BPS 248: Producing Sundance Winning Indie Films with Jonathan Baker

Today on the show we have Sundance-winning producer Jonathan Baker. His new film Sylvie's Love is the talk of Sundance 2020. Sylvie's Love is an upcoming American drama film, written and directed by Eugene Ashe. It stars Tessa Thompson, Nnamdi Asomugha, Ryan Michelle Bathe, Regé-Jean Page, Aja Naomi King, and Eva Longoria. It will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2020.

Jonathan is a wealth of information. In the episode, I pick his brain on what it was like winning the audience award at Sundance, how the indie film market place is changing, and much more. His last Sundance-winning film was Crown Heights which was later sold to Amazon Studios.

In 1980, police in Brooklyn, N.Y., wrongfully charge Trinidadian immigrant Colin Warner with murder. Convicted for a crime he didn't commit, Colin spends 20 years in prison while his friend Carl King fights for the young man's freedom.

He made his directorial debut with the stoner comedy Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime. Check out the trailer below.

In this absurdist satire, an awkward OCD physics genius and a hot ex-Catholic sorority girl wake up after blacking out Halloween night to discover they missed the evacuation of Earth. A mysterious agent pursues the feuding couple as they figure out how to work together to solve the recently entangled multi-verse and ultimately try to save humanity from AI.

Here's a bit more info on today's guest.

Jonathan Baker (JB) is an independent filmmaker, adjunct professor, and artistic coach. His company JB Productions, Inc. has many partnerships with artists JB develops and produces. He is a member of the Producer's Guild of America.

JB worked at Sony Pictures Entertainment, first in television research, then at Screen Gems and TriStar Pictures as Marketing Manager. He marketed over forty major theatrical releases, of which ten films achieved #1 at the box-office status. He Co-Producer the documentaries Fang vs. Fiction (airing on AMC), The Real Exorcist (A & E), and Real Premonitions (A & E). Films of note include Closer (dir. Mike Nichols), Adaptation (dir. Spike Jonze), Big Fish (dir. Tim Burton), Boogeyman (#1 at the box office), Underworld (#1 at the box office), In The Cut (dir. Jane Campion), You Got Served (#1 at the box office), the Resident Evil franchise, and Exorcism of Emily Rose. While at TriStar, Lords of Dogtown (dir. Catherine Hardwicke), Oliver Twist (dir. Roman Polanski), Running with Scissors (dir. Ryan Murphy) and Silent Hill.

Johnathan's new film The Banker starring Sam Jackson and Anthony Mackie comes out March 2020 on Apple TV+.

Two African American entrepreneurs in the 1950s hire a white man to pose as the head of their company while they posed as a janitor and a chauffeur and ran the business.

Enjoy my conversation with Jonathan Baker.

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