By Matt Zoller Seitz
Lead illustration by Peet Gelderblom
These films are not in production, except in my imagination.
1. Moby Dick. Written and directed by Terrence Malick. Starring Mel Gibson as Ahab, Ben Foster as Ishmael, Rudy Youngblood as Starbuck and Ian Holm as Father Mapple. Cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki. Edited by Anne V. Coates. Score by Eliot Goldenthal. 
The reclusive director follows up his long-awaited Fountain of Youth project with the ultimate nautical adventure, and does not disappoint. Herman Melville's supposedly unfilmable novel -- which stymied John Huston, among other would-be adapters -- gets the cosmic, ruminative treatment in this three-hour CinemaScope epic, which alternates quicksilver, free-associative montages with the most surprisingly conventional and exciting action scenes Malick has ever directed. As Ahab -- arguably the role he was born to play -- Mel Gibson gives a surprisingly restrained performance, resisting the natural inclination to play the character as Long John Silver on crack. Gibson instead directs his intensity inward, a decision that lends Ahab a lordly detachment and icy, inscrutable anger reminiscent of mid-period Laurence Olivier; the performance is aided immeasurably by Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography, which often hides Ahab's eyes in Rembrandt pools of torchlit blackness or, in daylight scenes, in the sliver of shadow cast by the brim of his cap. Throughout there are curious but distinctly Malickian changes -- including the casting of Apocalypto star Rudy Youngblood as a Starbuck who's actually a combination of the characters of Starbuck and Queequeg, with Maori tattoos and a habit of meditating on deck at the same time every day, even during storms.
But for the most part, Malick's Moby Dick incorporates more of the novel than anyone expected, with Ishmael's distinctive, first person-yet-omniscient ruminations put to especially good use. Although the film has but one narrator (a contrast to recent Malick films), the tone and style are similar to The Thin Red Line -- meditative, fascinated by rituals and social structures, and attuned to the moment-to-moment beauty of the sea and the infinite variety of creatures dwelling within it. (The movie begins with a woodcut-illustrated prologue about the history of whaling, set to scratchy 1920s-era, 78 rpm recordings of sea chanteys performed by Australian seamen, supposedly drawn from the director's record collection and played on his grandma's Victrola.) The movie's aesthetic high point is one of the largest seaborne action sequences ever filmed: a 20-minute section depicting the pursuit, slaughter and stripping of harpooned whales, a process shown in great detail while Ishamel recites passages from Melville's novel -- including an observation that doubles as the movie's tagline: "There's no savagery of beast that's not infinitely outdone by man."
2. Slaughterhouse Five. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Starring George Clooney as Billy Pilgrim and Scarlett Johansson as Montana Wildhack. Written by Lem Dobbs. Cinematography by Ed Lachman. Edited by Sarah Flack. Music by Cliff Martinez. 
Kurt Vonnegut's novel was adapted once before -- in an effective but not quite transcendent 1972 version by George Roy Hill. For anyone considering an adaptation of this book, the sticking point is the question of how much one should literalize the idea that the main character -- optometrist, suburban drone and traumatized World War II conscientious objector Billy Pilgrim -- has "come unstuck in time." Soderbergh's version makes that idea quite metaphorical while maintaining plausible deniability. We're never entirely sure if the tale's intricate flashback/flash-forward structure is the result of Pilgrim's actual dislocation in time and space (indicated by his sojourn on the planet Trafalmador, where he's kept as a zoological specimen by aliens and made to mate -- and live a weirdly awkward facsimile of domestic life -- with Johansson's porn star Montana Wildhack) or if he's suffered brain damage as a result of a plane crash and is roaming through his actual past and fantasy life in sort of a mid-century, sci-fi inflected American version of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Reassembling all of his collaborators from his greatest film, The Limey -- which also had a nonlinear structure and a black comedic yet powerfully emotional feel -- Soderbergh creates a puzzle-box film that plays like a summation of everything he's seen, learned and made during two decades as a filmmaker and moviegoer. It's a model of daring storytelling, a period piece about middle-American malaise during the Vietnam era, a harrowing absurdist war movie (the Dresden bombing scenes rival Apocalypse Now in their epic craziness) and an intensely erotic yet unexpectedly charming sex farce. (The Trafalmador scenes feature extensive full frontal male and female nudity -- which, coupled with footage of burn victims in the Dresden sequence, guarantees Slaughterhouse an NC-17 rating; but Soderbergh, whose movie is already in profit thanks to worldwide presale agreements, gives the MPAA the finger and releases the picture unrated.) Ed Lachman's CinemaScope images are so fluid, varied and mind-bogglingly beautiful that upon the picture's release, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences declares the cinematography category closed that year, and messengers the statuette directly to his house.
3. The Emperor Paul. Directed by Spike Lee. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Starring Terrence Howard as Paul Robeson. Cinematography by Ernest Dickerson. Edited by Barry Brown.
Lee's movies always seem to be on the verge of bursting into song; with The Emperor Paul, he scratches that itch at feature length for the first time since School Daze, but with a striking difference: the entire movie is sung-through from start to finish, gliding gracefully through different phases of Paul Robeson's life -- football player, opera and musical star, pioneering African-American movie star, temperamental diva, anti-racism activist and Communist pariah. Lee's selection of Sondheim to do the score and lyrics for a biopic of a politically incendiary African-American surprises many, given Lee's own past pronouncements on such matters. But the director's blunt explanation -- "He's the only musical theater figure alive today who's in Robeson's weight class, so it was a no-brainer" -- sets the issue to rest before production has even started. Shot on immense, defiantly "unreal" breakaway sets and lit like a Vincente Minnelli melodrama (by longtime Lee collaborator Ernest Dickerson, going behind the camera for Lee for the first time since Malcolm X) the movie's an unclassifiable, politically and aesthetically divisive work that at times plays like a hybrid of Bob Fosse's Lenny and Jacques Tati's Playtime. But its sheer chutzpah earns respect even from those who find it pretentious, sanctimonious and borderline impenetrable. The film's visual and musical zenith is a seamless three-minute montage that shows Robeson on a whirlwind music tour of North America, Europe, Asia and Africa, singing his way through "All God's Chillun Got Wings" in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and Swahili. Star Terrence Howard doesn't look much like Robeson -- but considering that he's credible as an intellectual, a musical genius, a bad boy and a tragic figure, and does all his own singing to boot, what's not to like?
