Director Bernard Rose's digital assault on Hollywood.

Danny Huston, brother to Anjelica and son of legendary director John, is arching his eyebrows like Jack Nicholson. All I did was suggest that the world depicted in Ivans xtc, where he plays doomed Hollywood agent Ivan Beckman, is a seedy one. "Do you think so?" he drawls. "But it's all around us, is it not? Here in London, I'm sure ambition creates those kinds of creatures too."

Ivans xtc was inspired by the death of hotshot Hollywood agent Jay Maloney who numbered Spielberg and Scorsese among his clients, as well as British director Bernard Rose (Candyman, Paperhouse). "Maloney was a guy you needed to know. He was a one-man green-light committee," says Rose, who shot Ivans xtc on digital in his house in Beverly Hills. "But then one day he was just gone. He'd cleared out his office, vanished, gone. That fascinated me."

Maloney had resigned from his post at the Creative Artists' Agency (CAA) in LA, allegedly due to cocaine addiction. Three years later he was found hanged in his bathroom. So how has Hollywood reacted to the film? "Well, they're intensely uncomfortable watching it," says producer and co-writer Lisa Enos, who also stars. "It's basically a mirror image of their life." "But I think Bernard actually treated the character with a great deal of compassion," adds Huston. "Really, it's about mortality which is a universal subject and involves all of us."

"When we first ran the movie for a room full of agents," says Enos, "they didn't like how it made them feel. Therefore, they didn't really want to talk about it anymore." But isn't that what she, Rose and Huston wanted? "Well, no," she says. "They were supposed to be representing it for sale."

For Rose, though, this is more than just a dagger to the heart of the Hollywood orthodoxy. It's also a fierce statement of intent funded entirely by his and Enos' money (they're married). He even issued a manifesto declaring that digital film-making would spell the end of movies as we know them.

So how does he think Hollywood will look in 10 years time? "People will own their own gear and make films at home," he says. "I think there'll come a time where we'll see films made by people whose personality doesn't interface well with the international film business. I mean, can you imagine Van Gogh going into a pitch meeting with his ear lopped off? They'd be watching him drip on the carpet. They wouldn't listen to what he said."JC 18 July 02

ivans xtc goes on release on 19 July 02.

useful link: www.ivansxtc.com

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