Discussing books on movies … almost as good as watching them, and without the sticky floors!
Out of all the movie-related prose I read this year, the one piece that fascinated me the most had to be a long article about Warner Brothers’ torturous attempts to resuscitate their ailing Superman franchise after the fiasco that was SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE.
What I found so thrilling about the article was the idea that at any time during this long process, the head of the studio could have given a greenlight to any of these potential continuations of the series and the result would have a been a vastly different film from the one that was eventually released this summer.
Now whether or not this is a good or bad thing depends entirely on what you thought of SUPERMAN RETURNS (personally, I loved it and have received much flack from friends for vocally proclaiming it superior to BATMAN BEGINS, but I admit that this may have something to do with my unapologetic love of chick flicks). Still, as much as the detractors of Bryan Singer’s film may lament its existence, it’s hard to believe that they would have preferred a Tim Burton version in which Supes would have been depicted as a flightless weapon-wielding killer who dressed in black and bore a stronger resemblance to an alien version of THE PUNISHER than the character once so perfectly embodied by Christopher Reeve.
For the imaginative film buff there are few aspects of cinematic history as entertaining than tales of the development process. Popularly known as Development Hell, it’s a place where a (preferably soulless) person can enjoy a well-paid career in Hollywood and never once see their name credited on a movie screen for their efforts. It’s a place where brilliant ideas are snuffed out by creativity-killing committee-think and where the most ludicrous of concepts thankfully are euthanized before they see the light of day.
It’s the place where one draft of FREDDY VS. JASON climaxed with the two famous anti-heroes fighting each other in a boxing match refereed by Hitler and where a dark and gritty script about a damaged prostitute and her brutally sociopathic john called 3000 DOLLARS was transformed into a lighthearted Cinderella story about a happy-go-lucky prostitute and her charmingly sociopathic john called PRETTY WOMAN.
Okay, I admit that these columns are probably getting a bit too self-indulgent for their own good, but I simply have to share with you one of my all-time favorite —probably apocryphal — Hollywood anecdotes, which involves a certain Julia Roberts movie mentioned above.
Before Eric’s little sister nabbed the role of the effervescent whore with a heart of gold, Jennifer Jason Leigh also auditioned for the part for director Garry Marshall. After she had finished reading through the prepared scene, Marshall told her that he had found her performance a bit too sullen for his liking and asked her to read it again, but this time with a little more pep and enthusiasm.
Leigh, an actress who has portrayed more hookers on film than anyone outside of porn, protested and asked him how a woman who spent her days out on the street giving $5 blowjobs to complete strangers could possibly show any enthusiasm in that given situation.
“Because she hasn’t been doing it for that long!” Marshall answered her immediately, with all of the conviction of the world behind him. Now, aren’t you glad I took the time to share?
For movie buffs, reading about tales set in the world of Development Hell are something akin to thumbing through old issues of Marvel’s WHAT IF…? Only instead of imagining scenarios where Jean Grey lived the first two dozen times she died, you instead get to ponder what TOTAL RECALL would have been like if it had been directed by David Cronenberg and starred Richard Dreyfus instead of California’s recently re-elected governor.
This is getting ridiculous, I know, but please allow me another self-indulgent aside as I use this space to wonder if it is odd that as an only occasional Marvel reader during my youth — DC rulz! — I found WHAT IF…? to be an extremely disturbing comic because every issue I happened across seemed to end with the destruction of the entire Marvel universe. I’m willing to chalk this up to random chance, but I cannot help but suspect that that was one nihilistic collection of speculative comic-book stories.
And just as compelling as these stories of alternate-dimension versions of classic movies are the tales of films that spent years in development but somehow never got made. Despite how broad and interesting a field of cinematic history this is, very few books have tackled it head on and (after nearly 800 words — I truly do need editorial boundaries, don’t I? Blame Rod, not me) this brings me to the subject of today’s review, Chris Gore’s 1999 book THE 50 GREATEST MOVIES NEVER MADE.