4. Watership Down. Written and directed by Brad Bird. Featuring the voices of Clive Owen (as Hazel), Daniel Radcliffe (as Fiver), Richard E. Grant (as Dandelion), Cate Blanchett (as Clover), Emily Blunt (as Hyzenthlay), Ray Winstone (as General Woundwort) and Sacha Baron Cohen (as Kehaar). Cinematography by Haskell Wexler. Score by Rachel Portman.
The cartoon auteur behind The Iron Giant and The Incredibles pushes his art one step further in an adult direction, turning Richard Adams' 1972 novel into a dark allegorical epic that borrows equally from Spartacus, the New Testament and Picnic at Hanging Rock. Adams' narrative -- about a displaced warren of rabbits following the visionary Fiver to a promised land somewhere in the English countryside -- is played straight, including the often shocking scenes of rabbit-on-rabbit (and dog-on-rabbit) brutality that made both the novel and the previous, 1978 film adaptation such a shock to parents who'd expected a time-waster about cute widdle bunnies. Working for the first time as a director of photography on an animated feature, cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who shot about half of Days of Heaven back in the day, fills Bird's widescreen canvases with an overwhelming variety of natural textures and colors, often employing a faux-deep focus technique that he says is modeled on the Technoscope cinematography in Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. The movie is rated PG-13, but brushes with an R because of what the MPAA calls "graphic animal violence and situations so emotionally intense that they make Bambi look like Scooby-Doo."
5. A Looney Tunes Odyssey. Directed by Joe Dante. Screenplay by Dante, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Music and lyrics by Parker, Stone and Marc Shaiman.
The pop culture-savvy director of Gremlins, Matinee and Looney Tunes: Back in Action returns to the Warner Bros. stable and turns out this brisk, 72-minute comic epic based on Homer's The Odyssey, starring Elmer Fudd as the wandering Odysseus, Bugs Bunny (in drag, natch) as his beloved Penelope, and a constellation of costars in plum supporting parts (including the Tasmanian Devil as the Cyclops and Daffy Duck as Penelope's most persistent would-be suitor, Ducchus). South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and their preferred composer, Marc Shaiman contribute 14 original (and uncharacteristically squeaky-clean) tunes in a variety of styles, ranging from 1940s Bing Crosby-style torch song to Gilbert and Sullivan-style libretto that plays during the thrillingly absurd finale, which crosscuts between Odysseus/Elmer returning home and preparing to eliminate the suitors, and Penelope/Bugs preparing for a wedding that'll be aborted as soon as the cleric says, "Speak now or forever hold your piece," prompting Bugs and Daffy's most elaborate bit of absurdist wordplay since the "Shoot him now" exchange in "Rabbit Seasoning." In CinemaScope, of course.
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Matt Zoller Seitz is editor-in-chief and publisher of The House Next Door, a contributor to the The New York Times film section, and a former columnist for NYPress and The Star-Ledger.
Friday, January 26, 2007
5 for the Day: Wish List
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59 comments:
Matt, as much as I enjoy your writing, I think Peet takes the prize today. He needs to make us all some posters of that! And I always wondered where Khan was getting that quote from...
Hey, great idea. All my ideas evaporated when I heard Terrence Malick's Moby Dick. How about Michael Mann's Iliad.
So I was going to come here and post that Pixar should do a straight adaptation of Watership Down, as that's been my go-to for questions like this for about five years now.
And then you go and ONE-UP me. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Gosh, I can only think of one off the top of my head, but it's impossible on so many levels.
A Confederacy of Dunces writtean and directed by Paul Brickman. Starring me as Ignatius O'Reilly, Maggie Gyllenhaal as Myrna Minkoff, Fionulla Flanagan as Irene O'Reilly, Olympia Dukakis as Santa Battaglia, Harry Dean Stanton as Claude Robichaux, Max Casella as Officer Mancuso, Ellen Burstyn as Lana Lee, Lou Pucci as George, Michelle Williams as Darlene, Samuel L. Jackson as Burma Jones and John Waters as Dorian Greene.
The guys that did Monster House should do Encyclopedia Brown.
This is probably the coolest thing I'll encounter all day. I have some niggling to do, though:
Moby Dick: Elliot Goldenthal? I'd rather have Malick use James Horner or Hans Zimmer, or of not one of those guys, give Alexandre Desplat a chance, he's earned the right to a large-scale project by now.
Also, I don't think I want to see Trey Parker and Matt Stone handling the Looney Tunes characters; something about the two worldviews doesn't seem like they would really match.
Okay, so here's my contribution (which was actually in development):
H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, directed by Guillermo Del Toro, starring Guy Pearce, John Hurt, and Ron Perlman, shot by Rodrigo Prieto, composed by Alexandre Desplat. An epic two-and-a-half-hour long epic horror movie set in the 1930s, beginning in the crowded city of Boston and featuring gorgeous Antarctic locations melded with huge, elaborate studio sets replicating the look of a long-dead civilization. Critics complain about the long first act, given over to character and thematic development, and arctic exploration scenes, but are placated by the mind-shaking third act, which is Kubrickean in its narrative audacity.
