Sloan is a sponsor of
Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival. We
don't usually think of De Niro and science together. He's a smart,
creative businessman who totally understands the potential of what
we're doing. The first year we partnered with Tribeca, a press
release went out with the heading, "De Niro Seeks Science Scripts."
More than 800 scripts came in from all corners of the nation. We
had to hire extra people and find extra space just to get them
catalogued.
What are some good science-based movies that have come out of the
film festivals? At Sundance, we've given awards to Dopamine,
Primer, and this year's winner, Grizzly Man, by the German director
Werner Herzog. It's the story of Timothy Treadwell, a man who lived
among grizzly bears in
Alaska and was eventually killed by them. It
really punctures that romantic view of nature, what Herzog calls
the "Disneyfication" of nature. What's so exciting here is the
variety. Shane Carruth, a novice
director, did Primer in his
parents' living room for about $7,000. Herzog is one of the most
distinguished directors working today.
The Hedy Lamarr project, Face Value, sounds like a sure winner. It
has great human-interest elements. The most glamorous movie star of
her generation makes this unbelievably important contribution to
science. She has an affair with her collaborator, but he dumps her
and goes back to his family. No one knows about that aspect of her
life.
Who will star in it? An A-list actress has signed on, but I can't
reveal her name right now.
What other Sloan projects are moving through the Hollywood
pipeline? Ismail Merchant has signed as executive producer of The
Broken Code, from a screenplay by David Baxter. It deals with
Rosalind Franklin, whose
X-ray images of DNA contribute to the
discovery of the double helix by James D. Watson and Francis
Crick.