‘King Ivory’ Filmmaking Duo on Their Deeply Personal Venice Hit and Producing Seven Films in Five Years: ‘We Hate to Let the Grass Grow’
The team behind opioid crime thriller “King Ivory” had a somewhat unorthodox journey to the Venice Film Festival this year.
When a delayed flight from New York meant they missed their connection by a matter of minutes, the group of six — including stars Ben Foster and Melissa Leo, plus producer Jeremy Rosen and writer/director John Swab — found themselves in Munich on a long waitlist for the only other plane going to Venice that day.
More from Variety
Thinking that the chances of them all getting seats were fairly slim, Rosen made what he describes as an “executive decision,” hiring a Mercedes Sprinter van for a seven-hour drive that took them from Germany into Italy through the Austrian Alps.
“It was truly like a camp trip… a camp trip for privileged children,” he notes. There was also a hint of danger — Swab claims that about halfway into the ride, he spotted Rosen “falling asleep at the wheel.” Thankfully, they pulled over and switched.
But for all the drama, the journey proved to be worth it.
Rosen and Swab’s first trip to the Venice Film Festival was rewarded with a string of solid reviews for “King Ivory,” which had its world premiere in the Horizon Extra competition. Featuring an intertwining series of tragic stories involving opioid traffickers, addicts, gangs and the police, the film — which alongside Leo and Foster also stars “Better Caul Saul” main cast member Michael Mando — was likened to a gritty “Traffic” for the fentanyl age.
The trip also provided a new peak for Rosen and Swab’s short yet prolific creative collaboration and their growing production hub in Tulsa, Okla. under Rosen’s Roxwell Films banner. As the producer asserts, not only is “King Ivory” their seventh feature in five years and their biggest and most ambitious project together, but it’s the “culmination of our efforts to date.”
The two met following a chance encounter at a Santa Monica coffee shop during the American Film Market in 2016 — where Swab was selling his first feature “Let Me Make You a Martyr” and Rosen was in town with his first producer credit, Paul Schrader’s “Dog Eat Dog” — and it wasn’t long before they were in Swab’s hometown of Tulsa pitching projects to wealthy local private equity investors (“in a dodgy lounge… I think we ordered a couple of seafood platters,” recalls Rosen). The pitch — and platters — worked, and they eventually got moving on what would become their first feature together, the action crime drama “Run With the Hunted” starring Ron Perlman.
“John and I complement one another very well,” notes Rosen, who also serves as an entertainment manager and lawyer with a string of major clients past and present including Boyz II Men, Aerosmith, Boy George and Frank Ocean. “We’re both antsy, so we don’t want to let the grass grow, but we don’t want to just gratuitously churn out projects for the sake of it.”
Not letting the grass grow would lead to the pair making — with Swab writing and directing and Rosen overseeing “virtually everything else, from the from the casting to financing to distribution and production and festivals” — in quick succession, “Body Brokers” starring the late Michael K. Williams in his final role, “Ida Red” with Josh Hartnett, the Locarno-bowing “Candy Land” and last year’s releases “Little Dixie” and “One Day as a Lion.”
With budgets creeping up (but remaining in the sub-$7.5 million range so far), private equity would soon give way to more steady film financing — “It feels so distasteful to have to do the dog and pony show each time,” says Rosen — with tax rebates being woven together with minimum guarantees from distributors to get projects off the ground and Rosen often taking on the gap financing element himself.
“It’s evolved, and now fortunately we’re in the mix with studios and streamers, where these minimum guarantees and credits are a lot less instrumental or live-or die,” he notes. Rosen also points out that fixing the gap financing in-house — “I’m the living, breathing, walking backstop” — has actually proved beneficial, with them passing on a several domestic offers for “King Ivory” that could have seen the project forced to pause during the actors’ strike.
Tusla has served as the most frequent backdrop for Roxwell’s films, not simply to take advantage of the beneficial tax rebates Oklahoma has in place, but because of Swab’s status and network of connections in the city.
Alongside a trusting crew he’s turned to on numerous projects (a group, many of whom he’s known for decades, that he describes as a “little bit of a militia”), there’s a bulging Rolodex of useful contacts that can help open doors.
“Being from here and being able to call police officers or sheriffs we know, we’re able to get into buildings in the middle of the night, things like that, because they love us,” he says. “Those kinds of relationships we have in spades and that’s what allows us to make these movies. We can shut down downtown Tulsa and have a machine gun shoot out on a Sunday afternoon for $100. You can’t do that anywhere else!”
But alongside the setting, crew and an assortment of regular returnees on screen (“King Ivory’s” Leo has appeared in three of their features, while Frank Grillo has four to his name), there’s another thread that runs through much of Roxwell’s output. Across the various films there are recurring themes of crime, addiction, abuse and redemption, large elements of which were taken from Swab’s own experiences and come grounded in unembellished authenticity (so much so that Sean Baker reached out about the sex worker-themed “Candy Land” and later auditioned one of the cast members for his Cannes-winning “Anora”).
“I was an opiate addict for a little over a decade, and toward the tail end of that was when fentanyl became more prevalent and made its way onto the American drug scene,” says Swab, adding that the epidemic has taken the lives of several people he knew. “But I got sober and got my life together and started making movies with Jeremy.”
For this reason, “King Ivory” (one of the various streets names for fentanyl) is “by far the most personal movie” for the writer/director, who — after almost a decade clean — was inspired to take an objective look at the crisis, spending time with cartel members, migrants, cops, prisoners and numerous other of individuals caught up in that world. “I was really just trying to understand the root of it and everybody’s side of it,” he says. “It was really enlightening.”
And, thanks to its Venice bow and the acclaim it has received, this deeply personal film may also wind up being the most consequential for Swab and his production partner Rosen.
As the producer notes, “King Ivory” is already “opening doors,” with the duo now “in the mix for some studio projects with proper budgets.” There’s also a “King Ivory” TV series in early development, with it star Mando having introduced them to his “Better Call Saul” leading exec and former Sony Pictures TV boss Jeff Frost. “He’s on board with our series and is in love with it and we’re honing our pitch together,” says Rosen. And an upcoming trip to L.A. could also see the pair land agency representation.
But with their work looking like it’s about to enter a new chapter, both Rosen and Swab — who admit there’s a bunch of their own scripts they could “pull the trigger on” and get going on immediately — have elected to try something they haven’t done in the eight years since they first met: wait.
“As much as we hate to let the grass grow and sit still — it drives me crazy — it seems like the wisest move right now is to just take a pause and weigh the options that are coming to us,” says Swab. Not that Swab is actually sitting still, of course. When we speak, the filmmaker is taking a short break from shooting a music video for his wife Sam Quartin, lead singer and guitarist for the punk band The Bobby Lees (and also an actress who appeared several of her husband’s films, including “King Ivory”).
Whether their next move is another in-house Oklahoma-based feature or a bigger project brought to them by a studio, given their prolific nature, this post-Venice pause could well be the last break for some time for a filmmaking partnership that has made more movies in half a decade than many manage in two.
As Rosen notes: “But despite all the films that we’ve done, we feel like we’re just getting started.”
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.