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Jenifer Lewis, Debbie Allen Team Up for Ventura Boulevard

The film is an homage to the classic Sunset Boulevard.

Jenifer Lewis has appeared in over 300 films in her illustrious Hollywood career, but her newest project will be her most personal yet. The veteran actress is teaming up with Debbie Allen, another household name, for Ventura Boulevard. The film will be a darkly comedic homage to the old Hollywood classic Sunset Boulevard, starring Gloria Swanson as a deluded and aging actress who ensnares a young screenwriter (William Holden) and convinces him to write her the comeback role of a lifetime.

Ventura Boulevard
, by contrast, will star Lewis as a former Blaxploitation star who sparks an affair with a young, white screenwriter and weaves him into her comeback plot. Allen will direct the film, and Emmy, Grammy and Tony winner Marc Shaiman, who is also a five-time Oscar-nominee for his work on films like Sleepless in Seattle and The American President, will provide the score.
“I am taking things into my own hands by producing Ventura Boulevard,” said Lewis. “The Hollywood establishment isn’t going to finance a movie about a middle-aged African-American diva who deceives and beds a young white man.”
Sounds like a winner to us!
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(Photos from left: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images,  Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

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