''ivansxtc'' is an American

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independe ...

drama film co-written by Bernard Rose and Lisa Enos, produced by Lisa Enos and directed by Bernard Rose, the first of several Enos-Rose collaborations, including ''Snuff-Movie'' (2005), ''Kreutzer Sonata'' (2008) and ''Mr. Nice'' (2010). The film stars

Danny Huston Daniel Sallis Huston (born May 14, 1962) is an Italian-born American actor and film director. A member of the Huston family of filmmakers, he is the son of director John Huston and the half-brother of actress Anjelica Huston. He is known for hi ...

Peter Weller Peter Weller (born June 24, 1947) is an American film and stage actor, television director, and art historian. He has appeared in more than 70 films and television series, including '' RoboCop'' (1987) and its sequel '' RoboCop 2'' (1990), in wh ...

, and Lisa Enos, with Rose and Enos' actual CAA agent, Adam Krentzmen, playing the role of fictional "Media Talent Agency" agent Barry Oaks. Other key roles include Morgan Walsh (Vukovic) as Lucy Lawrence, and SLC Punk director James Merendino in the role of director Danny McTeague. The story follows a Hollywood agent, Ivan Beckman (Danny Huston), who must force a smile and carry on with business as usual with the agency's biggest client, Don West (Peter Weller), in the face of a

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bl ...

diagnosis. The film, loosely based on

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

's 1886 novella ''

The Death of Ivan Ilyich ''The Death of Ivan Ilyich'' (also Romanized ''Ilich, Ilych, Ilyitch''; russian: Смерть Ивана Ильича, Smert' Ivána Ilyicha), first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, considered one of the masterpieces of his late f ...

,'' was also inspired by the rise and fall of talent agent

Jay Moloney James David "Jay" Moloney (November 14, 1964 – November 16, 1999) was an American Hollywood talent agent. Moloney was a top Creative Artists Agency (CAA) agent and a protégé of CAA founder Michael Ovitz. He committed suicide at age 35. Earl ...

. It premiered at the

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...

on September 12, 2000. It was released in the United States (New York and Los Angeles) on July 7, 2002 and on July 19, 2002 in the United Kingdom.

Cast

as Ivan Beckman, a successful film agent working in Los Angeles *

as Don West, Beckman's client * Lisa Enos as Charlotte White *

James Merendino James Anthony Merendino (born January 11, 1969) is an American film director and screenwriter who is best known for directing the 1998 film '' SLC Punk!''. Life Merendino was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and moved to Salt Lake City, Utah whe ...

as Danny McTeague * Adam Krentzman as Barry Oaks *

Sarah Danielle Madison Sarah Danielle Madison (September 6, 1974 – September 27, 2014), sometimes credited as Sarah Danielle Goldberg, was an American actress. Early life Madison was born Sarah Goldberg in Springfield, Illinois. She was a 1992 graduate of Latin Sch ...

as Naomi *

Tiffani Thiessen Tiffani Amber Thiessen (born January 23, 1974) is an American actress who starred as Kelly Kapowski on NBC's ''Saved by the Bell'' (1989–1993), as Valerie Malone on Fox's ''Beverly Hills, 90210'' (1994–98), and as Lori on Netflix's '' Ale ...

as Marie Stein *

Dan Ireland Daniel Frederick Ireland (May 11, 1949 – April 14, 2016) was an American-Canadian film producer and director.''. In: cinemawithoutborders.com, July 5, 2012 He was the co-founder of the Seattle International Film Festival. Biography Ireland was b ...

as Ted Zimblest *

Lisa Henson Lisa Marie Henson (born May 9, 1960) is an American television and film producer and former actress who has been involved in television shows such as ''Sid the Science Kid''. She is the CEO of The Jim Henson Company, founded by her parents Jim a ...

as Margaret Mead *

Hal Lieberman Hal Lieberman is an American producer and former president of production for Universal Pictures. Born and raised in Bronx, New York, Lieberman has a B.A. from SUNY at Stony Brook and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. Lieberman began his ...

as Lloyd Hall *

Valeria Golino Valeria Golino (born 22 October 1965) is an Italian actress and film director. She is best known to English-language audiences for her roles in ''Rain Man'', ''Big Top Pee-wee'' and the two ''Hot Shots!'' films, particularly the olive-in-the-bell ...

as Constanza Vero *

Angela Featherstone Angela Featherstone is an actress, writer, director, and advocate for children in foster care. She grew up in the Nova Scotia and Manitoba provinces of Canada. Career Modeling Within a year of emancipating herself from foster care at age ...

as Amanda Hill *

Victoria Silvstedt Karin Victoria Silvstedt (born 19 September 1974)''Expressen'', 29 October 2004. is a Swedish model, actress, singer, and television personality.Victoria Silvstedt Official Homepage, victoriasilvstedt.com, 8 May 2010. Early life Born in Skellef ...

as Melanie

Filming

The film was shot in July 1999 in

Sherman Oaks Sherman Oaks is a neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California located in the San Fernando Valley, founded in 1927. The neighborhood includes a portion of the Santa Monica Mountains, which gives Sherman Oaks a lower population density than ...

and Los Angeles and was originally intended as a "

Dogme 95 Dogme 95 is a 1995 avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vows of Chastity" ( da, kyskhedsløfter). These were rules to create films ...

" film in which the key collaborators (Enos, Rose, DP Ron Forstye, Production Coordinator Morgan Vukovic, etc.) would be credited as "The Filmmakers." It was shot at 60i fps on the Sony HDW-700A

HD video High-definition video (HD video) is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for ''high-definition'', generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines ( ...

format

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...

camera, which proved problematic for theatrical distribution.

Reception

Box office

On its opening weekend in the United States and Canada, the film was ranked at #71, behind '' The Salton Sea'', ''

The Singles Ward The Singles Ward franchise includes the original film, ''The Singles Ward'' from 2002 and the 2007 sequel, ''The Singles 2nd Ward'', both directed and written by Kurt Hale and John Moyer. The Singles Ward ''The Singles Ward'' is a 2002 romantic ...

'' and ''

Beauty and the Beast ''Beauty and the Beast'' (french: La Belle et la Bête) is a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in ''La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins'' (''The Young American and Marine T ...

''.

Critical response

''Ivans Xtc'' received mostly positive reviews. On film aggregation website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, it holds a 77% rating, with an average score of 6.8/10, sampled from reviews from 30 critics. It scored a 67/100 (citing "generally favorable reviews") on

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, based on reviews from 14 critics.

Accolades

References

External links

* {{The Death of Ivan Ilyich Films based on works by Leo Tolstoy Films based on Russian novels 2000 films British independent films American independent films 2000 drama films Films directed by Bernard Rose (director) Films about death Rhino Films films Films with screenplays by Bernard Rose (director) 2000 independent films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films 2000s British films