The Newest Film Fad: the Presenter

The opening credit on the American-release print of “Hate,” a riveting French film about tough young layabouts by 25-year-old Mathieu Kassovitz, reads: “Jodie Foster and Egg Pictures Present a Mathieu Kassovitz film: Hate (La Haine).” Foster joins Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Redford and recent initiate Quentin Tarantino in the ever-expanding club of Hollywood celebrity presenters.

The trend seems to fulfill a need for famous directors looking for alternatives to the increasingly homogeneous--and mindlessly shocking--home product. And business connections in the industry often facilitate communication between directors and distributors. (“Hate’s” U.S. distributor, Gramercy Pictures, is a division of European producing giant PolyGram, which backs Egg, Foster’s production company.)

Foster explains why she decided to lend her considerable clout to “Hate,” which opened in Los Angeles on Friday: “Mathieu has managed to make a picture which goes beyond those immature yearnings for just a flashy movie about violence. It’s everything I’ve been wanting. It has a respect for French traditions yet takes a realistic, hard-edged look at the new France.”

The picture follows a rainbow coalition of friends--the Jew Vinz (Vincent Cassel), the Arab Said (Said Taghmaoui) and the black African Hubert (Hubert Kounde)--who battle cops near their desolate housing project outside Paris and venture into the City of Light with a policeman’s lost Smith & Wesson .44.

Egg Pictures began discussions with Kassovitz about directing a movie after Foster saw his previous film, “Cafe au Lait” (1993). She became twice smitten after seeing “Hate” (for which Kassovitz won the best director prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival).

Although she did appear recently with Kassovitz at a New York press conference, her involvement in “Hate’s” release is more practical than visible, Foster says.

“It’s his movie, and he’s the one who knows how to talk about it,” she says. “I’m not interested in stealing his thunder. Everything else I’m doing is really about distribution: making sure that the one-sheet is correct, that Gramercy buys the kind of TV time we need--that kind of monitoring stuff. I want to help distribute a film that otherwise wouldn’t get a fair shake.”

Tarantino has hung up a shingle reading Rolling Thunder in art-house distributor Miramax’s L.A. offices. Jerry Martinez, a former sales colleague of his at Manhattan Beach’s now-legendary Video Archives, is the only other crew member on board.

“Harvey Weinstein [co-chairman of Miramax] created Rolling Thunder for Quentin as a separate distribution arm of Miramax. They decide together what to pick up,” Martinez says.

Rolling Thunder exists, he adds, “to pick up films that might not otherwise find a distributor. If some other distributor expresses interest, Quentin says, ‘Hey, great, go with them.’ ”

Although Tarantino does not put his name on posters, trailers and prints of Rolling Thunder releases, he is as hands-on involved as Foster.

“He’s not a figurehead,” Martinez says. “Every little decision, including art and ad work, is funneled through him. The poster for ‘Chunking Express’ [a starkly minimalist design with few visuals] was his layout,” Martinez adds, referring to Rolling Thunder’s first release, due Friday.

Also on the horizon from Tarantino’s company are Beat Tagashi’s “Sonatine,” which Martinez describes as “a Japanese ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ ” and Gordon Chan’s Hong Kong action story “Fist of Legend” (a.k.a. “New Chinese Connection”), a remake of Bruce Lee’s “Chinese Connection.”

Somewhat more highbrow and Eurocentric are the films released under the banner “Martin Scorsese Presents.” Most of the pictures have distributors, although some have opened without them in nonprofit venues.

Scorsese does not get involved with the nuts and bolts of releasing; he is more of a “validator.” Most of the pictures he has backed are classics in re-release--films like Luis Bunuel’s “Belle de Jour” (a surprise success for Miramax last year), Luchino Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers,” Arthur Penn’s “Mickey One,” Federico Fellini’s “La Strada,” Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s “Stairway to Heaven,” Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “The Wages of Fear,” Pasolini’s “Mama Roma” and, with Francis Ford Coppola, the critically acclaimed ‘60s documentary “I Am Cuba.”

Scorsese has also presented several old movies from Republic Pictures on home video: “Johnny Guitar,” “Force of Evil” among others.

Coppola is as prolific a presenter as Scorsese. He more or less initiated the designation with a Filipino film, Kidlat Tahimik’s “The Perfumed Nightmare,” which opened in the States in 1980.

Subsequent additions to the Coppola roster often have been as quirky as Scorsese’s choices have been conventional: Hans-Jurgen Subergerg’s “Parsifal” and epic-length “Our Hitler,” Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi” and “Powaqqatsi” and Barbet Schroeder’s “Barfly,” among others. Coppola has also backed one new work by an old master--Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s “Kagemusha”--and his revival of French director Abel Gance’s silent “Napoleon” in 1981 was a huge success.