News

Exclusive: Veteran indie executive and filmmaker Jeff Lipsky is hooking up with Kino Lorber to launch The Jeff Lipsky Collection on growing streaming service Kino Now. The collection, which becomes available on March 5, will include five out of seven of Lipsky’s directing efforts dating from 2006-2019. Other filmmakers who are similarly represented with Kino Now Auteur Collections include Jean-Luc Godard, Lina Wertmüller, Derek Jarman, István Szabó and F.W. Murnau.

On the Lipsky roster are Flannel Pajamas (2006), a relationship story co-starring Julianne Nicholson and Justin Kirk; family drama Twelve Thirty (2011), starring Jonathan Groff; surreal comedy Molly’s Theory Of Relativity (2013) with Sophia Takal and Lawrence Michael Levine; character study Mad Women (2015), co-starring Reed Birney and Jamie Harrold; and Holocaust-themed family drama The Last (2019), starring Rebecca Schull. Lipsky hopes to add his first film, 1997’s The End, to the collection as soon as its restoration is complete.

Says Lipsky, “Being inducted...

Great news for fans of filmmaker Jeff Lipsky, her controversial and critically acclaimed sixth feature “Mad Women” is now available digitally, for rent or download, on Amazon and Vimeo-on-Demand.

The official synopsis reads: "'Mad Women' is a dark satire about Harper Smith, a middle-aged mom who, following a one-year prison sentence for having committed an act of conscience, becomes a local hero and folk legend in her small community of Iris Glen, NY. She runs for local office but has much grander aspirations up her sleeve. She is a woman accustomed to personal challenges: She lost her third child at the age of three to cancer, her first-born daughter, a pediatrician, is in Ukraine having joined Doctors Without Borders, her own mother lost an eye in her youth in an archery mishap, and her husband, a successful and beloved dentist, commits statutory rape under the influence of LSD at a rock concert. It’s up to Harper and her middle daughter, Nevada, to persevere, and they do, as a most unlikely mother/daughter bond emerges."

About the genesis of “Mad Women” Lipsky explains: “I began writing 'Mad Women' in early 2013, just after President Obama’s second inaugural, moments after a season of political drivel came to an end, and seemingly seconds before cable outlets began their non-stop palaver about the 2016 election. So I set out to conjure up my personal candidate, one whose idealism can’t be blunted, even as the world would be playing whack-a-mole with her. When I finished the script I knew there could never be a ‘Harper Smith.’ But now that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are front-runners, well, now I’m not so sure anymore!”

“Mad Women” marks the third consecutive collaboration between Lipsky and co-star Reed Birney (“House of Cards,” 2014 Tony Award nominee “Casa Valentina”). It also spotlights three extraordinary actresses – Kelsey Lynn Stokes, Christina Starbuck, and Sharon Van Ivan (John Cassavetes’ “Opening Night”) and marks a reunion for Lipsky with Jamie Harrold who co-starred in “Flannel Pajamas.” Lipsky’s previous films include “Twelve Thirty,” “Molly’s Theory of Relativity,” and “Once More With Feeling,” which along with “Flannel Pajamas,” have starred Justin Kirk, Julianne Nicholson, Jonathan Groff, Mamie Gummer, Chazz Palminteri, Drea deMatteo, Linda Fiorentino, Cady Huffman, Rebecca Schull, Halley Feiffer and Barbara Barrie.

Jeff Lipsky, the writer-director of the sexually explicit family psychodrama Mad Women, all but dares you not to loathe his film. He even gives his female protagonist, Nevada Smith (Kelsey Lynn Stokes), a line of dialogue for audiences and critics to use against him: Nevada tells a friend that a movie of her life wouldn’t be any good because, “Nobody can identify with me.” It’s almost funny-ha-ha the way that, speech by speech (there are many speeches), the characters alienate you, adding extra sentences guaranteed to shift your response from hmmm to ewww. I like a good dare. And I respect a filmmaker who zooms in on the sexual subtext to the point where you want to hide under your seat. Not that it’s easy to watch ...Nevada has an interesting family. Her doting father, Richard (Reed Birney), is a dentist who tells her a story — about...

Women on the Verge: Lipsky’s Overwrought Portrait of Dysfunction

Those having experienced the independent cinema styling of Jeff Lipsky won’t be surprised by the end product of his latest overblown cascade of maudlin litanies in Mad Women. A forced provocation ruinously scored by an endless patter of affected, hopelessly insincere bits of dialogue, the ineptitude is exacerbated by this being Lipsky’s sixth feature, and yet this production bears the same marks of amateurism as his previous endeavors. Shrill, annoying, and as graceful to observe as a symphony of tapered fingernails viciously excoriating a football field sized chalk board, the end result features overly rehearsed actors floundering through endless, exaggerated monologues.

Nevada Smith (Katie Lynn Stokes) is the product of a seemingly affluent environment. Residing in the privileged community known as Iris Glen, she is the second of three children belonging to her dentist father Richard (Reed Birney...