Two female-helmed features out of Sundance — Elizabeth Wood’s drug drama “White Girl” and Penny Lane’s animated medical documentary “NUTS!” — have found distribution.
Starring Morgan Saylor (best known as Dana from “Homeland”), “White Girl” centers on a college girl left with a cache of cocaine when her Puerto Rican drug-dealer lover is arrested. Wood wrote and directed the feature, which she described tersely in an interview with Women and Hollywood as “a personal story.” Netflix acquired the picture for seven figures.
Meanwhile, Amazon has picked up “NUTS!,” the real-life story of Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, a 20th-century surgeon whose claim to fame was a miracle cure for impotence: transplanting goat testicles into his patients. (Yes, you read that right.) A mix of interviews, archival footage, animated reenactments and an unreliable narrator, “NUTS!” took home a Special Jury Award for Editing at this year’s Sundance.
In an interview with Women and Hollywood, Lane said the following of her subject: “Brinkley’s life was made for the movies. It’s a classic tragedy of the maybe specifically American variety. From humble roots, he applies himself with genius, grit and a signature seductive style to a series of innovative business ventures. He is wildly successful, but is brought down by his own hubris in the end. Also, he might be a sociopath. Who can resist a character like that?”
Both films will also enjoy theatrical releases.
[via THR]
