The beautiful animated logo for Steven Rales/ Indian Paintbrush, primarily known for being the main financier and producer of Wes Anderson films over the last 18 years (the first was 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited — the most recent is The Phoenician Scheme)…the CGI logo was designed by Kelly Carlton at Intralink Film Graphic Design. The string/flute flutter was composed by Jamie Anderson at J Trax Music.
Indian Paintbrush’s first producing credit was Alan Ball‘s Towelhead, which I mostly admired and in fact praised during the ’07 Toronto Film Festival.
“There’s no question about Towelhead being smart, thoughtful and high-grade,” I wrote. “It’s not 100% flawless (I had two or three speed-bump issues) but it’s certainly a sturdy, complex character drama that’s 100% deserving of respect. It’s obviously one of the most original, daring films about adolescent sexuality ever delivered by a quasi-mainstreamer. It’s also a sharp look at racism (and not just the American-bred kind) and a sobering portrait of the rifts and tensions between American and Middle-Eastern mindsets.”
Towelhead “is not exploitation…not even a little bit. It’s a smartly written thing with all kinds of intrigues and counterweights built into each character, and an earnest residue of humanity seeping through at the finish.
“Even Aaron Eckhart’s character, scumbag that he is, has tics and shadings that make him more than just a thoughtless statutory rapist. Even Jasira’s dad, a dictatorial racist thug of the first order, comes off as somewhat sympathetic at times. And each one is his own way cares for Jasira. And despite the dark sexual currents (and as odd as this sound), it’s also a fairly amusing film. Really. It’s really boils down to being a ‘neighborhood folks and their quirks’ movie that…okay, is a little bit icky in two or three scenes but isn’t nearly as icky in a general sense as you might expect.”