As the founder of FILM THREAT magazine (and future host of IFC’s ULTIMATE FILM FANATIC), Gore certainly has the credentials to serve as Hollywood’s own Uatu the Watcher, as his time with the magazine allowed him access to the kind of behind-the-scenes stories that are so much Viagra to geeks like me and you (I’m assuming). The guy is obviously truly passionate about movies, but oddly, it’s that passion that limits the book and renders it far less entertaining than it should have been.
All of the books’ problems start with its title, which Gore admits in his introduction was more a matter of marketing than personal conviction. In selling these almost-movies as THE 50 GREATEST, rather than the most intriguing or just plain strangest, Gore is forced in each entry to convince the reader of his subject’s enormous potential as a creative enterprise and, in many cases, he simply fails.
While some of Gore’s entries really do make you yearn to see the never-made films they describe — especially A TRIP TO MARS (a 1930s Universal sci-fi adventure to have been directed by FRANKENSTEIN‘s James Whale), THE DREYFUS AFFAIR (a comedy about a scandal caused by a love affair between two baseball players, which at one point was to have starred Garth Brooks) and the John Hughes-scripted NATIONAL LAMPOON’S JAWS 3, PEOPLE 0 (a satire of both the JAWS franchise and Hollywood in general that was killed when Steven Spielberg indicated that he didn’t have a sense of humor about his first big hit) — many more seem only to possess greatness in Gore’s own mind.
Examples of this include BIKER HEAVEN (a sequel to EASY RIDER that Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda should thank the gods of their choosing was never made), GOOD GIRLS (a “comedy” based on a graphic novel about a rich American heiress whose face is disfigured after undergoing the rituals of a childhood spent with a savage tribe in Africa), THE ADVENTURES OF FARTMAN (which would have featured Howard Stern in assless chaps, farting his way through the skies) and SWIRLEE (a gritty mob film about a low-level hoodlum whose head just happens to be composed of soft-serve ice cream). In the end, despite all of Gore’s protests to the contrary, all of these films sound far more like failed SNL sketch pitches than anything that actually deserved to be filmed, much less could potentially achieve greatness.
But the book’s major flaw is its scope. By including entries on 50 films, Gore sacrifices quality for quantity. Truly interesting entries (like the ones for CASABLANCA 2, HARROW ALLEY and a David O. Selznick-produced adaptation of Hitler’s MEIN KAMPF) end far too soon, while others (Stanley Kramer’s E.R.N., a last Hope and Crosby movie called THE ROAD TO TOMORROW and the Jerry Lewis-directed THAT’S LIFE) obviously were only included to meet the quota.
While I am loathe to bring up my own work as a writer yet again (and it’s not even like I earn royalties for that junk), I can speak with experience on why Gore’s book would have been much better if he hadn’t been so ambitious. When I first started work on a book I wrote about the horror movie genre, I started with a list of 50 movies I wanted to discuss. I soon realized there would be no way I could give each film its due in the amount of time and space I had allotted, so I cut the list down to 25. That, too, didn’t last and anyone who’s picked up the book knows that eventually only six movies made the final cut (and were I able to do it over again, I would cut it down to five).
By focusing on fewer titles, I was able to give the reader a more in-depth look at the few that remained, rather than give short shrift to all of them. And that’s why I’m brilliant and Gore sucks. I’m kidding. Gore doesn’t suck, but his book would have been better served if it had been called THE 20 GREATEST MOVIES NEVER MADE and it would have been much, much better served if it had been called THE 20 MOST INTERESTING MOVIES NEVER MADE.
As it is, THE 50 GREATEST MOVIES NEVER MADE is worth reading only because there are so few other books out there like it. Even though I’ve just given it a fairly bad review, I’ve read it cover to cover at least four times since I first bought it, so — despite its flaws — it’s certainly worth picking up if you can find it. –Allan Mott
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