(Untitled) Movie Preview – Images, Trailer And More

For those upset at the loss of The Unusuals (a wonderful show that should have been given a chance), especially due to the loss of overall Adam Goldberg screentime available, or those who are even remotely aware of 2001′s Bartleby, you will be happy to note the release of (Untitled) on October 23rd.

From the writing/directing team that brought us Bartleby (Jonathan Parker and Catherine DiNapoli), (Untitled) is a story that centers around the uniquely bizarre world of contemporary art. While Bartleby had a few flaws, it was a movie that left me hungry for more from the people (or sensibilities) that made it. Put the creative team together with Adam Goldberg, in a role that seems designed for him, and I’m pretty excited for this quirky adventure. While it’s hard to put your finger on where the exploration of artists’ lives is going to end, and where the mockery of the contemporary scene is going to begin, I think the subject is in the right hands.

Below check out a detailed synopsis, some great bits from a comprehensive press release, and the trailer. Looks fantastic to me, and I like the feel of where it seems the creators are coming from on this one.

In this smart, satirical comedy, a brooding avant-garde composer falls for the gorgeous owner of a trendy New York art gallery and the quirky worlds of contemporary art and music are set on a hilarious collision course.

Directed by Jonathan Parker (Bartleby) from a screenplay he co-wrote with Catherine di Napoli (Bartleby), (UNTITLED) stars Adam Goldberg (2 Days in Paris, “Entourage”), Marley Shelton (Grindhouse, Pleasantville), Eion Bailey (Fight Club, “Band of Brothers”) and Vinnie Jones (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). The film is produced by di Napoli, Parker and Andreas Olavarria (The Chosen One, Reality Check) and executive produced by Goldberg and Matt Luber (Bride Wars, Evan Almighty). The production designer is Academy Award® nominee David L. Snyder (Blade Runner), with sound design by Academy Award winner Richard Beggs (Apocalypse Now) and music by 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang.

Set in the artsy Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, (UNTITLED) tells the story of Adrian Jacobs (Goldberg), a difficult composer of equally difficult music whose sparsely attended performances involve musicians breaking glass and kicking metal buckets. In contrast, Adam’s brother, Josh (Bailey), is a commercially successful painter of vapid canvasses that corporate clients snap up by the dozen.

introduced to a world of pretentious art collectors, dueling gallerists and eccentric artists, including Ray Barko (Vinnie Jones), whose bizarre creations include chandeliers of stuffed animals and dead cows draped with jewelry.

When Josh discovers Adrian and Madeleine’s relationship and Madeleine refuses to exhibit Josh’s paintings—even though the money they bring in is what keeps the gallery afloat—the stage is set for a showdown as comedic and discordant as Adrian’s music.

But, Adrian’s luck appears set to change when Josh brings the stunning Madeleine (Shelton) to one of his concerts. Not only does she embrace his work and ask him to perform at her gallery, she invites him into her bed. As the two embark on a fiery affair, Adrian is introduced to a world of pretentious art collectors, dueling gallerists and eccentric artists, including Ray Barko (Vinnie Jones), whose bizarre creations include chandeliers of stuffed animals and dead cows draped with jewelry.

Writer-director Jonathan Parker and writer-producer Catherine di Napoli got the inspiration for (UNTITLED) from the confluence of two completely different experiences. The first was reading Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, which tells the story of a fictional German composer who makes a deal with the devil in exchange for a quarter century of great musical achievement. It was in the 1947 novel about an angry malcontent—also named Adrian—that the filmmakers found the template for their tortured protagonist.

The second was attending a concert of avant-garde music in New York. Parker and di Napoli were among a tiny audience at the performance, which included a woman who kept fanning herself. The experience was not only the basis for a hilarious scene in the film, but it also epitomized one of (UNTITLED)’s central themes.

“The idea of what the struggling artist goes through to make something great is a subject that was intriguing to us,” says di Napoli. “How do you enjoy that process? And how do you define success?”

“We decided a contemporary music composer would make a great film character,” Parker continues. “It’s a pursuit that caters to a small audience and has this funny contrast between seriousness and silliness. When you play a gig and there are six people on stage and six people in the audience and you’ve spent a lot of time writing and learning the piece, you can’t be too happy about it.”

