Sony Pictures Classics has acquired the worldwide rights to Lizzie Gottlieb’s doc “Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb,” which just had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival. Deadline confirmed the news.
Centering on Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robert Caro and legendary editor Robert Gottlieb, the latter of whom is the director’s father, the doc explores the men’s 50-year publishing partnership. “Turn Every Page” sees Caro and Gottlieb taking on the the task of finishing their life’s work with Caro, 86, working on the final volume of his masterwork, “The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” while Gottlieb, 91, waits to edit it.
“Lizzie Gottlieb has made a wise and in-depth love letter to one of the most incredible collaborations in literary history. Not only do we eavesdrop on their working process but revelations about Robert Moses and LBJ abound. We look forward to working again with [production company] Topic Studios and bringing this major American documentary to audiences everywhere,” said Sony Pictures Classics said in a statement on the acquisition:
Gottlieb previously explained in an interview with us that she “wanted to make this film to try to understand a wildly productive, oddly contentious, hugely important collaboration, and through that, to open a window into a secretive creative process, a vanishing world of book publishing, and the way truths about power in America are revealed.”
The filmmaker added, “I think at heart this is a story about what it takes to make works that endure. About integrity and mortality and legacy. About what my generation and my children’s generation should hold onto from this world that is disappearing before our eyes.”
Gottlieb’s previous directing credits include the documentaries “Today’s Man,” a portrait of her brother, a former child genius who was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome at the age of 21, and “Romeo Romeo,” the story of two married women’s attempts to conceive.