Studio City Firm Rides Wave of Documentary Popularity

“We’re like newspapermen, only we sing about what’s going on instead of writing about it.” John Lennon, 1972 Imagine making a film about one of your heroes and his struggles against the excesses of the U.S. government; a story set against the backdrop of an unpopular war, a divided nation, and an embattled president with sagging approval ratings. David Leaf and John Scheinfeld did just that and without taking their story from current headlines. Instead, the pair reached back more than 30 years to a time of campus protests, street marches and when having “ex-Beatle” in front of your name drew instant attention. Then imagine that film receiving nationwide release, a first for LSL Productions, Inc., based in Studio City. And imagine further, the film coming at a time when the commercial appeal of feature length documentaries is at an all time high. “We are part of a wave of acceptance of a legitimate art form that can also be a successful business,” Leaf said. “The U.S. vs. John Lennon” hits the Los Angeles and New York City markets Sept. 15. Wider distribution comes Sept. 29, three days after the release of the 21-song soundtrack. Released by Lionsgate Films and made in conjunction with VH-1 Rock Docs, the film is part of progression for Leaf and Scheinfeld whose past projects delved into the careers of their heroes of stage and screen. The pair primarily made their documentaries for television. Not until 2004’s Grammy nominated “Beautiful Dreamer” about Brian Wilson and the “Smile” album did they approach a project like a feature film. They screened their next collaboration “Who is Harry Nilsson and Why is Everybody Talking About Him” at film festivals only, including one in late August that packed a theater in Santa Monica. The pair hope to piggyback the success of the Lennon film into a distribution deal for the Nilsson film if even for a limited theatrical run. While documentaries have always been in big demand for television, Scheinfeld said, that wasn’t the case for movie theaters. In 2004, a portly ideologue from Flint, Mich., changed that. Both Leaf and Scheinfeld reference the success of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9-11,” also released by Lionsgate, as evidence feature length documentaries have a broad appeal. Last year’s surprise hit “March of the Penguins” and this summer’s global warning treatise “An Inconvenient Truth” showed that Moore’s success was not just a fluke. Brandon Gray, president and publisher of Box Office Mojo, a Burbank firm that tracks box office receipts, said there is a renaissance in feature length documentary films. With “Lennon” having a significant distributor and an aggressive marketing campaign it should do solid numbers at least by documentary standards at the box office, Gray said. “This documentary is political and the political documentaries that have pushed the right buttons have done exceedingly well,” Gray said. In its marketing campaign Lionsgate focuses on the political angle, launching a website called “The Grudge Report” and promoting the film in certain cities by dusting off the “War is Over” billboard campaign Lennon and wife Yoko Ono did in 1969. But Leaf pointed out the film is not about his and Scheinfeld’s politics or the current political climate in the U.S. “It’s about a great artist and what happens when he uses his art and steps into the world of politics,” Leaf said. Separately, Leaf and Scheinfeld said they wanted to get a “visceral” reaction from the audience, a sock in the gut from images and narration of a time when an insecure Richard Nixon so feared the influence the bespectacled Liverpudlian had over American youth his administration resorted to wiretapping, surveillance and deportation proceedings. Screenings of “The U.S. vs. John Lennon” for test audiences and the press have been positive, the pair said, with some viewers leaving inspired while others come out angry. “The younger people say ‘Where is our John Lennon,'” Leaf said. “The baby boomers say ‘Where’s John Lennon now that we need him.’ Their point is the same. People are walking out of the theater bowled over at being reminded why John Lennon was such an important figure in his lifetime and why he should remain an iconic figure today.” Fab Photos Before blending his music with politics, in the heady days of Beatlemania, John Lennon ran a comb through the hair of Herb Bleiweiss, art director of McCall’s magazine, when Bleiweiss visited the Fab Four in the Bahamas during the filming of their second movie. A photograph of that moment is among the never-before-seen pictures published in the September/October issue of Calabasas magazine, whose publisher is Bleiweiss’s son, Richard. Richard Bleiweiss was reminded of the photos taken by his father as he assembled the Hollywood Fashion issue of the high-end lifestyle magazine, communicating online with his father down in Florida about his experiences of spending time with The Beatles. Unfortunately, Herb Bleiweiss didn’t get to see the pictures run in the magazine. He died in July following a car accident. “There’s a large hole in my heart right now, but I will always have the fondest memories of the last weeks we spent working together,” Richard Bleiweiss writes in the publisher’s note of the issue. Sada Launches ZEROi A framed poster of The Beatles hangs in the kitchen area of Sada Systems, a holdover from the days when the one-story building in North Hollywood was a recording studio and Sada President Tony Safoian’s office was the control room. Instead of creating music from the warren of rooms, Safoian and his crew took the next step with managed systems, conceiving and implementing for small- and medium-sized businesses a virtual desktop called ZEROi. The philosophy of the Sada Systems, formed six years ago, is why should companies not in the information technology field develop an expertise in information technology? With companies outsourcing payroll operations, legal counsel, accounting services, why shouldn’t they do the same with their technology needs? So was ZEROi born, an Internet-based system where employees log onto a remote server to access their desktop and the applications needed for their day-to-day work. With ZEROi there’s no capital expense, no spending thousands of dollars on computer equipment, setting aside separate space for servers, and no on-site personnel to manage and maintain the system, Safoian said. What a business does need is a reliable high-speed Internet connection. Sada Systems has devised a way to bind two different types of connections together so there is a backup in the event one connection gets cut. “We’re excited to be ahead of the curve,” Safoian said. “We’re leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else doing this now.” Staff Reporter Mark R. Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or at [email protected].