NEW YORK--April 16, 1998—
The Asset Pictures nonfiction feature film Five Wives, Three Secretaries and Me makes its New York debut at a Special Advance Screening this week. Directed by filmmaker Tessa Blake, Five Wives screened to enormous critical and audience acclaim at last month's hot indie film festival, SXSW in Austin, Texas, described by Variety as "rapidly becoming one of the most important film forums in the country."
The Austin Chronicle hailed Five Wives, Three Secretaries and Me as "fascinating, intensely personal...witty and incisive...a rare invitation to see how the other half lives," while Seattle Weekly described the film's climax as "one of the most powerful father/daughter moments ever seen in a documentary." One festival-goer went so far as to write Entertainment Weekly to say the film had changed her view of the entire documentary genre! Although a successful Texas venture capitalist has offered Asset Pictures the funding to develop a releasing arm (creating the world's smallest studio...), producer Jason Lyon is still actively considering the possibility of selling off world rights to the project to distributors.
Filmmaker Blake, 28, used the receipts of a million-dollar trust established by her father to document his life as a Houston oil man, Hollywood playboy, hotshot lawyer and serial monogamist. The 87-year-old Thomas Walter Blake, known as "Blakey" to brides and brood alike, candidly expounds on everything from infidelity to separation of the races, even while knowing that his daughter is living with a black boyfriend. The Austin American-Statesman described Ms. Blake as "vibrant and searching" in the piece, and credits her with offering "an insider's (view) with an outsider's sense of irony."
Five Wives screens Thursday, April 23 at 7:30 p.m., in the Sutton Twin Theater, 205 East 57th Street. Among those scheduled to attend are acquisitions scouts from every major distributor, as well as such notables as actors Billy Crudup (Sleepers, Inventing the Abbots), Mary Louise Parker (Fried Green Tomatoes) and Brooks Ashmanskas (How to Succeed...), novelist Dale Peck (Martin & John), writer-performers David Drake (The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me) and Claudia Shear (Blown Sideways through Life), poet Dana Bryant, singer Shannon Worrell Chapman of "September 67" and artist Mary Weatherford, among others. Complimentary tickets are available to press and film industry by calling 212/255-6187.