LOS ANGELES — "To Leslie," the indie drama that scored Andrea Riseborough one of the most shocking nominations in Oscar history, opened at Monica Film Center in Santa Monica on Oct. 9, where it came and went after playing to an empty house for five days.
It ended its theatrical run soon afterward with a worldwide box office of $27,000 — that's thousand, not million. Marc Maron, who co-stars with Riseborough in the downbeat drama about an addict returning to her West Texas hometown to rebuild her life, was incensed at distributor Momentum Pictures' handling of the film, grousing on his WTF podcast: "The f— distributor dropped the ball on facilitating something that would bring a lot more attention to the movie. And now this movie with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score that everyone should see [has] been hobbled by the people responsible for putting it out there."
But a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity. Riseborough, a gifted English actress who has worked with everyone from Mike Leigh to Alejandro G. Iñárritu and won many admirers and allies in the process, somehow entered the awards season conversation. You didn't see her face on billboards along Sunset Boulevard or in for-your-consideration ads in the trades. There wasn't any money for that.
