and Unplugged versions of a song. Why couldn\u2019t we do plugged and unplugged versions of our movie?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhich is exactly what Ruether is doing. \u201cWe call them the still and sparkling versions because MTV has the copyright on plugged and unplugged,\u201d he says, \u201cbut the version that Nora cut, the one that will premiere in Oldenburg, is the still version. It\u2019s a quieter, more dialog-focused arthouse film. With a score by Sting\u2019s guitarist Dominic Miller.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe \u201csparkling\u201d version of Uppercut<\/em>, which Ruether describes as \u201cmore mainstream, box office\u201d includes co-stars Joanna Cassidy and Jordan E. Cooper, includes a score by music collective Brass Against, and was edited by Savannah Bayse.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShe started from scratch with the same material as in the still version but without having ever seen it,\u201d says Ruether. \u201cAnd she didn\u2019t pick a single take used in the first version. So I like to say these films aren\u2019t twins, but they are siblings.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe U.S. version of Uppercut<\/em> was shot in the middle of the dual strikes with an interim agreement from SAG-AFTRA. \u201cI\u2019m so proud of that, we had someone from SAG on set every day and I think they\u2019re doing a fantastic job,\u201d says Ruether. \u201cAnd we are the kind of truly independent productions, with no studio, no big backers, they want to support.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tUppercut<\/em>, the sparkling version, will hit the festival circuit later this year. Ruether is currently shopping both films to world sales companies.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe have no pre-sales, we own them entirely so we can do what we want,\u201d he says. \u201cI think it could be a very sweet spot for independent films now because, at least by the winter, there will be a gap in the market, with fewer films getting made and the blockbusters being pushed to next year. People will be missing movies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #making #Oldenburg #closing #film #Uppercut #starring #Ving #Rhames #Hollywood #Reporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIt really is a fairy tale, an Oldenburg fairy tale,\u201d says Torsten Ruether, speaking about<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1930,185,1821,1928,1929,1822,1933,551,1931,1932],"class_list":["post-1353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-news","tag-closing","tag-film","tag-hollywood","tag-making","tag-oldenburg","tag-reporter","tag-rhames","tag-starring","tag-uppercut","tag-ving"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY.jpg",1024,576,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY-768x432.jpg",640,360,true],"large":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY.jpg",640,360,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY.jpg",1024,576,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY.jpg",1024,576,false],"chromenews-featured":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY.jpg",1024,576,false],"chromenews-large":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"chromenews-medium":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY-590x410.jpg",590,410,true],"arpw-thumbnail":["https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Oldenburg-UPPERCUT-PUBLICITY-50x50.jpg",50,50,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Movie News<\/a>","tag_info":"Movie News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo3.aiwalls.com\/thesemovies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}