Parker and di Napoli found the contemporary art and music scenes in New York in many ways easy targets for humor, “But we were determined not to turn the film into a know-nothing “You call that art?” critique… It’s very easy to go off into farce land,” Parker says. “But, you can never outdo in strangeness what actual artists create, so, we decided to make our fictitious artists pretty close to the real thing.”

In writing the story, Parker and di Napoli tapped into a number of the art world’s apparent contradictions, which they felt were ripe with comic potential. For one, there’s the seriousness with which certain artists and musicians approach their art and the inherent absurdity in their use of certain found objects as instruments and materials—buckets that are kicked for musical effect, for instance, or push-pins or stuffed animals used as works of art.

In addition, there is the duality of art for its own sake and art as a commercial venture—a paradox that finds its external representation in the front and back rooms of the Chelsea art gallery where Adrian is invited to perform his music. For the gallery’s owner, Madeleine, the front room is exclusively for exhibits by artists she finds interesting, where commercial appeal is irrelevant—or even a drawback. The back room, hidden from the eyes of the world like some dirty little secret, is where she keeps the commercially viable art that allows the gallery to exist.

“This whole thing about the front room and the back room was particularly interesting to me,” says Parker, who got to know many gallery owners during his research.

When it came time to cast the role of Adrian, both Parker and di Napoli immediately thought of Adam Goldberg.

“He’s perfect for it. I can’t really imagine anyone better,” says di Napoli. “Plus, in an independent film, where you’re not paying people a lot of money, it’s crucial that the actors respond to the script, and Adam really did.”

Parker recalled being impressed with Goldberg after seeing him in 2 Days in Paris. “I also remember seeing some photos of Adam on the IMDB and he looked terminally pissed off about something. It seemed like he’d be perfect for this role.”

For his part, Goldberg says he was drawn to the project in part by the demanding nature of the script. “It had a very stringent tone,” he says. “It was not a blueprint for improvisation, as some scripts I’ve worked with have been. That was appealing, but it was also a challenge. I thought I could bring something to the role, but I liked that I would have to do a certain amount of adaptation. I appreciated the tone and the amount of restraint in the humor and the philosophizing.”

Goldberg sees his character, Adrian, as someone who hides his true feelings of self-loathing behind “a mask of obstinacy and self-righteousness.”

“That can make for some funny interplay,” he says. “He takes his music very seriously, even more than he might if he were a success. He’s very beholden to this intellectual idea about what music is and isn’t, rather than playing from his heart. That puts him in a bind, because it excludes a lot of people who might otherwise come to see him. And, the less people who come to see him, the more he has to validate himself.”

For the role of Madeleine, the stunning and stylish gallery owner who falls for Adrian, the filmmakers chose Marley Shelton.

“We had written the character to be a little hard and very ambitious,” di Napoli recalls. “But, Marley gave it a softer dimension. In addition to being driven, Marley’s Madeleine is really passionate about the art, which is one of the movie’s themes—feeling passionate about something, no matter how ridiculous it may seem to someone else.”

Shelton says the fact that Goldberg was already involved was a big factor in her decision to take the role.

“I was a fan of his, so the idea of working with him was very exciting,” the actress says. “I had recently seen 2 Days in Paris, which had come out around that time, so it was fresh in my mind. I thought he was brilliant in that movie.”

But, the actress says she was also attracted to the boldness of the film’s premise. “What an ambitious idea to do a satire about the art world!” she says. “It sounded like such a dangerous prospect. I thought if we could pull it off, we would have something really special on our hands.”

As for the character of Madeleine, Shelton describes her as “a heat-seeking missile” trying to get ahead in the New York contemporary art scene. Although her character is incredibly ambitious and driven to succeed, Shelton observes, “She utterly believes everything she says and believes in everything she sells. It might appear she’s just going for the next hot thing, but I think she believes her own jargon. There’s a purity to her.”

A key moment for her character, Shelton says, is when Madeleine breaks down after finally caving in to Josh’s desire to have his highly commercial work displayed at her gallery. “That scene reveals that she is wholehearted in her beliefs.”