Janice Engel’s award-winning tribute to Molly Ivins has secured North American distribution. Deadline reports that Magnolia acquired rights to Sundance doc “Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins.”
Ivins, a best-selling author, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, and popular TV pundit, died in 2007 at the age of 62. “She railed against ‘big bidness’ in government, and often said, ‘Texas is the national laboratory for bad gub’ment,'” Engel told us in an interview. “Molly’s words have proved prescient. She knew the Bill of Rights was in peril, and said, ‘Polarizing people is a good way to win an election and a good way to wreck a country.'” She continued, “Molly spoke from the heart. She was not a cynic. She gave voice to people who didn’t have one. She called her constituents her ‘beloveds’ and she never stopped raisin’ hell.”
“Forty percent of Raise Hell profits will be split between the ACLU and The Texas Observer, the Austin-based news outlet. Ivins had been a vigorous champion of the ACLU … and major ACLU donors provided completion funds for ‘Raise Hell’ (and the group’s Texas Chapter hosted a reception for the film’s Sundance world premiere). The left-minded Observer, meanwhile, was the newsroom home for Ivins from 1970 to 1976,” the source details.
Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles described the doc as a “hugely entertaining film about a larger-than-life journalist whose voice is as timely as ever.”
When we asked Engel what she’d like audiences to think about after watching the film, she said, “How important it is to vote! To learn and take their civic responsibility with pride and action. It is up to us to do “the heavy lifting,” as [Molly’s]good friend columnist Jim Hightower says. And how important Molly Ivins was and is to our democracy, our sense of finding a way to agree to disagree, and getting back to bringing together our country. Democracy demands this and depends upon this. Molly knew that!”
Following its world premiere at Sundance “Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins” went on to win the Festival Favorites Audience Award at SXSW and an Audience Choice Award at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. A theatrical release is being planned by the year’s end.
“Jackson Browne: Going Home,” “Ted Hawkins: Amazing Grace,” and “Addicted” are among Engel’s previous credits.
