FilmBuff Gets ‘A Better You’; Kino Lorber Knows ‘How To Smell A Rose’

FilmBuff has licensed the worldwide rights to Veep co-star Matt Walsh’s second directorial feature film. The company will distribute A Better You in select theaters and VOD beginning October 9. The film, which premiered at this year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival, is an improvised comedy about hypnotherapist Dr. Ron Knight (Brian Huskey, Veep, Neighbors), who practices an unusual and jarring method. When his fragile ego and increasing isolation begin to undermine his marriage and family, he spirals into a midlife crisis, But his salvation might come from an unlikely friendship he forms with a day laborer named Hugo (Horatio Sanz).

The film also stars Joe Lo Truglio, Erinn Hayes, Rob Huebel, Morgan Walsh, Natasha Leggero, Reid Scott, Mo Gaffney, Andrew Daly and Riki Lindhome. Co-written by Walsh and Huskey, it’s produced by Badlands Features’ Kirk Roos, who also produced Walsh’s previous feature High Road.

Kino Lorber has acquired all North American rights to How To Smell A Rose: A Visit With Ricky Leacock In Normandy, directed by Les Blank & Gina Leibrecht. The penultimate film made by Blank before his death in 2013, How To Smell A Rose is framed by a visit between Blank and Leacock in which the two share memories of their careers. Interspersed within that narrative is a look at their work, including Leacock’s classic Primary, which followed the 1960 Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, and one of Leacock’s earliest films, Canary Bananas. Blank also looks back on his life, including his decision to become sober.

How To Smell A Rose will open August 12 at New York’s Film Forum, where it will screen along with the Leacock-Joyce Chopra film Happy Mothers Day, which chronicled the first surviving American quintuplets. In other theaters, the film will be paired with Blank’s 1980 short film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Kino Lorber will distribute How To Smell A Rose in festivals and art house theaters throughout fall, with VOD and home media release to follow.