The team behind the opioid crime thriller “King Ivory” had a considerably unorthodox journey to the Venice Film Festival this year.
When a delayed flight from New York caused them to miss their connection by minutes, the group of six — along with stars Ben Foster and Melissa Leo, plus producer Jeremy Rosen and writer/director John Swab — found themselves in Munich on a long waiting list for the only different plane heading to Venice that day.
Considering the odds of all of them getting seats were slim, Rosen made what he describes as a “government choice,” renting a Mercedes Sprinter van for a seven-hour drive that took them from Germany to Italy through the Austrian Alps.
“It really was like a camping trip… a camping trip for privileged kids,” he notes. There was also a touch of danger—Swab says that about halfway through the experience, he noticed Rosen “falling asleep at the wheel.” Fortunately, they stopped and switched.
However, despite all the drama, the trip was worth it.
Rosen and Swab’s first trip to the Venice Movie Pageant was rewarded with a slew of strong reviews for “King Ivory,” which had its world premiere in the Horizon Further competition. Featuring an intertwined collection of tragic tales involving opioid dealers, addicts, gangs and the police, the film — which alongside Leo and Foster also stars “Higher Caul Saul” cast member Michael Mando — has been compared to a gritty “Visitors” for the fentanyl era.
The journey also offered a new peak for Rosen and Swab’s fast-paced but prolific inventive collaboration and their growing manufacturing hub in Tulsa, Oklahoma, under Rosen’s Roxwell Movies banner. As the producer puts it, “King Ivory” is not only their seventh feature in 5 years and their biggest and most formidable challenge together, but it’s also the “final result of our efforts thus far.”
The two met after a chance encounter at a Santa Monica espresso shop at the American Movie Market in 2016 — where Swab was promoting his first feature film, “Let Me Make You a Martyr,” and Rosen was in town on his first producing credit, Paul Schrader’s “Canine Eat Canine” — 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,” Rosen recalls). The pitch — and the platters — worked, and they eventually moved on to what would become their first feature film together, the action crime drama “Run With the Hunted,” starring Ron Perlman.
“John and I complement each other very well,” notes Rosen, who also serves as a music director and attorney with a number of past and present major clients, including Boyz II Males, Aerosmith, Boy George and Frank Ocean. “We’re both impatient, so we don’t want to let the grass grow, but we don’t want to just churn out work for free for the sake of it.”
Not letting the grass grow would result in the duo making — with Swab writing and directing and Rosen overseeing “almost every other piece, from casting to financing, distribution, production and festivals” — in quick succession, “Physique Brokers” starring the late Michael Okay. Williams in his last role, “Ida Purple” with Josh Hartnett, the Locarno arc “Sweet Land” and last year’s releases “Little Dixie” and “One Day as a Lion.”
With budgets gradually increasing (but remaining in the sub-$7.5 million range so far), private equity would soon give way to more regular film financing—“It’s so annoying to have to do the dog and pony show every time,” Rosen says—with tax deductions being intertwined with minimal guarantees from distributors to get projects off the ground and Rosen often taking on the full financing component himself.
“It’s evolved, and now, fortunately, we’re in the mix with studios and streamers, where those guarantees and minimum credits are much less instrumental or dead or alive,” he notes. Rosen also points out that fixing the financing hole internally — “I’m the living, breathing, walking backstop” — has actually proven useful, with them passing on a number of housing offers to “King Ivory” that would have seen the project forced to pause during the actors’ strike.
Ben Foster in ‘King Ivory’
Tusla served as the most frequent setting for Roxwell’s films, not only to take advantage of the useful tax breaks Oklahoma offers, but because of Swab’s position and network of connections in the town.
In addition to a trusted team he’s called on for various tasks (a group, many of whom he’s known for years, that he describes as a “small militia”), there’s a Rolodex full of useful contacts who can help open doors.
“Being from here and having the ability to name law enforcement officers or sheriffs that we all know, we’re able to go into buildings at night and stuff 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 shootout on a Sunday afternoon for $100. You can’t do that anywhere else!”
However, beyond the setting, the crew, and the array of standard returnees on display (King Ivory’s Leo has appeared in three of his choices, while Frank Grillo has four to his credit), there’s another thread that runs through much of Roxwell’s output. Throughout the various films, there are recurring themes of crime, addiction, abuse, and redemption, much of which is drawn from Swab’s personal experiences and delivered on an unvarnished authenticity (so much so that Sean Baker reached out to the sex worker-themed “Sweet Land” and later auditioned one of the cast members for his Cannes-winning “Anora”).
“I used to be an opioid addict for a little over a decade, and toward the end of that was when fentanyl became more prevalent and made its way into the American drug scene,” Swab says, adding that the epidemic took the lives of several people he knew. “But I got sober and got my life together and started making movies with Jeremy.”
For that reason, “King Ivory” (one of several street names for fentanyl) is “by far the most private film” for the writer/director, who — after nearly a decade of distance — was inspired to take an objective look at the disaster, spending time with cartel members, migrants, police officers, prisoners and many others caught up in that world. “I was really just trying to get the gist of it and everyone’s aspect of it,” he says. “It was really enlightening.”
And given its Venice premiere and the acclaim it garnered, this deeply private film may also end up being the most important one yet for Swab and his producing partner, Rosen.
As the producer notes, “King Ivory” is already “opening doors,” with the duo now “in the mix for some studio work with the right budgets.” There’s also a “King Ivory” TV series in early development, with its star Mando having pitched it to his “Higher Name Saul” chief executive and former Sony Pictures TV boss Jeff Frost. “He’s on board with our series and he’s passionate about it and we’re honing our pitch together,” Rosen says. And an upcoming trip to Los Angeles could also see the duo land corporate representation.
Yet with their work seemingly about to enter a new chapter, Rosen and Swab — who admit there are several scripts of their own they could “kickstart” and make happen immediately — chose to try something they haven’t done in the eight years since they met: wait.
“As much as we hate to let the grass grow and stand still — it drives me crazy — it seems like the wisest course of action right now is to just pause and weigh the choices that are coming at us,” Swab says. Not that Swab is ever really standing still, actually. When we speak, the filmmaker is taking a brief break from filming a music video for his wife Sam Quartin, the lead singer and guitarist for the punk band The Bobby Lees (and also an actress who has appeared in several of her husband’s films, including “King Ivory”).
Whether their next move is yet another in-house Oklahoma production or an even bigger challenge thrown down by a studio, given their prolific nature, this post-Venice hiatus could very well be the last break for a while for a filmmaking partnership that has made more movies in half a decade than many make in two.
As Rosen notes: “Yet, regardless of all the films we’ve executed, we feel like we’re just getting started.”