Terrence Malick to direct Moby Dick? I'll sign that petition! I always thought a good scene for such a film would employ some grainy B&W slightly sped up documentary footage of the whalers catching and processing the whale, with matching narration from Ishmael. After the matter-of-fact presentation, and after the audience sees the oil go from the sperm whale to the try-pots, a sudden jolt of color follows with an over-head shot of the Pequod's deck, drenched in bright red blood.
Incidentally, worse than the John Huston version is the Lloyd Bacon 1930 version where Ahab gets the whale! I hadn't been so disgusted since the indians road to the rescue in the criminally offensive Scarlett Demi.
Although I can see Mad Max as Ahab, I always though Gary Sinise would be great as well.
1. I read somewhere Orson Welles wanted to make "Heart of Darkness" as his first feature, leading to my dream of Welles directing and starring (as Marlow), with the beautiful cinematography of Gregg Toland, and featuring Boris Karloff as Kurtz. It exists only in my memory.
2. "The Alienist" -- an adaptation of the Caleb Carr novel, starring Jeremy Irons as Kreizler, Gary Sinise as Moore, Cate Blanchett as Sarah. Directed by Philip Kaufman.
3. Julie Taymor directing the "His Dark Materials" trilogy.
4. A grab bag: A horror film directed by Mike Leigh, a futuristic science fiction film directed by Wong Kar Wai and any Ayn Rand novel adapted by Michael Mann.
I would pay a great deal to see your first proposal, Matt, but Croesus himself could not pay me enough to watch your second, and I bow to no man in my regard for Scarlett Johannsson.
I hate to duplicate, but I would choose Malick for my dream project as well.
During the Second World War, the French poet Rene Char belonged to the Resistance in the area around his rural home in the South of France, and kept an allusive, Delphic journal of the time, which was subsequently published as "Leaves of Hypnos" ("Hypnos" being his code name). "At every meal that we eat together, freedom is invited to sit down. The chair remains vacant but the place is set." This was the real, bloody-handed Resistance, and "Leaves of Hypnos" includes passages about ambushing German convoys, hiding from SS forces that were searching villages, and executing collaborators and security threats. But Char retained something deep, in spite of the brutality that surrounds him on every side, as what he called the "damned algebra of war," and there are enormously moving passages about the countryside and, elliptically, his friends and comrades. One of my favorite passages describes watching a woman depart down a country road, vanishing around a bend. There's been only one translation into English that I know of, and it's rare but relatively easy to get via Amazon; when I first found one several years ago, it was only after a search of about eighteen months.
I think Char is sort of forgotten nowadays -- at least, the French people whom I've asked were surprised that I had ever heard of him, and hadn't had to read a great deal of his work in school. Sort of a shame, for someone who was friends with Picasso et al. in Paris before the war, but his poetry can be willfully, obstructively obscure, and few people like that sort of thing.
Malick's respect for silence, attention to the natural world, and sensitivity to its invasion by human conflicts, as in The Thin Red Line and The New World, would make a film adaptation of "Leaves of Hypnos" a dream project, for me at least. The interruptions of human and animal life in the forests, camps and villages by slashing, brutal attacks would make good material for Malick to use to illuminate the less narrative passages.
Moreover, Char became friendly with Martin Heidegger after the war, and Malick translated one of Heidegger's books when he was a graduate student. Despite what one might charitably call differences of position during the war, the two had something in common besides opacity. I'd like to know what Malick might have to say about it.
Bela Tarr, directing an adaptation of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Out of this cast of thousands, we have Cameron Bright as the gifted, Hamlet-esque Hal, Angelica Huston as his statuesque and cold mother Avril, and Heath Ledger as Hal's promiscuous football-playing brother Orin. Aishwarya Rai is PGOAT (the Prettiest Girl of All Time) and The Rock plays the immovable object that is Don Gately.
nick nolte as ahab
I have to say, I love Edward's idea of Confederacy... by the great Paul Brickman. In fact, I counterpropose ANY movie by Paul Brickman, who's even less prolific than Malick at this point.
This reminds me of that Borges short story which is a collection of reviews of books never written. Cool stuff Matt!
I don't know how I feel about Soderbergh directing Slaughter-House Five. It seems it would require a director a bit more...cerebral? I don't know if that's necessarily the right criteria, but Soderbergh smacks me as being a bit too literal-minded and clunky for that film. Look what he did to Solaris! (Maybe Alfonso Cuaron?)
That said, Malick and Moby-Dick seem made for each other. Brilliant!
My wish: X - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, written and directed by Darren Aronofsky. Cinematography by Mathew Libatique. Starring Nicholas Cage as Dr. Xavier, Scarlett Johannson as Dr. Diane Fairfax, and Don Rickles as Crane.
Both 1 & 2 sound about as perfect as possible.
That Orson Welles Heart of Darkness movie always sounded fascinating. He said he wanted to shoot the whole thing from Marlow's point of view where the only time you'd actually see Welles was in the window's reflection in the bridge of the boat.
I'd love to see:
1. In another ten or fifteen years, a remake of Father Goose starring Owen Wilson, directed by Wes Anderson from an adapted screenplay by Owen & Wes. Jeff Goldblum could play the commander back at base with Keira Knightley as the prim and proper nanny who falls for the Owen/Cary Grant's Father Goose despite their differences. With Anderson at the helm it could probably be an even better film than the original, which is a pretty silly late-career trifle on Grant's filmography. But they gotta keep it in the WW2 setting. Any other way and it'd just be dumb. I think that kind of a hermetic set-up is just perfect for Wes Anderson's ability to create a perfectly realized world. Also, it'd rake in hella dough at the box office because it'd be one of Owen's most charming performances ever, rivaling his PERFECT Dignan creation from Bottle Rocket.
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince directed by Werner Herzog. Imagine the weight of the last 100 pages in Werner's hands. Too heavy? I don't think so. That's a heavy ending worthy of being played as striaght and honest as possible.
