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Fulle and producer David Miller hope the film festival exposure will lead to a distribution deal for the low-budget, independent picture. Such deals are rare for small, nonstudio films with no star power, but Miller remains optimistic: “I think our best bet is to hook up with a specialized distributor who could arrange a limited or specialized release for the picture.” Miller started out making music videos and industrial films, but now he’s concentrating on narrative features; another of his productions, The Ride, is also being screened at the festival.
Fulle says he was compelled to turn his journal into a screenplay but never thought it would get produced. After graduating from Columbia he worked in Lake Forest as a production assistant for high-powered producer-writer-director John Hughes, doing grunt work for good money. He’d met Miller through family friends, and Miller was impressed by Fulle: a couple of years ago he asked Fulle to serve as assistant director on The Ride. Fulle had to choose between his respectable wage working for Hughes and the relative pittance he would earn working closer to the creative center with Miller. He went with Miller. The two filmmakers established enough of a working relationship for Fulle to show Miller his script for Three Days, and Miller offered to let Fulle direct it. “The script came together for me because it was such a personal, real story,” Miller explains. “But it was also entertaining and not all really heavy emotional stuff.”
The North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie could be the next stop for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the new musical by Styx member Dennis DeYoung. A source close to the production says Michael Leavitt and Fox Theatricals are talking to North Shore Center management about opening the show in its 850-seat main-stage theater in late spring 1998. DeYoung’s musical had its world premiere last month at the Tennessee Repertory Theatre in Nashville, where encouraging reviews apparently prompted Leavitt and Fox to continue developing the show. Hunchback could prove a welcome tenant at the new North Shore Center, which has been searching for a high-profile show to draw audiences and generate rental revenue. Meanwhile, sources say that a new general manager for the center may be selected from among local candidates by the end of the month.
