The greatest films never made

Eddie Constantine in Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville

I learn from Richard Brody's new book Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, that prior to settling on Alphaville with him, Godard wanted American expat tough-guy portrayer Eddie Constantine to play the lead role in an adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend.

The mind fairly boggles at the notion: Jean-Luc Godard's I Am Legend, starring Eddie Constantine.

What are your favorite unrealized movies, in the mode of this, or, say, David Lean's Nostromo? There are hundreds out there, for sure...

On a side note, it's pretty droll how Lou Reed has turned into such an Eddie Constantine lookalike in recent years, no?

Comments

[bill]

Wow. That would have been...something. I'll go ahead and admit to not being, for various reasons, much of a Godard fan, but I still would have seen the hell out of that movie, had it ever come to pass.

As far as unrealized movies, this one was a hoax, but a few years ago the Internet claimed that at one point Orson Welles was planning on making a Batman movie. Like I say, it was a hoax (which I knew before I even read the "article", which was filled with little clues, as I remember), but even so...

And speaking of Welles -- and not unrelated to the above for other reasons -- am I remembering this wrong, or did he at one point kick around the idea, however weakly, of doing "Dracula"?

[Dan]

I have to disagree, Glenn, great casting aside that sounds like a dodged bullet. Part of that is simply personal preference but it's difficult for me to see Godard doing anything INTERESTING with it. More like we'd see Ben whittling a stake for an entire damn reel.

As for "lost films", my personal favorite is actually a total hoax. You might remember the story going around a few years back that Orson Welles wanted to follow up "Citizen Kane" with "Batman", and that it fell apart over casting disputes (i.e. Welles wanted to play Batman). I knew it was BS the moment I read it but the idea of Orson Welles making a Batman movie just makes me smile, somehow.

[Dan]

Oh, and bill? Stop reading my mind. :-)

[Glenn Kenny]

Yeah, that was pretty spooky. But neat.

As for Welles' 'Dracula," it was a Mercury Theater radio production. Recounting it to Peter Bogdanovich, Welles said, "'Dracula' would make a marvelous movie. In fact, nobody has ever made it; they've never paid any attention to the book, which is the most hair-raising, marvelous book in the world." That aside, I can't find any evidence that Welles ever tried to make said movie himself...

[Mike De Luca]

I feel I must temper the two Godard sidechecks with a bit of high-sticking. As someone who loved the bleakness and setting of "Alphaville", with its modernist architecture and claustrophobic corridors, I feel a Godard "I Am Legend" would have been a rather chilling, stark, monochromatic vision of the apocalypse. It would have certainly topped the latest incarnation, and Godard would not have allowed the film SPOILER to turn into a commercial for Jesus. And don't get me started on the gag involving Bob Marley's last album. And yes, Eddie Constantine and Lou Reed. The resemblance is disturbing.

[Mike De Luca]

Oh, and Glenn, have you heard of the Swedish garage rock band Lemmy Caution Strikes Back? They kick ass.

[bill]

Wow, Dan, that was creepy.

As for what you say about Godard (again, this is for Dan), I know you're exaggerating with the "whittling for a reel" comment, but something in that vein is exactly what a film of that novel needs, and has never gotten. Something to really drive home the solitude and periods of boredom, without being showy about it (like the mannequins in the most recent version).

My own concern would have been that every so often he would have periodically inserted clips news clips of Che Guevara, and, I don't know, Turtles concert footage, or something.

[bill]

Oh, and Glenn, regarding Welles' "Dracula" -- that's right, now I remember. I also remember, in that Bogdonavich book, Welles saying that he wished someone like Polanski would make it. Again, that doesn't really count as an actual unrealized film, but...

As for one that DOES count, I would have really liked to see Charles Laughton's "The Naked and the Dead". Or, really, ANY follow up to "Night of the Hunter".

[Matt Miller]

And for an actual Welles unrealized project that would have counted, I have to go with the first-person "Heart of Darkness" that he planned, pre-Kane.

[Tony Dayoub]

David Lynch's Ronnie Rocket.

Also, it'd be interesting to see what different direction Mulholland Drive would have gone if Lynch had sold the pilot to ABC, as originally planned.

[bill]

Supposedly, Lynch was going to turn "Ronnie Rocket" into a graphic novel (or perhaps simply a "comic book"), but I heard that a long time ago, and to my knowledge nothing has come of it.

[Glenn Kenny]

Aaaargh, 'Ronnie Rocket.' The non-realization of that one actually hurts, whenever I think about it...

[bill]

Speaking of ones that hurt: the Coen Brothers' "To the White Sea". Which, incidentally, I still have hopes of seeing one day.

One of the biggest, if not THE biggest, stumbling blocks for "To the White Sea" was the fact that it would have been virtually silent. After watching "No Country for Old Men", I thought that it functioned as a sort of dry run, because there are long stretches of that movie with no dialogue at all. With a hatful of Oscars to show everybody, maybe the Coens can one day get that one off the ground.

As for "Ronnie Rocket", I still have hopes for that one, as well. With "Inland Empire", Lynch seems to be kissing off all the traditional ways of getting movies made and distributed. Since I believe he's still passionate about "Ronnie Rocket", maybe he'll find a way.