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows directed by Claire Denis & Nicolas Roeg. This movie will blow your mind. And make the least ammount of money of all the series' films because the kids won't know what to do with the utter lack of exposition and dialogue. But they'll still be frightened and perversely aroused by the horrors (emotional and physical) onscreen. [I know nothing of how this septet will turn out, of course, but the idea of those two directors working together for some populist project makes me giggle with glee.] And Stuart Staples does a cover/re-imagining of the Williams theme with a heavily reverbed guitar "drilling" into the audience. Then there's a David Bowie song over the end credits, something like "It Ain't Easy". Saddest blockbuster media event ever this side of Peter Jackson's King Kong.
4. Edward Norton's always in 'pre-production' version of Motherless Brooklyn. He's a little old to play Lionel now so maybe he could switch over and take on Minna role, with his heir-apparent, Ryan Gosling, playing the tourette-addled hero. Prince could do some original song for the end credits to go along with a soundtrack taken exclusively from the Purple One's back catalogue to mirror Lionel's obsession. Also, I'd like to see Norton give up the director's chair to somebody new -- but still Brooklyn -- like, say, Matt(!). Lethem said the reason it's not been made yet is simply because Norton keeps taking acting gigs. Apparently on his press junket tour for The Painted Veil he said he's hoping to take some time off so maybe that means prepping this movie, finally! If Norton takes my advice and plays Minna instead of Lionel maybe he can get Val Kilmer to play his older brother, Gerard, and Judy Greer to play Julia. Take heed, my man.
5. To keep with the pairings and slightly more probable wishful thinking: As She Climbed Across The Table directed by Lodge Kerrigan, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gylenhaal. The first effort by these three was destroyed in a lab fire. So this would give them an opportunity to work together again on a really poignant, powerful sci-fi dramedy of re-marriage. The blind men could be played by Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest. Lethem told me this was the most recent novel of his to get optioned (by Dreamworks) so hey industry lacky reading this on your downtime: make this happen: you can do it: just propose it. I don't even care to get a credit or thanks, I just want to see this movie, if at all possible.
Also, #4: fuck yeah. Forgot while picking my own list.
The announcement that HBO is developing a series based on George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" with David Benioff as the showrunner takes care of one of my biggest nerd wish-list item. As to another one...Matt's suggestion of Soderbergh for "Slaughterhouse Five" makes me realize that his knack for out-of-sequence storytelling would make him the perfect director for "Watchmen"--imagine how he'd do the Doctor Manhattan origin sequence! Casting-wise, gosh, how about Clooney as Night Owl, Julia Roberts as Silk Spectre, Christian Bale as Doctor Manhattan, Val Kilmer as Ozymandias, Nicky Katt as Rorschach and Dennis Farina as the Comedian. With a lineup like that, you might get a movie Alan Moore could actually approve of.
1. A Doll's House, adapted from Ibsen and directed by Ms. Lina Wertmueller. Let's see how my favorite male chauvanist pig director handles this feminist tale. Starring Emma Thompson as Nora.
2. The Women, starring Meryl Streep, Winona Ryder, Helen Mirren, Julia Roberts, Keira Knightley, Sissy Spacek, Kate Winslet, Angela Bassett, and RuPaul. Written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, and score by Franz Waxman.
3. White Butterfly, starring Denzel as Easy Rawlings and Don Cheadle as Mouse. Adapted by John Ridley, directed by Spike Lee, cinematography by Gordon Willis. Imagine a noir that moved like a dark musical.
4. Terrence Malick's Walden. Shot by Emmanuel Lubeski.
5. The Lord of the Flies recast as the gay love story we thought it was back in 10th grade. Adapted by Gus Van Sant, who turns it into Survivor, and directed by Larry Clark, who turns it into the the kind of pervy ogling of young teenage boys gone native approved by such celebrities as Jeffrey Jones, Pete Townshend, and Mary Kay Letourneau.
JJ sez:
I like the idea of combining Starbuck and QueeQueg, but in my fantasy movie they'd stay seperate characters. Here's my casting suggestions:
--Dwayne The Rock Johnson as QueeQueg! He's Polynesian, ripped like a mother, and a terrific physical actor.
--Sean Penn as Starbuck!
--Be back with more Greatest Movies never made...
Ridley Scott's adaptation of Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel, starring Guy Pearce as Elijah Bailey and Jude Law as R. Daneel Olivaw. Cinematography by Darius Khondji, screenplay by Brian Helgeland, music by Howard Shore.
And, without thinking too much about the details, David Fincher's The Man in the High Castle.
Werner Herzog's "Blood Meridian". Ok, I know the character of the Judge is some hugely corpulent figure, a philosophy spouting murderer, and we can maybe work that out with CGI, but I want Tom Noonan for that part. If Herzog isn't game for this gig then it has to be Mel Gibson. I don't want Ridley Scott anywhere near this. I'd shortlist Malick for this job, as well.
And it's a shame Michael Mann backed off of Stephen Pressfield's "Gates Of Fire", concerning the epic battle of Thermopylae, and those 300 spartans holding off King Xerxes Persian forces. But I look forward, nonetheless, to "300".
Martin Scorsese directs American Tabloid.
Odie!
your #3, "directed by Spike Lee, cinematography by Gordon Willis. Imagine a noir that moved like a dark musical."
That'd be the most gorgeous film noir ever. And it might gruff it up a bit, too. Not that I didn't like Devil in a Blue Dress (I did, I did), but this dreamteam project would do its best to distance itself from Chinatown instead of revisiting it.
Also, your #4.
pure dope
What you think about those HP ideas? Werner Herzog HAS to do it, right?!!?! Dumbledore is Timothy Treadwill is Fitzcarraldo is Aguirre is Dieter is Graham Norrington is Kinski is Herzog himself.
