The Addams Family, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, For the Boys, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, Prospero’s Books, 1991
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Talking about casting ideas for the possible Gone With the Wind made for television miniseries.
Thanks to andyfilm for transferring the video!
Excellent commentary from Gene on Hearts of Darkness, about Coppola making Apocalypse Now from the HEART! The press loves to publicize filming problems, cost overruns, and clashes between the director and the studio. But, that’s now telling me about the passion that these filmmakers are having over their projects. It was true for Coppola filming Apocalypse and Godfather, Spielberg filming Jaws, Lucas filming Star Wars, and Cameron filming Titanic. It was even true of Chimino filming Heaven’s Gate. It also proves to me that these troubled productions are usually worth the wait if these studios only had the patience, not just worrying about the bottom line!
Well, with most of those films, they were trying to make something great and ran into difficulties. I think a lot of people like the negative gossip on a film because they like to see suffering. Basically, films can have problems but it is the finished product that matters. The only one in your list that is the exception is Heaven’s Gate.
Yes, Heaven’s Gate was definitely a passion project from Chimino. Unfortunately, unlike the others, the finished product was a mess that turned off critics and audiences.
One passion project you didn’t mention was Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. I thought that movie really enhanced Jesus’ message of love. Yet, conservative Christians go out and picket theaters without even watching the film. Why? Because Jesus is depicted as a flawed man with doubts and the film ends with him being tempted by Satan into having a family and living a normal life. Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve been to Catholic school, and I knew that Jesus was tempted by Satan in the Bible. So I think what the movie is trying to say is that if Jesus was both God and Man, he had to be tempted in order to resist temptation. I felt that the film had a powerful message that fell completely through people’s heads.
Gene picked Last Temptation as 1988’s best film. I haven’t seen the film but I didn’t listen to those people who were picketing the film, I never do.
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