LIKE CRAZY (WINNER: BEST PICTURE - GRAND JURY PRIZE): " DOMESTIC TRAILER #1" (VO) - GENERIC INTERVIEWS (VO): Felicity Jones " Anna" - Anton Yelchin " Jacob" - Drake Doremus ( Director) - SUNDANCE FILM CLIPS (VO): " CLIP #3" - " PRESS CLIP" -
" LIKE CRAZY " “She comes back to tell me she’s gone. As if I didn’t know that, As if I didn’t know my own bed.” -- “Graceland,” Paul Simon From the intoxicating opening encounter between young lovers Jacob (Anton Yelchin) and Anna (Felicity Jones), Like Crazy leaps into the sweeping arc of a couple’s first, unforgettable, yet star-crossed love affair. But as soon as it does, the film defies all the usual conventions of movie romance. Instead of watching the thrill and madness of love unfold from an amused distance, director Drake Doremus dives head-on into the thick of it, right into the nitty-gritty experience of the roiling, dizzying, over-in-a-flash moments that define roller-coaster love. They are moments almost everyone knows deep in their bones – the feeling of fitting so perfectly, of throwing out all caution, of being more alive for your longing; and the feeling of having to say goodbye, of missing someone fiercely, of wrestling with trust and jealousy, and of hoping against hope to light a match to that fire one more time – moments that we rarely get to see so intimately and revealingly exposed. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and Special Jury Prize for Best Actress at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Like Crazy was filmed in a handmade, improv style that becomes a haunting x-ray of contemporary, transcontinental love -- its obsessions, its uncertainty, its unreasonableness, and its excitement, its whimsy and its never-ending promise. The film begins when Anna and Jacob are college students. He’s a talented young designer from Los Angeles; she’s a gifted writer from London – but after Anna’s makes the nervy first move, they seem to connect at the purest level. When they’re together, they feel like anything is possible. But when Anna overstays her American visa, breaking the rules of 21st Century travel, she unwittingly drops a wall between them. Forced by law to return to London while Jacob remains in L.A., they discover the perils of long-distance relationships. Their lives become wrapped up in anxious text messages, missed phone calls and ecstatic reunions that turn to bittersweet departures. They also begin to change. Jacob’s furniture design business takes off in L.A. Anna is promoted to Junior Editor in London. Jacob seeks solace with his assistant, Sam (Jennifer Lawrence) and Anna has a fling with her neighbor Simon (Charlie Bewley.) Yet every time they are inevitably pulled apart – by circumstance, by Homeland Security, by the clash of inexplicable emotions -- something keeps luring them back together, something they cannot seem to hold on to, yet cannot live without. Paramount Vantage and Indian Paintbrush present a Super Crispy Entertainment Jonathan Schwartz/Andrea Sperling production, Like Crazy, directed by Drake Doremus from an original screenplay written by Doremus &Ben York Jones. The producers are Jonathan Schwartz and Andrea Sperling, and the executive producers are Zygi Wilf, Audrey Wilf, Steven Rales and Mark Roybal. The artistic crew includes cinematographer John Guleserian, production designer Katie Byron, editor Jonathan Alberts, and costume designer Mari Chisholm, with music by Dustin O’Halloran. DRAKE DOREMUS (Director/Co-Writer), 28, native of Orange County California and graduate of the American Film Institute, has made a film a year for each of the last four years. His latest, Like Crazy, was his second Dramatic Competition Film at the Sundance Film Festival in as many years. The film was glowingly received by audiences and critics alike and sold the evening of its Premiere to Paramount Vantage and Indian Paintbrush. One week later the film won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Picture at Sundance as well as a Special Jury Prize for Best Actress to Felicity Jones. Doremus' second feature, Douchebag, made its world premiere in Dramatic Competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival where it was acquired by Red Dragon Releasing. Douchebag garnered rave reviews from the likes of Elvis Mitchell (NPR), Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times), Owen Gleiberman (Entertainment Weekly), and Newsweek. The film was released in late 2010. Doremus’ first feature film, Spooner, premiered at Slamdance in 2009 and won Best Feature at several festivals. The movie was acquired by Moving Pictures and was released at the beginning of 2011. Doremus is currently in the middle of production on his latest film in New York. The film stars Emmy Nominated Guy Pearce, Like Crazy star Felicity Jones, and Academy Award® nominee Amy Ryan. The story centers around the change in a family’s dynamic when a beautiful and talented foreign exchange student moves in to their house during their daughter's senior year of high school. The newest film marks his fourth consecutive with Jonathan Schwartz of Super Crispy Entertainment, his long time producer, who is producing along with Super Crispy's Andrea Sperling and Indian Paintbrush's Steven Rales and Mark Roybal. Doremus' unique approach is to shoot films without giving actors specific lines, instead encouraging the actors to improvise while being guiding by an extensive outline which he writes. These outlines not only focus on story, but also scene objectives and subtext. Doremus has been directing and performing improv since he was 12. He has studied with several well respected improvisational teachers, including his mother, Cherie Kerr, a founding member of The Groundlings.