This is my kind of jagoff daydreaming. Some brilliant hallucinations above. (Odie, I was biting my nails waiting for you to jump on this track.)
1. Malick? Howbout Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? With Linda Mans-like hushed voiceover. If Malick drops out to go birding or something, give it to Harmony Korine. Cinematography by Lance Acord. Jeffrey Wright as Jim. Some eerie, magnetic newcomers as Huck and Tom.
2. An erotic film by animator Hayao Miyazaki. His patient sensualism would make it explode.
3. Wormhole: George Lucas somehow recovers his filmmaking sanity long enough to helm The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and delivers The Outsiders of teen racing/JD flicks-- set in the futurist Japanese locations he scouted but utlimately abandoned for THX-1138 wayback. Chris Doyle shoots in 24 HD and cross-processed 16mm reversal. If George wigs out mid-shoot, hand it over to Joey "Streets of Legend" Curtis.
4. ^Speaking of: The three Star Wars prequels written by... somebody who can write; directed by Carl Franklin, Ang Lee and George Miller, respectively. Star Wars with people in it again. Lucas confined to the post-production suites and f/x house.
5. William Styron's The Long March, directed by Yang Li ("Blind Shaft"), Danis Tanovic, Bruno Dumont, Samira Makhmalbaf or the Dardenne brothers. Agnes Godard on camera. The book description from Amazon: "In the blaze of a Carolina summer, among the poison ivy and loblolly pines, eight Marines are killed almost casually by misfired mortar shells. Deciding that his batallion has been "doping off," Colonel Templeton calls for a 36-mile forced march to inculcate discipline." Ciaran Hinds as Templeton. Terence Howard as his seething nemesis.
All we get is five? Fk that! Every Spike Lee flick remade by Wendell B. Harris, the black Orson Welles! Sounder remade by Robert Duvall or David Gordon Green! Mel Gibson takes Herzog on a documentary tour of his compound. Doug Liman's North by Northwest...
Steve, three things:
1. I didn't even want to touch STAR WARS but yeah...those would be awesome movies if those guys had directed. Could they work Bill Paxton into EPI? Heath Ledger as young Ani, starting in EPII? Actually, I like EPIII. It was basically 'ghost-directed' by Steven Spielberg...
2. Yeah, a sexy Miyazaki. Kinda like Oshima but real-deal pastels and charcoal.
3. All we get is five?
I know, right? Let's buck the trend, say fuck the "rules".
-- Malick directs the CHE picture like he originally was supposed to.
-- Wiseman or Maysles follow Lewis Lapham around for a year for the ultimate movie called The Notebook.
-- Richard Linklater's True West starring Philip Seymour Hoffman & John C Reilly.
-- David Gordon Green's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
-- Andrei Tarkovsky's never-realized Hoffmania, which is an update on The Tales of Hoffman.
-- Peter Jackson's The Hobbit.
Wow. There's so much good stuff here, I don't know where to begin.
jeffreycmcmahon: For Terrence Malick's "Moby Dick," I went with Eliot Goldenthal for the score because I knew he'd do something daring and gorgeous (like his score for "Heat," which is what I had in mind when I picked him.) But I like the idea of Alexander Desplat; he'd bring a thunderclap awesomeness to the assignment. Imagine a whale hunt scored with that music that plays during the opening Central Park scene of "Birth."
Also, re:"Moby Dick," I like kj's suggestion of The Rock as Queequeg, and I considered casting him in that role at first -- dunno what made me hesitate. Maybe Rudy Youngblood's just fresher in my mind?
Dan Jardine: Bela Tarr directing "Infinite Jest" is totally out-of-left-field, but I'd like to see that. He'd probably dry out the book and make it less precious, but just as funny. Go ahead and let it be six or seven hours.
Wagstaff: I've actually daydreamed about Michael Mann's "Iliad," as well as -- coincidentally -- a Mann version of the battle of Thermopylae. (Despite being a Mann man, for some reason I didn't know he'd been considering directing "Gates of Fire." I wish he'd go ahead with it. Cinematography by Dante Spinotti -- shot on 35mm film, though -- and score by Elliot Goldenthal.
Wagstaff: Martin Scorsese directing "American Tabloid" sounds awesome, though personally I would prefer Oliver Stone.
Odienator: Terrence Malick's "Walden" -- wow, talk about an unfilmable book. But I'd like to see that. I'd also like to see your take on "Lord of the Flies." At first I thought van Sant should just direct as well as write, but on second thought, your instincts are correct here -- Larry Clark's a sick fuck with a real dangerous streak, and "Lord of the Flies" needs that -- a sense of, "Surely he's not going to go there...Oh, shit, he went there!"
I also like your idea for a version of "White Butterfly" -- though it makes me kind of sad to consider it. Remember, when "Devil in a Blue Dress" came out, Carl Franklin and Denzel Washington pictured it as the first film in a franchise with the same cast and director. But then it fizzled at the box office; I'm not entirely sure why, since I saw it twice in the theater and both times the audience was over the moon for it.
Steven Boone: Malick's "Huckleberry Finn." Just saying those four words puts a smile on my face. Jeffrey Wright as Jim is a masterstroke. And if Ennio Morricone's still in fighting shape, the score is his. Come to think of it, that river sequence in "Days of Heaven" scored to acoustic guitar and Linda Manz' narration had a very Huck feel, didn't it?
Ryland: I don't think the Harry Potter franchise is ready for Werner Herzog, which is all the more reason why I'd love to see him take a shot at it. Also, I am already visualizing a Herzog documentary about the private life of Mel Gibson. If anybody could speak Mel's language, it's the director of "Fizcarraldo" and "Aguirre."
And yeah, fuck the rule of five. Keep 'em coming.
Also, Malick's "Huckleberry Finn" is actually three words, but y'all knew what I meant.
