Tragically overshadowed by the Oscars and Charlie Sheen’s magical fighter jet brain, producer/director Gary Winick died last night at the age of 49. To add insult to injury, his most recent films were Bride Wars and Letters to Juliet, which is a shame, because before Kate Hudson had him Raul Julia’d, it sounds like he was a legit dude.
Winick’s most enduring legacy is likely the one he left on a smaller community, the thousands of filmmakers who have and will continue to benefit from his work as a digital pioneer at the turn of the century as the founder of InDigEnt, the collective he created with Cinetic’s John Sloss and IFC Films to make films for under $100,000 on digital video.
Inspired by the Dogme 95 movement out of Denmark, and especially Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Celebration,” Winick saw a similar opportunity in America, knowing the depth (and underutilization) of New York’s indie filmmaking community, observing much of it firsthand as a teacher at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for nearly a decade. By luring the likes of Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and then-budding auteurs like Rodrigo Garcia and Rebecca Miller, Winick gave digital filmmaking credibility at a time when it didn’t seem like the inevitability it is today and, better yet, produced 19 films between 2001 to 2007 that included gems such as Linklater’s “Tape,” Miller’s “Personal Velocity,” Peter Hedges’ “Pieces of April” and Steve Buscemi’s “Lonesome Jim” and Andrew Wagner’s “Starting Out in the Evening.” [IFC]
It’s terrible to say when we’re talking about a man dying, but I’m having trouble covering anything while Charlie Sheen’s epic meltdown continues. Winick’s cause of death is still unknown, but I have a hunch Charlie Sheen melted his face off and exploded his body. I honestly can’t imagine it happening any other way.