Mr. Mudd is a film
production company
A production company, production house, production studio, or a production team is a studio that creates works in the fields of performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, comics, interactive arts, video games, websites, music, and ...
founded in 1998 by Lianne Halfon,
John Malkovich
John Malkovich (born December 9, 1953) is an American actor. He is the recipient of several accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, two Screen Actors Guild Aw ...
, and Russell Smith. The company is known for producing the films ''
Ghost World'' (2001), ''
Juno
Juno commonly refers to:
*Juno (mythology), the Roman goddess of marriage and queen of the gods
*Juno (film), ''Juno'' (film), 2007
Juno may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Fictional characters
*Juno, in the film ''Jenny, Juno''
*Ju ...
'' (2007) and ''
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
''The Perks of Being a Wallflower'' is a coming-of-age epistolary novel by American writer Stephen Chbosky, which was first published on February 1, 1999, by Pocket Books. Set in the early 1990s, the novel follows Charlie, an introverted and obs ...
'' (2012), all three of which received critical acclaim.
Formation of the company
The company is named for a
Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
man (and convicted murderer)
["Inside Outsiders."](_blank)
''Filmmaker
Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...
.'' Spring 2003. Accessed 2015-04-07. named Mr. Mudd who acted as Malkovich's driver while he was making ''
The Killing Fields
A killing field is a concept in military science.
Killing field may also refer to:
* Killing Fields, a number of sites in Cambodia where collectively more than a million people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of ...
'' in 1984.
Malkovich met Russell Smith in high school, where Smith was a star basketball player for the
Lanphier High School
Lanphier High School, in the capital of the U.S. state of Illinois, Springfield, is a public high school affiliated with Springfield Public School District 186. It is also the home of the John Marshall Club, a club with open membership dedicated ...
Lions in
Springfield, Illinois
Springfield is the capital of the U.S. state of Illinois and the county seat and largest city of Sangamon County. The city's population was 114,394 at the 2020 census, which makes it the state's seventh most-populous city, the second largest o ...
. The two later became freshman roommates at
Eastern Illinois University
Eastern Illinois University is a public university in Charleston, Illinois. Established in 1895 as the Eastern Illinois State Normal School, a teacher's college offering a two-year degree, Eastern Illinois University gradually expanded into a co ...
. Malkovich later co-founded the
Steppenwolf Theater Company
Steppenwolf Theatre Company is a Chicago theatre company founded in 1974 by Terry Kinney, Jeff Perry, and Gary Sinise in the Unitarian church on Half Day Road in Deerfield, Illinois and is now located in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood on ...
, and invited Smith to become a writer for the troupe. Smith later produced a number of Steppenwolf plays, then moved into film production. Malkovich and Smith formed the Smith-Malkovich film production company in 1994.
Malkovich met Lianne Halfon in the late 1980s while she was an executive at
A&M Films. Malkovich and Halfon were both bidding for the film rights to author
Don DeLillo
Donald Richard DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, per ...
's 1988 novel about
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963.
Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at the age of 12 fo ...
, ''
Libra
Libra generally refers to:
* Libra (constellation), a constellation
* Libra (astrology), an astrological sign based on the star constellation
Libra may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Libra'' (novel), a 1988 novel by Don DeLillo
Musi ...
''. A&M films won the auction, and Halfon asked Malkovich to help develop the property. Although the film never coalesced, Malkovich asked Halfon to help produce a version of the novel as a play for the Steppenwolf Theater.
[Gross, Michael Joseph. "Mr. Mudd's Wild Ride (in Indie Land)." ''New York Times.'' March 5, 2006.](_blank)
/ref> The three first met while developing ''Libra'' for Steppenwolf.
Having Malkovich's name attached to the company did not initially prove valuable. According to Smith, writers and financers kept turning down Mr. Mudd because they assumed Malkovich would want to star in the film. The company was forced to stop mentioning Malkovich's involvement, and did not look for a property for Malkovich to act in for three years.
Operations
Malkovich describes his involvement in the company as minimal, limited to finding novels and plays which might be worth producing. Russell Smith, however, says that Malkovich also is good at developing a property, provides excellent script notes, and has a strong sense of good editing. According to Halfon, the three principals are attracted to properties for very different reasons, but each has the "same sensibility": "Each of us might pick up a different book, but what that person finds interesting in that book will be something the other two will see as something that can make a movie."
Halfon has described the three principals as very hands-on during production. "We are there every day on the set, we're there at the answer print, we're there at the mix, we're there at the delivery. We supervise the transfer to DVD," she told ''Filmmaker
Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...
'' magazine in 2003. Helping writers and directors protect their vision of what the film should be, she says, is what draws filmmakers to Mr. Mudd.
Beginning in 2003, Mr. Mudd became more involved in producing films for television. The principals say they enjoy the faster production times which television offers.
The company had a financing and development deal with United Artists
United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the studi ...
which ended in 2004. The deal funded production costs, but not Mr. Mudd's overhead. When the UA deal ended, Mr. Mudd began raising money for its projects through private equity financing. Mr. Mudd signed a first-look deal
A first-look deal is any contract containing a clause granting, usually for a fee or other consideration that covers a specified period of time, a pre-emption right, right of first refusal, or right of first offer (also called a right of first neg ...
with Mandate Pictures
Mandate Pictures was a full-service film production company acquired by Lionsgate in 2007.
History
In 2005, Mandate Pictures was officially formed when the Los Angeles–based Senator International completed a management buyout from German indie ...
in July 2008.[Siegel, Tatiana. "Mandate, Mr. Mudd team for 'Towns'." ''Variety.'' October 23, 2008.]
Notable films produced by Mr. Mudd
References
External links
IMDB Profile
{{Authority control
Film production companies of the United States