Ry,
Further back, you mentioned Lodge Kerrigan, which got me thinking about horror (Kerrigan's true calling--he's the American Ozon).
All the American neo-grindhouse horror flicks of the past four years, directed by either Lodge Kerrigan, Larry Fessenden, Chris Cunningham or "Body Snatchers"-era Abel Ferrara.
Alright, I'm all geeked out. Gotta go shower.
Who'm I kidding? Can't get enough.
Matt: "that river sequence in "Days of Heaven" scored to acoustic guitar and Linda Manz' narration had a very Huck feel, didn't it?" I always thought so: "Nobody’s perfect. There was never a perfect person around. You just got half-devil and half-angel in you. The sun looks ghostly when there’s a mist on the river and evrything’s quiet. I never knowed it before. You could see people on the shore but it was far off and you couldn’t see what they were doin’. They were probably calling for help or somethin’, or they were tryin’ to bury somebody or somethin’. We seen trees that the leaves are shaking and it looks like shadows of guys coming at you and stuff. We heard owls squawkin’ away, oonin’ away. Some sights that i saw was really spooky that it gave me goose pimples. I felt like cold hands touchin’ the back of my neck and- and it could be the dead comin’ for me or somethin’. I remember this guy, his name was Black Jack. He died. He only had one leg, and he died. And i think that was Black Jack makin’ those noises...”
Yes!
I saw Devil in a Blue Dress at least three or four times in the theatre. It seemed the perfect crime movie to my 13-year-old self. Or, at least, the perfect follow up to One False Move. I know, right? Why was I watching these movies then? Whatever: Denzel as Easy is still beautiful. Makes you think his Oscar is for that role, not the Training Day drive-by mugging.
Even though I hate Huckleberry Finn with white hot passion, I'd still go see Malick's take on it. And thanks, Mr. Boone, for the excerpt from my favorite Malick.
RWK & MZS: I too was excited about the potential for a Easy Rawlins series with Denzel, Cheadle and Franklin, especially since I love the books. I couldn't believe Devil in a Blue Dress wasn't a success.
Maybe David Webb Peoples can tackle one or more of the prequel Star Wars movies, so long as you keep the directing order suggested by SB. Or, of course, you could ask Larry Kasdan.
If we turned Double Indemnity into a movie where Phyllis Dietrichson had someone else murder her husband, and the team of Neff and Keyes showed up to try and take her down for insurance fraud, it would be the perfect Michael Mann film. Imagine Phil Collins' cover of "The Lady Is a Tramp" playing over heavily edited, flashy scenes of Neff and Keyes going over pictures in the Dietrichson files. Then, Neff can fall for her, straining the relationship between him and Keyes. (After all, Mann's characters are far too devoted to measuring to see which one has the bigger dick and the most devotion to the job--it's his primary theme.)
We learn that Dietrichson hired another insurance agent from a rival company to kill her husband. Neff learns this too, but must make a choice: Happiness with Phyllis, or devotion to Keyes and the job. He could run away with her--the insurance company can afford to pay the claim and she didn't pull the trigger--and it wouldn't be such a bad way to spend a life.
But in the end, Neff turns down
happiness with Phyllis, handing her over to Keyes to be processed for fraud. Mann heroes always fuck up anything that would make them happy outside of the job. There's a big shoot-out, because damnit, it's Barbara Stanwyck and having her shoot up the joint would be hot. Neff blows away the rival insurance agent who killed Mr. Dietrichson, but Phyllis can't bring herself to shoot Neff. Neff turns her over to Keyes, and the last we see of her is her beautiful face, shot by Dion Beebe on a camera mounted in the back window of Neff's car, going from closeup to long shot as Neff pulls away.
As much as I'd love to keep that famous last line, no Mann hero would admit love for another man. Instead, Neff and Keyes go back into the office they've shared for years while k.d. lang sings a slow, mournful cover of "The Man I Love" on the soundtrack. Fade out.
Edwin Mullhouse, by Stephen Millhauser, is basically a Wes Anderson movie in prose. Maybe he should just go ahead and film it, using Selick-like stop-motion animation to bring Mullhouse's epic novel, Cartoons, to life.
Good list!
One question, re: Joe Dante's The Odyssey. Why not Bugs as Odysseus and Fudd as the Cyclops? Seems to make better casting sense...
Odie, the only screen verbiage as perfect as the Days of Heaven river raft monologue is Adam Sandler's ramble at the end of Punch Drunk Love:
"Hi Lena. I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry I left you at the hospital.
I called a phone sex line ...
I called a phone sex line
before I met you.
And four blond brothers came after me.
And they hurt you and I'm sorry.
And then I had to live again because
I wanted to make sure you never got hurt again.
And ... and I have a lot of pudding ...
... and two weeks it can be redeemed.
So ... if you could just give me
that much time ...
... I think I can get enough mileage to go with you
wherever you have to go, if you have to travel ...
... for your work because I don't ever
want to be anywhere without you.
So ... could you just let me
redeem the mileage?"
Oh, shit: Paul Thomas Anderson's Starsky and Hutch!
Career-capping/killing adaptations/sacreligious remakes, by director:
Joe Dante: Uncle Sam by Alex Ross
Wong Kar-Wai: almost all of Mike Figgis' work, especially One Night Stand.
Q.T./Robert Rodriguez (if they had the balls): Christian Zanier's graphic novel "Banana Games"
Scorsese: The Power and the Glory
Abel Ferrara: a bio of cop-killing ghetto anti-hero Larry Davis. Wood Harris stars.
a do-over: Ken Loach's or the Dardenne brothers' Dirty Pretty Things. Same cast & outline.
Mann: Two-Lane Blacktop. Billy Bob Thornton as GTO.
Sam Raimi: The Dark Knight Returns
P.T. Anderson: The Choirboys
Spike Lee: The Beast (La Bete) or the upcoming Black Snake Moan.
