Ira Sachs on Getting Dumped by His Manager, Working With Ben Whishaw and His Intimate Sundance Drama ‘Peter Hujar’s Day’

variety.com:

Brent Lang Executive Editor In 2008, Ira Sachs got fired by his manager. The most indie spirited of independent filmmakers had refused to play the game for too long, and the bill had finally come due. “I understood it in a way,” Sachs, more than a decade and a half-dozen features removed from that experience, says. “Because I was not entering the business, and his job was to facilitate the business of Hollywood, which was not what I was interested in doing.

They were trying to get me jobs as opposed to what I was trying to do, which was produce my own work.” For the record, Sachs thinks that he never would have gotten the gigs that his representatives wanted him to land.

But the experience helped rethink his value in an industry that usually measures those things in terms of box office grosses. “Before that, I thought I was kind of owed a career based on certain successes, or hoops that I had jumped through,” says while sipping a ginger tea in the lobby of a West Village hotel. “And after that, I thought, can I have a career?

Let’s see.” Money, or rather the lack thereof, is front-and-center in Sachs’ latest feature, “Peter Hujar’s Day,” which premieres at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.