'Mysterious Skin' Returns: Corbet on Spielberg Theories
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- Strand Releasing is re-releasing Gregg Araki's 2004 "Mysterious Skin" in a new 4K restoration in select theaters starting August 14, following work by the Academy Film Archive, UCLA Film & Television Archive, and Sundance Institute.
- Brady Corbet was 14 when he played Brian Lackey opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Neil McCormick — two boys processing sexual abuse by the same Little League coach through alien-abduction fantasy and teenage sex work, respectively.
- Corbet credits director Gregg Araki with fostering one of the happier sets he's worked on and has applied those techniques to protect young actors on his own films "The Childhood of a Leader" and "Vox Lux."
- Steven Spielberg's recent alien-centric "Disclosure Day" has drawn online theories linking a Froot Loops match cut and childhood bedroom scene to "Mysterious Skin"; Corbet hasn't seen it but said he'll ask Spielberg if he runs into him.
- Corbet quit acting during the 2008 financial crisis, when his mother worked in the mortgage industry, because studio gigs kept eating into money he'd raised for his own films — calling directing "much more validating."
- Corbet's next film, rumored to be "The Origin of the World" with Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, and Selena Gomez, is "100 percent independent" with no boutique studio money; he called the MPAA "a dinosaur" and named his production company Precode after pre-Code Hollywood.
Why it matters: A once-banned 2004 indie now credited online with influencing Spielberg's "Disclosure Day" gets a 4K re-release August 14, with co-star Corbet — now an Oscar-nominated director — calling the MPAA "a dinosaur" and announcing a fully independent next film. The restored return turns a 20-year-old indie into a cinematic event and a rebuke of the studio system.
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