On the heels of the sale of their award-winning rock documentary “Immediate Family” to Magnolia Pictures, film producer-musicians Greg Richling and Jonathan Sheldon have announced the launch of their production company Pfonetic and are unveiling a slate of music-driven film and television projects.
The roster includes a long-in-the-works authorized documentary on the enormously influential but unsung producer Tom Wilson, who produced Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” and the first Velvet Underground album and recordings by John Coltrane, Frank Zappa, Sun Ra and many more — which is now titled “Like a Rolling Stone,” fittingly enough.
Other film and television projects currently in production include:
- ”Restless – The Bob James Story” – Music doc on the legendary jazz musician, with Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgenson directing.
- “Singers Night” -with executive producer Jeff Gaspin (“Rhythm + Flow”), a singing competition from small club competition for the best singer in the world.
- “Here To Eternity: Collective Soul” – the ’90s rockers reflect at Elvis’s home in Palm Springs on their rise from the religious South and highlights from their 30-year career.
- Untitled Roger Nichols film – Documentary on Steely Dan’s brilliant recording engineer, who rose from from nuclear scientist and inventor to the trusted audio wizard for Becker and Fagen, some of the most sonically perfectionist artists in recent music history.
Richling, a veteran filmmaker who was also a longtime member of the Wallflowers, says, “Pfonetic is a place where we can develop IP from the ground up as we just did for ‘Immediate Family,’ and also field work from the studios to oversee high-level music needs on their projects handling the creative and business side in tandem.”
Sheldon adds, “As Greg and I are both musicians and film producers, we can uniquely get into the DNA of a project as an artist-executive managing the creative side and business as one whole.”
“Immediate Family,” directed by Denny Tedesco, is the follow-up to the “Wrecking Crew” doc which focused on the legendary ‘60s session musicians who performed on literally thousands of hits by everyone from Phil Spector to the Beach Boys and beyond. “Immediate Family” focuses on the musicians who would craft the singer-songwriter sound of the early 1970s. With interviews from the rock stars of the era including Neil Young, Steve Nicks, Don Henley, Carole King, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Keith Richards, David Crosby, Jackson Browne, and Phil Collins. The film was recently picked up by Magnolia Distribution for a December 2023 theatrical release.