David Farnor | On 03, May 2017

A full trailer has landed for I Love Dick, ahead of its premiere on Amazon this month.

Adapted from the lauded feminist novel, Jill Soloway’s series is set in a colourful academic community in Marfa, Texas. It tells the story of a struggling married couple, Chris and Sylvere, and their obsession with a charismatic professor named Dick (Kevin Bacon). Told in Rashomon-style shifts of POV, I Love Dick charts the unraveling of a marriage, the awakening of an artist and the deification of a reluctant messiah.

All episodes of the series will be released on Amazon Prime Video on Friday 12th May. Read on for more details, or check out our full guide to what’s coming soon to Amazon Prime Video in May.

 

I Love Dick: Teaser trailer lands for Jill Soloway’s latest

11th April 2017

Amazon has released the trailer for Jill Soloway’s new series, I Love Dick.

Adapted from the cult classic novel by Chris Kraus, the Amazon original show is set in the colorful intellectual community of Marfa, Texas.

Indie filmmaker Chris (Kathryn Hahn) has spent most of her adult life in the shadow of her older and successful academic husband Sylvère (Griffin Dunne). When her latest work is accepted into the Venice International Film Festival, Chris finally gets her big break. She plans to head to Italy after dropping off Sylvère at a residency fellowship program in the remote West Texas art haven of Marfa, run by the legendary artist Dick Jarrett (Kevin Bacon). Excited for their new prospects, Chris and Sylvère sublet their cramped New York apartment and set out on a cross-country road trip.

When they arrive in Marfa, Chris’s plan to drop off Sylvère and continue on to glory in Venice falls apart when she learns that the festival has pulled her film over a licensing dispute for rights to a song she failed to clear. Her plans shattered, Chris finds herself stranded in a small town with nothing to do but confront her failing artistic career.

It isn’t long before Dick Jarrett catches her eye. Dick is as much mysterious cowboy as he is art star, and Chris is immediately drawn to him. After Dick belittles Chris and expresses doubt that women can make art as good as men’s, Chris finds that her attraction has inexplicably turned into obsession.

Fuelled by the encounter, Chris begins to write letters to Dick that she never plans on giving him. But when she realises that they represent her best work yet, Chris knows that she can’t keep the letters to herself. Soon everyone in town is reading them, setting off a chain reaction of explosive artistic expression and wild self-discovery – and upending Chris and Sylvère’s preconceptions about love and monogamy.

An exploration of the female gaze and how we tell stories about love and desire, the series was one of Amazon’s pilots last year.

“Full of promising nuance, likeable characters and gorgeous visual compositions, this pilot is an intriguing study of human relationships and artistic inspiration – and an excellent piece of television that demands for more episodes to be made,” we wrote in our review. “At this point, Amazon could commission an adaptation of the telephone book by Soloway and we’d be watching.”

The series will premiere on Friday 12th May. Here’s the trailer:

 

Amazon’s I Love Dick screens at Sundance before May release

21st January 2017

Amazon’s new TV series, I Love Dick, will premiere at Sundance Film Festival next week, before it’s released in May.

Jill Soloway’s adaptation from Chris Kraus’ 1997 cult novel is the kind of bold piece of TV you’d expect from the woman who brought us Transparent. The renowned feminist book follows a couple’s marital struggles in the artistic and academic community of Marfa, Texas.

It stars Transparent’s Kathryn Hahn as Chris, a frustrated New York filmmaker who finds herself marooned in Texas, where her academic husband, Sylvère (Griffin Dunne), has a writing residency. Amid the dusty silence, art snobs, and tumbleweeds, she meets scholar Dick (Kevin Bacon). An infuriating and beguiling exchange with this enigmatic, macho character unleashes in her a dramatic awakening.

The series was commissioned last year, after its first episode was released as part of Amazon’s 2016 summer pilot season.

“Full of promising nuance, likeable characters and gorgeous visual compositions, this pilot is an intriguing study of human relationships and artistic inspiration – and an excellent piece of television that demands for more episodes to be made,” our verdict on the first episode read. “At this point, Amazon could commission an adaptation of the telephone book by Soloway and we’d be watching.”

I Love Dick is executive produced by Soloway, Gubbins, Andrea Sperling (Transparent) and Victor Hsu (Transparent). The series will premiere its first three episodes at Sundance on Monday 23rd January at a special screening attended by Bacon, Hahn, Dunne, India Menuez, Lilly Mojekwu, Roberta Colindrez, Jill Soloway, co-creator Sarah Gubbins and other cast and crew.

Soloway will also participate in The Art of Episodic Writing on 26th January, a panel about episodic storytelling featuring Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reggie Rock Bythewood (Shots Fired, Beyond the Lights), Larry Karaszewski (The People v. O.J. Simpson), Marti Noxon (UnREAL), and Issa Rae (Insecure, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl).

It marks the growing presence of streaming services at Sundance, with Amazon already acquiring a documentary about The Grateful Dead, following its acquisition of Manchester by the Sea at last year’s festival. Netflix, meanwhile, has snapped up The Casting of JonBenet and Cate Shortland’s Berlin Syndrome, and is also screening I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore and Abstract: The Art of Design, ahead of their online release in February. (Keep up to date with the latest acquisitions and Sundance news here.)

All episodes of I Love Dick will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Friday 12th May. You can still watch the pilot episode for free, whether you have an Amazon Prime Video account or not.

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