Anyway, I can hope.

[Dan]

Mike, I've got to ask..."commercial for Jesus?" You can't leave me hanging like that, details, man, details!

For the record, I personally liked the movie. The third act was a little stock, and CGI when you could go practical is always a bad idea, but Smith hands in an excellent performance and I really liked Francis Lawrence's work as well.

[Mr. Pete]

Aronofsky's Batman, which he was planning on doing in B&W, shot handheld, sounded great to me.

[Matt]

Dan and Mike, have you seen the alternate (i.e. original, replaced-after-test-screenings) ending yet? As drama it's merely adequate, but it completely changes the meaning(s) of the film and feels much more like a natural continuation of what's preceded it (and it's no longer remotely a "commercial for Jesus" - the butterfly is still significant, but this time it's used for a moment of unexpected empathy rather than Signs-esque "everything happens for a reason" bullshit, and the film basically allows Neville's "There is no God!" to stand unchallenged).

The difference between the 2 cuts is particularly interesting if you think of them as competing Iraq allegories, with the creatures as "insurgents" and Neville as the occupier trying to give them what he thinks they need. (It's telling that the 2 cuts diverge right after Neville's line "I want to help you! Let me help you!") Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I really feel like it's there if you look for it; they could almost have released them as the Red State and Blue State versions.

All of which has nothing to do with the greatest films never made. Hold on, I'll think of something...um...

Guy Maddin's The Dikemaster's Daughter probably would've been interesting, 'cause when is he not interesting? Also Jodorowsky's Dune, with (if Wikipedia's to be believed) Mick Jagger as Feyd and Orson Welles as the Baron, among others.

[tk]

I wish Stanley Kubrick had made his adaptation of Wartime Lies, the Louis Begley novel about an aunt and nephew fleeing the Nazis in Poland. When I first heard about in the early 90s, it was apparently going to star Julia Roberts. Since I'm not that huge a Kubrick fan, I think I really just miss the making-of footage of Kubrick and Roberts trying to work together. I'm thinking Shelley-Duvall-in-the-Shining, turned up to ee-LEV-en.

[tk]

I wish Stanley Kubrick had made his adaptation of Wartime Lies, the Louis Begley novel about an aunt and nephew fleeing the Nazis in Poland. When I first heard about in the early 90s, it was apparently going to star Julia Roberts. Since I'm not that huge a Kubrick fan, I think I really just miss the making-of footage of Kubrick and Roberts trying to work together. I'm thinking Shelley-Duvall-in-the-Shining, turned up to ee-LEV-en.

[bill]

Speaking of Aronofsky - his adaptation of Theodore Roszak's "Flicker". That one might still happen, too! I have faith!

[Matt]

Kubrick! That reminds me...Spielberg's A.I. was so ambitious-yet-flawed (it'd be one of his best movies...if it *worked*) that I can't help but pine for what Kubrick would've made of it had he hung onto it and seen it through to the end (not that he would've lived long enough to anyway).

[Dan]

Matt, I did see that ending and to be honest: I loathed it and it marks one of the few times that those audience surveys were actually RIGHT. I liked the idea of the "darkstalkers" as being more human than we think, but it just doesn't fit with the rest of the film (not to mention being a rather ripe wedge of cheese). I thought the ending they went with wasn't great, either, but of the two bad options, I'll take that one.

[I.F. Stone]

Kubrick's Napoleon.
Kubrick's Blue Movie.
Dumont's Untitled End of the World/Detective Procedural.
Kerrigan's In God's Hands.
Coppola's Keitel Apocalpyse Now.
Zemeckis' Stoltz Back to the Future.

[bill]

Kubrick's "Aryan Papers".

As for the ending(s) of "I Am Legend", if you took both those endings, smooshed them together, and removed/added a few elements, you'd have the ending of Matheson's book.

[bill]

Which (regarding Matheson's ending), I hasten to add, is what they should have done.

[Matt]

Dan,
I agree that the original ending has its shortcomings. I just think it makes for interesting viewing in light of current events: the 2 cuts offer very different answers to the question "Why don't they see that he's trying to help them, and stop attacking him?" In the rejected ending, the answer is "Because he's actually hurting them." He gives up his "prisoner" and gets the hell out of Baghdad, I mean New York. In the theatrical version, the answer is "Because they're fucking bloodthirsty maniacs who can't be reasoned with! You can't help them; blow them all to hell!"

The rejected ending also, for whatever it's worth, echoes the ending of the original novel, not in terms of plot events but in terms of what Neville realizes about himself and his enemies. Not that that would automatically make it good (I happen to think the novel falls apart toward the end), but it's another reason why I can see the filmmakers originally wanting to go there.

I admit I'm also giving it bonus points just because I'm a dirty heathen who was overjoyed to see the "God works in mysterious ways" crap purged from the climax. If the rejected version had been the only one I'd seen, I imagine I'd've liked it less. But as an alternative to what I'd already seen, it was...refreshing, and it helped me articulate what my problems with the theatrical ending were (even as it's got problems of its own).