George Miller: The Proposition
Raoul Peck: The Proposition, retold from the perspective of the Aborigine tracker
Matt's like a dope pusher. I gotta get OFF this shit.
Julien: "Why not Bugs as Odysseus and Fudd as the Cyclops?"
Because Elmer showed he could yearn with the best of them in "What's Opera, Doc," and I think he'd relish the chance to play a full-on romantic lead, lisp and all. And because Bugs is the greatest drag performer of all time.
Steve: P.T. Anderson's "The Choirboys" is another one I'd like to see.
RWK: What you think about those HP ideas? Werner Herzog HAS to do it, right?!!?!
I can see Herzog doing the last one, but I'd also love to see Alfonso Cuaron do another one.
I'd love to see Wong-Kar Wai's take on One Night Stand if I can see it on a double bill with Curtis Hanson's take on Stormy Monday. Or a triple bill with Leaving Las Vegas adapted by Charles Bukowski and starring Robert Downey Jr.
Odie: Robert Downey Jr. in "Leaving Las Vegas" could have been one of the great male lead performances of recent times -- much deeper than Cage's work, which was quite good.
Looking over your list there, it occurs to me that except for "Vegas," there isn't a single Figgis movie that I don't think would be just as interesting, maybe more interesting, if directed by someone else. (The Wong Kar-Wai connection is interesting -- they do seem like very similar filmmakers.)
Michael Mann directs The Blood Meridian, starring John Goodman as The Judge and Daniel Day Lewis as Glanton. Cinematography by Harris Savides.
The Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, written by Brad Bird and directed by Steven Spielberg.
I'd love to see Fincher take on American Tabloid.
And Salmon Rushdie's "Shame" by Baz Luhrman.
No. "Moby-Dick" must be directed by Werner Herzog, and that's it. Malick lacks the humor for it.
And I'd like to see David Cronenberg take a crack at a two-part "Gravity's Rainbow" with a "Titanic"-sized budget.
This might sound blasphemous, but a Zemeckis version of Underworld would be cool. That scene in Cast Away where Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt dance to the rhythm of an office copier always struck me as DeLillo-ian. And, of course, that book requires someone with both an epic style and a sense of the absurd. Early Zemeckis would have done a brilliant Ratner's Star, but, since that book was essentially a Carl Sagan parody, I don't think he'd do it now. Which director will be the first to crack Mr. DeLillo?
Joel: Personally, I always wanted Atom Egoyan to tackle "White Noise," ever since "The Adjuster," which has similar themes, a similarly ominious/sick tone, and a remarkably similar "is he serious or kidding?" sense of humor. That image of Elias Koteas' title character in his bikini underwear, taking aim with a bow and arrow out of the second story window of a house in a desolate suburban subdivision has no equivalent in DeLillo's fiction, but is quite DeLilloesque (is that a word?) in tone.
I like the idea of Zemeckis directing "Underworld." He has the commercial ballast to get it done on a big budget with the appropriate sweep, and as "Gump" proved, he's a master of that confounding comic tone -- the one where you can't quite decide what's being made fun of, the characters, the audience's expectations, or nothing (in other words, it's supposed to be taken straight).
Also: DeLillo's first book, "Americana," has Wes Anderson written all over it.
A partial correction, to spare beefcake Googlers a wasted search: that cited image of Koteas actually shows him in a towel; glimpsing it briefly while composing a comment, I thought it was briefs because of how the sunlight fell.
None of which changes the fact that the man's in dynamite shape.
Lots of great ideas here.
I wish Miyazaki would direct a version of Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. When I was reading it, I could picture it in Miyazaki-drawn tones, which says something about Murakami's blend of fantasy and reality and about my limited understanding of contemporary Japanese culture.
In the realm of the impossible, I'd like to see Peckinpah's Blood Meridian (or Suttree), although having seen Children of Men, I believe that Cuaron could handle the hallucinatory violence well. It's also a shame that Jean Renoir lived in a different time than Walker Percy, but Renoir's The Moviegoer would be a thing of intense beauty and truth.
I'd like to see Jarmusch return to the Louisiana swamps to film Faulkner's Old Man (from The Wild Palms).
While Malick would make a lovely and meditative Moby-Dick, he doesn't really have the jovial bullshittery down, and Ishmael is nothing if not a talker. I think Michael Winterbottom could do it pretty well, but I'd love to see David Milch take it on. Give the man four hours, and I'd bet he could capture the book, which is, after all, about 50% character development, 40% entertaining digressions, and maybe 10% plot. I say this as an avowed Moby-Dick fanatic who read large chunks of it aloud to my infant son.
I'd like to see Gondry take on The Crying of Lot 49. Who else could do Pynchon?
I had a long post that I think blogger ate. Upshot was:
Malick would make a dreamy, meditative Moby-Dick, but I think he would lose Ishmael's jokey, bullshitty pleasures. Winterbottom would be better, but best would be David Milch, who gets how to combine thoughtfulness with humor and Biblical violence.
Peckinpah would have made the best Blood Meridian possible, but having seen Children of Men, I think Cuaron could handle the hallucinatory violence.
Miyazaki should make a version of Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Although I picture many of Murakami's books in terms of Miyazaki's imagery, that one in particular blends the real with the fantastic in a way that Miyazaki could best capture. This may also speak volumes about the depth of my ignorance about contemporary Japanese culture.
I'd like to see Gondry tackle The Crying of Lot 49. I'd also like to see Jarmusch head back to the swamps of Louisiana for Faulkner's Old Man from The Wild Palms.
A few more:
1. Jonathan Demme's "Light in August" starring Jeffrey Wright as Joe Christmas. Co-starring Patricia Clarkson and Terrence Howard. Adaptation by David Gordon Green. Cinematography by Tak Fujimoto. Song score by Bob Dylan, which is deemed superior to his "Garrett" work for Peckinpah.
