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Wokeness, gender fluidity, the audacity of ageing … Madwomen of the West is a play giving ‘women of a certain age’ a voice – and audiences are loving it. We meet two of its outspoken stars, Brooke Adams and Caroline Aaron

Brooke Adams was a huge star in her 30s after appearing alongside a brooding Richard Gere in Days of Heaven, Terrence Malick’s tragic and masterful film about farm workers. But she walked away from the business in her 40s and instead devoted herself to painting and parenting. Adams was decidedly retired. “I had quit acting,” she says.

But actor Caroline Aaron, her longtime friend, had other ideas. “I tried to bring her out of retirement,” recalls Aaron, who has notched up more than 40 years in the business, most recently playing mother-in-law Shirley in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. She approached Adams with Madwomen of the West – the timing was right, it...

Exclusive: Veteran indie executive Jeff Lipsky, who launched distribution consulting firm Glass Half Full Media in 2017, returns to theaters as director/writer this spring with The Last, and we have the first clip (check it out above).

The Last is Lipsky’s 7th feature and is a Holocaust-themed family drama. It tells the story of a modern Orthodox Jewish family whose sense of identity is shattered when its beloved matriarch, played by Rebecca Schull, reveals her true lineage, and what she did during the war. The film co-stars Jill Durso, Aj Cedeño, Julie Fain Lawrence and Tony Award-winner and frequent Lipsky collaborator, Reed Birney.

Produced by Michael Goitanich, and executive produced by Nick Athas. The Last will be released by Glass Half Full Media in domestic theaters on March 29.

Lipsky is the respected co-founder of October Films who later segued to a dual career as a filmmaker and distributor,...

Great news for fans of filmmaker Jeff Lipsky, her controversial and critically acclaimed sixth feature “Mad Women” is now available digitally, for rent or download, on Amazon and Vimeo-on-Demand.

The official synopsis reads: "'Mad Women' is a dark satire about Harper Smith, a middle-aged mom who, following a one-year prison sentence for having committed an act of conscience, becomes a local hero and folk legend in her small community of Iris Glen, NY. She runs for local office but has much grander aspirations up her sleeve. She is a woman accustomed to personal challenges: She lost her third child at the age of three to cancer, her first-born daughter, a pediatrician, is in Ukraine having joined Doctors Without Borders, her own mother lost an eye in her youth in an archery mishap, and her husband, a successful and beloved dentist, commits statutory rape under the influence of LSD at a rock concert. It’s up to Harper and her middle daughter, Nevada, to persevere, and they do, as a most unlikely mother/daughter bond emerges."

About the genesis of “Mad Women” Lipsky explains: “I began writing 'Mad Women' in early 2013, just after President Obama’s second inaugural, moments after a season of political drivel came to an end, and seemingly seconds before cable outlets began their non-stop palaver about the 2016 election. So I set out to conjure up my personal candidate, one whose idealism can’t be blunted, even as the world would be playing whack-a-mole with her. When I finished the script I knew there could never be a ‘Harper Smith.’ But now that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are front-runners, well, now I’m not so sure anymore!”

“Mad Women” marks the third consecutive collaboration between Lipsky and co-star Reed Birney (“House of Cards,” 2014 Tony Award nominee “Casa Valentina”). It also spotlights three extraordinary actresses – Kelsey Lynn Stokes, Christina Starbuck, and Sharon Van Ivan (John Cassavetes’ “Opening Night”) and marks a reunion for Lipsky with Jamie Harrold who co-starred in “Flannel Pajamas.” Lipsky’s previous films include “Twelve Thirty,” “Molly’s Theory of Relativity,” and “Once More With Feeling,” which along with “Flannel Pajamas,” have starred Justin Kirk, Julianne Nicholson, Jonathan Groff, Mamie Gummer, Chazz Palminteri, Drea deMatteo, Linda Fiorentino, Cady Huffman, Rebecca Schull, Halley Feiffer and Barbara Barrie.

Jeff Lipsky, the writer-director of the sexually explicit family psychodrama Mad Women, all but dares you not to loathe his film. He even gives his female protagonist, Nevada Smith (Kelsey Lynn Stokes), a line of dialogue for audiences and critics to use against him: Nevada tells a friend that a movie of her life wouldn’t be any good because, “Nobody can identify with me.” It’s almost funny-ha-ha the way that, speech by speech (there are many speeches), the characters alienate you, adding extra sentences guaranteed to shift your response from hmmm to ewww. I like a good dare. And I respect a filmmaker who zooms in on the sexual subtext to the point where you want to hide under your seat. Not that it’s easy to watch ...Nevada has an interesting family. Her doting father, Richard (Reed Birney), is a dentist who tells her a story — about...

Women on the Verge: Lipsky’s Overwrought Portrait of Dysfunction

Those having experienced the independent cinema styling of Jeff Lipsky won’t be surprised by the end product of his latest overblown cascade of maudlin litanies in Mad Women. A forced provocation ruinously scored by an endless patter of affected, hopelessly insincere bits of dialogue, the ineptitude is exacerbated by this being Lipsky’s sixth feature, and yet this production bears the same marks of amateurism as his previous endeavors. Shrill, annoying, and as graceful to observe as a symphony of tapered fingernails viciously excoriating a football field sized chalk board, the end result features overly rehearsed actors floundering through endless, exaggerated monologues.

Nevada Smith (Katie Lynn Stokes) is the product of a seemingly affluent environment. Residing in the privileged community known as Iris Glen, she is the second of three children belonging to her dentist father Richard (Reed Birney...

Filmmaker Jeff Lipsky’s latest feature, Mad Women, opens July 10th in New York, July 24 in Los Angeles and across the country in August. Here, the longtime distributor and director shares an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, which is scheduled for publication in 2016. At noon, on an early October day in 2014, after wrapping a scene at the Plainview Library for my sixth film Mad Women, a scene that would end up on the editing room’s digital floor, I commandeered a crew car and chaffeured a breakaway team to race back to Massapequa, Long Island. I needed to film […]...

Filmmaker Jeff Lipsky’s latest feature, Mad Women, opens July 10th in New York, July 24 in Los Angeles and across the country in August. Here, the longtime distributor and director shares an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, which is scheduled for publication in 2016. At noon, on an early October day in 2014, after wrapping a scene at the Plainview Library for my sixth film Mad Women, a scene that would end up on the editing room’s digital floor, I commandeered a crew car and chaffeured a breakaway team to race back to Massapequa, Long Island. I needed to film […]...

Exclusive: The latest film helmed by Jeff Lipsky, an indie distribution veteran and Adopt Films co-founder, is due for domestic theatrical release in July via Plainview Pictures. Mad Women, a dark satire, is the sixth title in Lipsky’s oeuvre, which also includes Flannel Pajamas and Molly’s Theory Of Relativity. The story centers on a beautiful woman in her late 40s who conspires to commit a crime of conscience, becomes radicalized in prison, and upon her release…...