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=> Re: Why Bad Movies Keep Coming Out And What To Do About It

Re: Why Bad Movies Keep Coming Out And What To Do About It
Posted by Marcello (Guest) - Thursday, November 7 2013, 17:39:54 (UTC)
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Pancho, by sheer coincidence, HBO aired a new documentary about James Toback called "Seduced and Abandoned"... check it out when you can. Here's a little piece about it:

Bill Brownstein: HBO’S Seduced and Abandoned

BY BILL BROWNSTEIN, THE GAZETTE NOVEMBER 7, 2013

http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Bill+Brownstein+Seduced+Abandoned+James+Toback+Alec+Baldwin+subversive+documentary+examines/9137536/story.html

MONTREAL — The documentary Seduced and Abandoned begins with this cautionary recollection: “I look back on my life and it’s 95 per cent running around trying to raise money to make movies and 5 per cent actually making them. It’s no way to live.”

These are not the words of some bitter, no-talent filmmaker. These are the words of filmmaking giant Orson Welles, clearly bitter about the process of motion-picture financing.

On that note, the equally idiosyncratic director James Toback and actor Alec Baldwin head off to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, ostensibly to find financing for a joint project, tentatively titled Last Tango in Tikrit, a politically erotic thriller inspired by the Bernardo Bertolucci classic Last Tango in Paris.

Seduced and Abandoned — airing Saturday at 7:45 p.m. on HBO Canada — is an account of Toback and Baldwin’s attempts to seduce money-people into financing this project and their subsequent feelings of abandonment.

But here’s the rub: many will likely have their doubts that Toback and Baldwin really want to put together this picture, that it is more their plan to punk the players and the system.

It would certainly not be outside the realm of possibility that Toback and Baldwin would pull off such a caper. Their records speak for themselves: Toback — the director of the documentary Tyson, the Oscar-nominated writer of Bugsy and the writer/director of Fingers, The Big Bang, The Pick Up Artist and When Will I Be Loved — is among the major mavericks in Hollywood. He is well-matched with the equally volatile and outspoken and unpredictable and talented enfant-terrible Baldwin, who has had success in about every genre of showbiz that he has tackled.

But, really, it’s no matter if their proposed flick is all a prank and if their documentary meanders on occasion, Seduced and Abandoned should be mandatory viewing for anyone with notions of entering the rough-and-tumble film world. Whether or not it is the intention of Toback and Baldwin, their film is one of the best primers ever to have surfaced on the harsh realities of the movie business.

Toback is no doubt being honest when he declares that “making movies is the oxygen of my being.” He makes the analogy that one has to be ready to die — both in life and career — to succeed, and that he has been ready to die since he was 19 and had flipped out on acid over an eight-day stretch. Baldwin can relate easily to his partner’s quixotic state of mind.

They wish to entice some freethinking financier with a sense of humour to fork over $25 million to make their Last Tango in Tikrit. As preposterous as it all sounds, they do get to take lunch — fancy ones, too — with well-heeled money-folk on their yachts while cruising the French Riviera. “A sunny place for shady people,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once aptly described this scene.

Alas, even the dim rich and sundry film distributors realize that $25 million is too much to spend on a project that could star Baldwin and his choice of romantic partner, Neve Campbell. Most feel a more sensible budget figure would be about $5 million.

What proves most fascinating is that few seem interested in seeing a script for this alleged political erotic thriller. If, in fact, there even is a script. It’s all about the stars.

As one of the more sage players indicates, the money follows the stars. On that note, Toback and Baldwin realize they have to re-adjust their thinking if they want their $25 million. So they try to engage Hollywood’s new favourite hunk, Ryan Gosling and new female flavour, Jessica Chastain. Both are bemused, and that’s about it.

In the midst of their funding mission, the guys consult the oracle that is Bertolucci, to question him about his inspirations and his ability to attract money and stars. No piece of biscotti, it seems, and, worse, Bertolucci reveals that Brando wouldn’t talk to him for five years after Last Tango in Paris. (No telling if this was the result of a butter allergy Brando developed with boudoir buddy Maria Schneider in the film.) Toback and Baldwin listen to the true and often depressing confessions of some of the biggest names in the business:

Martin Scorsese indicates that, because of his asthma, he had only two career options: the priesthood or the movies. He also points out that few were initially wild about his seminal Mean Streets.

Francis Ford Coppola notes that he couldn’t find financing for Apoclaypse Now, even after winning Oscars for The Godfathers; all that the money-people wanted from him was another gangster film: “But I will never make a film like The Godfather again. It was a fluke … and I had to start all over again.” Coppola also states that Cannes is less a film fest than a film market, which he compares to a bullfight in terms of getting money or getting gored.

Film financier Avi Lerner admits that he doesn’t read scripts and that all he cares about is profit in making a movie and that most of the arty fare at Cannes will be seen only by the mothers of the filmmakers.

Film exec and former agent Ron Meyer is equally blunt: “You don’t get points for a good film no one sees.” So they keep making the bad ones everyone sees.

Perhaps most telling and depressing of all is this revelation from studio exec and producer Mike Medavoy: “All the films we did that won awards were films no one else wanted.” He’s referring to such films as Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Raging Bull.

Rampant pessimism forces Toback and Baldwin to alter their approach again. Particularly after they discover there is no Iraqi film commission in Cannes — or perhaps in Iraq — to facilitate the funding of their Last Tango in Tikrit. Now the boys are thinking that in the interests of saving money they could shoot their masterpiece in the U.S. with shell-shocked characters who only imagine they’re still ducking beneath the bed covers in Iraq.

An exasperated Toback finally gives in and makes this plea to a would-be investor: “Tell me how much money you will give me and I will devise the film.”

Finally, he gets it. About time, too.

Put-on or not, Seduced and Abandoned turns out to be most instructive in the fine art of movie-babble and/or making.

Seduced and Abandoned airs Saturday at 7:45 p.m. on HBO Canada.

bbrownstein@montrealgazette.com

Twitter: billbrownstein

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette



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