Movie Polls

Which of these films from Kevin Jackson's list of "The Ten Greatest Movies Never Made" would you most like to have seen?

Please reference this thread for the rules of this group.

I've been reading the novel "A Confederacy of Dunces" and have heard the stories about all the different people who have been involved in trying to put a production together at different times over the past 30 years.  The fact that John Belushi, John Candy, and Chris Farley had all been cast for the role at some point and then died created a legend of the Confederacy Curse.  However you must also consider they were all probably chosen because they were obese commedians, and obeseity in itself is probably more of a curse and health issue in this situation.  I'm not sure if I could picture any of them in the role of Ignatius though.  I think it will take some very special casting to discover the right person for such a specific character.  Anyways, one of the possible productions of this film is mentioned in a list from the wonderful book 10 Bad Dates with De Niro: A Book of Alternative Movie Lists.  And thus this poll:

Please vote only once in each poll.

Re:Which of these films from Kevin Jackson's list of "The Ten Greatest Movies Never Made" would you most like to have seen?

I'd have to go with Megalopolis just because I enjoy the way that word rolls about in my mouth like a handful of jelly bellies. It also sounds like a scary giant monster from Japan. I envision screaming Japanese citizens being crushed by the giant Megalopolis. Terrifying indeed.

Re:Which of these films from Kevin Jackson's list of "The Ten Greatest Movies Never Made" would you most like to have seen?

If these films have never been made, why are there directors attached to them?  Is it because they were going to direct it but somehow the project fell through?  ;)

Re:Which of these films from Kevin Jackson's list of "The Ten Greatest Movies Never Made" would you most like to have seen?

Nice idea - I went with David Lean and Mutiny...

Tom

Re:Which of these films from Kevin Jackson's list of "The Ten Greatest Movies Never Made" would you most like to have seen?

Definitely A Confederacy of Dunces.

I LOVED LOVED LOVED the book. I would even go far as to say it's my favorite.

The last rumor I heard a number of years ago was that Will Ferrell was trying to get it made into a film.

Re:Which of these films from Kevin Jackson's list of "The Ten Greatest Movies Never Made" would you most like to have seen?

Seconding "Dunces" - I also loved the book and would be curious to see any film version.

I can see Belushi or Candy in the role; they showed an underappreciated level of diversity in their TV work (and to a lesser extent, their films) that lead me to believe they could've found the right comedic tone, if under the proper direction. Farley, on the other hand, nearly always portrayed big-hearted goofballs, so I'm not sure he could've played a character as eccentric and misanthropic as Ignatious.

Really can't see Ferrell in the role. I've also heard about Jack Black and Phillip Seymour Hoffman campaigning for the part. I wonder who Waters would've cast - Divine?

Re:Which of these films from Kevin Jackson's list of "The Ten Greatest Movies Never Made" would you most like to have seen?

Phantasma-gore-ia:

If these films have never been made, why are there directors attached to them?  Is it because they were going to direct it but somehow the project fell through?  ;)

Robert, that is true!  These projects were all in some stage of pre-production at some point with a certain director attached.  I'm sorry I didn't specify it more clearly before.  I wanted to include a link to all of the text and descriptions accopanying the list in the book, but I couldn't find a link to the full text published anywhere on the web.

I think I will type out the exact text into posts in this tread because I find it pretty interesting.  I might just type a bit each day so it isn't too much effort on my part, and maybe it will give people a reason to keep coming back.

First of all, here is the introduction to the list:

The Greatest Movies Never Made

Ten Sadly Unrealized Masterworks

Kevin Jackson

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter." (Keats)

The curse of every artist who needs a patron - and in today's movie world that usually means the CEO of a major production company - is that one works at the patron's whim.  And even when patrons are not fickle, they may fall out of favour, or be summarily axed, or simply fail in tenacity or power.  So it is almost more normal for a film to fall at the first or second hurdle than to make it all the way into distribution, and the true chronicle of unmade films is too vast to record.  This personal list of ten great unmade films is confied to those projects which came tantalizingly close to production, sometimes to the point of having actors cast, sets designed, caterers booked.  (I know at least one recent example of the last: a film of Robert Irwin's novel Exquisite Corpse.)  The history of production would only need to have been a little different for the history of cinema to look very different.

I'll start typing out Kevin Jackson's descriptions of the projects on the list shortly.

