When Gary Cogill left his job as movie critic at WFAA for a career in the movie business more than a few questioned his decision. After all, there have been movie critics who have tried their hand at making movies, but very few have succeed (and if you don’t include the critics who left Cashiers du Cinema to start the French New Wave, then even fewer). Pauline Kael famously left her writing gig at The New Yorker and tried her hand at Hollywood producing, only to fail spectacularly.
But Cogill was undeterred, and just a few months into his new gig at Lascaux films, a production company funded by a handful of Dallas doctors, he had Clive Owen committed to a project and a short list of actresses that included Julia Roberts, Julianne Moore, and Charlize Theron. Juliette Binoche eventually got the part, and the movie, called Words With Pictures, went into production earlier this year.
Now comes the latest milestone in Cogill’s movie making career. Words and Pictures, directed by Roxanne and Six Degrees of Separation director Fred Schepisi, will make its world premiere at a gala screening at the Toronto Film Festival. You can read more here, and here’s a synopsis of the film via the TIFF:
A writer (Clive Owen) whose talent has dried up and an artist (Juliette Binoche) struggling to paint, clash at the school where they teach, sparking both an unlikely romance and a school-wide war: which is more powerful, the word or the picture?