2. Alfonso Cuaron tackles "100 Years of Solitude," adapted by Gabriel Garcia Marquez from his own novel. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Penelope Cruz. Cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki. Music by Ennio Morricone. Edited by Walter Murch.
3. Todd Haynes writes (or adapts) and directs a sci-fi love story, featuring Julianne Moore (naturally) and Daniel Day-Lewis. Cinematography by Christopher Doyle. Music by Clint Mansell. Costumes by Sandy Powell.
4. The Camus novel "La Chute," written for the screen and directed by Michael Haneke. Starring Daniel Auteuil. Music by Alexandre Desplat. Cinematography by Thierry Arbogast.
5. Wong Kar-wai rescues the live-action musical from certain death by writing an original screenplay w/ songs by Stephen Merritt. Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Norah Jones, Ewan McGregor, Faye Wong, Bernadette Peters and Hugh Jackman. Dance choreography by Stanley Donen. Cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno.
Spike Lee does a film noir (any will do--but a Blanchard score is a must), Werner Herzog reimagines CATCH-22 and John Boorman delivers a Western.
Julien: "Why not Bugs as Odysseus and Fudd as the Cyclops?"
Matt: "Because Elmer showed he could yearn with the best of them in "What's Opera, Doc," and I think he'd relish the chance to play a full-on romantic lead, lisp and all. And because Bugs is the greatest drag performer of all time."
Odysseus isn't so much a romantic lead, as a hero renowned for his craft and cunning, particularly in the way he outwits the Cyclops. I can better fathom Bugs cast adrift, trying to get back to his beloved rabbit hole ("I must have taken the wrong turn at Albuquerque") and running into a one-eyed Elmer. Plus the famous "Nobody" punchline of the Cyclops episode seems more of Bugs' intellectual calibre.
But you've convinced me on the drag bit. Maybe Bugs could play two or even three roles, a la Peter Sellers.
Werner Herzog's Catch-22 might be the best ever. It'd be able to balance the comedy well with the novel's fascination with insanity -- and its hummingbird theory fallout. The thing Nichols' version ignored the most was how the entire novel is about insanity. Also, it plain wasn't funny enough. And the great final walk-through-Rome chapter got a pretty shitty translation to the screen: it showed the horrors but it didn't shock or nauseate like the novel. That's a sequence to overwhelm the audience (readers/watchers alike).
Plus, Alan Arkin was wrong: we need somebody like Vince Vaughn as Yossarian.
I rather liked Arkin's Yossarian, maybe because I like Arkin.
I love Alan Arkin. It's just, in that movie, he lacked the wacked out crazy element. Oddly, I think his *crazy* Grandpa in Little Miss Can't Do Wrong is closer to the soul of Yo-yo than his actual portrayal of Yo-yo. Also, I always envisioned Yossarian as a bigger man. Vaughn has the energy but he may be a little too big, actually. At least now, when he's moon-faced and doughy; his Swingers personality and body type could be fine, tho. Basically, my criteria are:
(1) broad, strong performer [Arkin was almost there, but never imposing--I couldn't imagine anybody fearing him, you know?]
(2) funny as shit [Arkin is funny but you can see him thinking too much]
(3) insane and wild-eyed to go along with the funny, or, to help it. with the point being he's not insane because he's so insane, it's a weird, uh, catch-22 of a performance you want to get from whomever is playing Yossarian (or any character in that book).
Two more things:
-- Milo needs more screen time.
-- It's one of my favorite books so it'd be pretty hard to impress me, I guess, no matter who tried it again. But I do think Werner's obsession with driven nuts would work. (A young Mad Max Mel, however short, could be a good Yossarian: combine the wackyness of his Lethal Weapon roles with his Gallipoli runner's physique and I think you've got Yo yo.)
I'm still waiting to see Sergei Eisenstein's 5-hour-long version of An American Tragedy.
I realize that I'm starting late in this game, but here goes:
1) Mel Gibson directs Long Day's Journey into Night, in which he also plays James Tyrone, Sr. I mean, really, Ralph Richardson as a former "matinee idol"? What was Sidney Lumet thinking?
2) The Catcher in the Rye, directed by Woody Allen. I have no idea who would play Holden, but the perfect Mr. Antolini would be Paul Giamatti. Fans of the novel would be outraged when Woody casts Scarlett Johansson as Mrs. Antolini, claiming that now Mr. Antolini is obviously not gay. Others argue that it's still an open question, because now Mr. Antolini rather ostentatiously kisses his pregant wife's belly in front of his former student. Thus, if Antolini is gay, his wife is transformed from a desperately lonely middle-aged woman who probably knows the truth about her husband, to a glamorous but naive young woman -- chosen precisely for her glamour and fertility -- who probably doesn't know about her husband's orientation yet.
It's taken me a while to mull this awesome concept over. Here are my five (all book adaptations):
1) Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos directed by Garth Jennings (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). "Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos--novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes--you are beyond doubt the strangest?"
2) Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman adapted and directed by David Gordon Green, starring Ellen Page as Natalie. A college girl drifts into dissociation, reclusivity and psychosis while trying to forget what happened to her in the woods.
3) Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride adapted and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder (circa 1981). Starring Hanna Schygulla as Charis, Margit Carstensen as Roz, and Barbara Sukowa as Tony, with Margarethe von Trotta as Zenia. A group of women recall the life of the college friend who stole the men from their lives.
4) Stephen King's The Gunslinger adapted and directed by David Fincher, starring John Lurie as Roland.
5) Hitchcock/Truffaut (you know, the big silver book) conceived by Lars Von Trier as some sort of survival game for Werner Herzog.
Mel Gibson in a Malick film? LAME LAME LAME
almost as lame as Steven Soderbergh's overrated bore of a filmography.
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