Re:Which of these films from Kevin Jackson's list of "The Ten Greatest Movies Never Made" would you most like to have seen?

The entire Kubrick collection will never ever be enough....

Re:Which of these films from Kevin Jackson's list of "The Ten Greatest Movies Never Made" would you most like to have seen?

Ok, here are excerpts of descriptions of a couple of the entries in the list:

10.  Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis"

Unlike most of the titles on this list, Megalopolis may one day be completed.  Perhaps.  Coppola has been developing the project for well over a decade now,k and it is rumouredthat hours of second unit footage already exists.  Performers known or believed to have read for parts include Nicholas Cage, Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro, Paul Newman, Kevin Spacey and Parker Posey.  Coppola has offered some vague descriptions of the film as being somewhat like an Ayn Rand novel (to be precise, The Fountainhead), and taking the form of a science-fiction drama set in the present day, about an architect who dreams of rebuilding New York.  It is also said that the film links contemporary New York with ancient Rome at the time of the Catline Conspiracy.  But sceptical souls have cast doubt on it ever reaching a screen.

9.  David Lean's "Mutiny on the Bounty"

To be pedantic, this thwarted project would have taken the form of two films: The Lawbreakers and The Long Arm, both scripted by Lean's most trust writer, Robert Bolt.  In the summer of 1977 Bolt received an unexpected summons to the island of Bora Bora in the South Pacific, where Lean had settled in his long retreat from directing that began with the critical massacre of Ryan's Daughter (1970).  He had fallen in love with the islands of Polynesia, and felt compelled to convey their beauty in a new film; the full story of the Bounty, which he had rediscovered in Richard Hough's study Captain Bligh and Mister Christian, seemed the ideal vehicle.  Dino De Laurentiis had agreed to finance both films, even though the production costs included the hugely expensive task of building a full-sized replica of the Bounty.  Both Lean and De Laurentiis declared themselves ecstatic with Bolt's writing: the first script detailed the events leading up to the mutiny, while the second would show its various consequences.  But De Laurentiis began to repent his involvement when it became clear that the films would cost almost twice as much as he first calculated, and he put the project into turnaround.  Not long after, Bolt suffered a major stroke, which threatened to leave him permanently disabled and incapable of writing, though he eventually managed a partial recovery.  A much pared-down version of the two scripts was eventually directed by Roger Donaldson in 1984, but this film had none of the epic sweep Lean and Bolt had originally conceived.

More to come.

Re:Which of these films from Kevin Jackson's list of "The Ten Greatest Movies Never Made" would you most like to have seen?

Here are some more if anyone cares:

8. Stanley Kubricks's 'Napoleon'

Riding high on the critical success of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Kubrick believed that he had MGM in the palm of his hand, and was finally in a position to make 'the one film I've always wanted to make, the life of Napoleon'.  He was almost right: Napoleon came so close to being shot that some filmographies - such as that in Joseph Gelmis's The Film Director as Superstar (1970) - actually list it as a completed work.  Cynics were not slow to point out the reasons why Kubrick might have found the Corsican such an appealing subject, but their quips were blunted by the director's own willingness to confess how much he identified with Bonaparte, even down to copying the undiscriminating manner in which Napoleon wolfed his food.  Kubrick planned to start shooting in the winter of 1969 - three months on location, four in studio - using as many as 40,000 infantrymen and 10,000 cavalry.  Jack Nicholson, still a hungry young actor, was the unconventional choice for the title role.  By August 1969, however, corporate changes at MGM meant that Kubrick no longer had approval for his grandiose scheme, and he went on to develop the much more modestly budgeted A Clockwork Orange, from the novella by Anthony Burgess.  One of the few concrete survivals from this busy period is Burgess's novel Napoleon Symphony, dedicated to Kubrick.

7.  Bernardo Bertolucci's 'Red Harvest'

Ever since the late 1960s Bernardo Bertolucci had been telling people that one of his dream projects would be a film based on Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel.  He came closest to achieving the dream in the early 1980s, when Jack Nicholson and Debra Winger were both attached to the project.  It soon fell through, partly because of a complication concerning rights to the book.  But perhaps it would have been a rather redundant project anyway, since the essential plot of Red Harvest has turned up, only lightly disguised, in everything from Kurosawa's Yojimbo (a samurai version) to A Fistful of Dollars to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome to Miller's Crossing to Last Man Standing...