Favorite Films (lists up to participating site members)

[Henry Flower]

Hi Henry
whats Valerie about? never even heard that one!

Ive heard about the jodorowsky documentary and his failed attempt. havnt seen it. wow that would have been something, huh? it would have been cool to see his version!!! ironically though I do like the Lynch Dune movie. I know, its a mess, but I still like it.

speaking of docus. have you ever seen the docu on the making of Apocalypse Now? one of the best documentaries on one of my favorite movies.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.... hard to summarize. Angela Carter meets Werner Herzog's Nosferatu meets Lolita meets my own prettiest nightmare.

Confession time: Not only have I never seen the documentary on the making of Apocalypse Now, I have ... never seen.... Apocalypse Now.

I've never really liked war movies.

But still, I know it's considered one of the greatest of all movies.

Damn it all, I'll try it.

[Abby Normal]

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.... hard to summarize. Angela Carter meets Werner Herzog's Nosferatu meets Lolita meets my own prettiest nightmare.

Confession time: Not only have I never seen the documentary on the making of Apocalypse Now, I have ... never seen.... Apocalypse Now.

I've never really liked war movies.

But still, I know it's considered one of the greatest of all movies.

Damn it all, I'll try it.

its not really a war movie. and it is a masterpiece. as is the docu.

[Steadmund Brand]

Apocalypse Now is fantastic to be sure... and I love Heart of Darkness (the Novella it's based on) would love to have seen what Orson Wells would have done with it....Heart of Darkness was what he wanted to do for his first film....but due to problems ended up making a film nobody remembers called Citizen Kane hahaha

Steadmund Brand

[Henry Flower]

Apocalypse Now is fantastic to be sure... and I love Heart of Darkness (the Novella it's based on) would love to have seen what Orson Wells would have done with it....Heart of Darkness was what he wanted to do for his first film....but due to problems ended up making a film nobody remembers called Citizen Kane hahaha

Steadmund Brand

Not bad for a Plan B!

[Abby Normal]

Apocalypse Now is fantastic to be sure... and I love Heart of Darkness (the Novella it's based on) would love to have seen what Orson Wells would have done with it....Heart of Darkness was what he wanted to do for his first film....but due to problems ended up making a film nobody remembers called Citizen Kane hahaha

Steadmund Brand

I think Orion wells is awesome. I would have loved to see him in the Brando part in apacoplypse now. And I love citizen Kane too!

[Abby Normal]

Didn't orson wells do the radio thing with the matians invading that freaked everyone out?? In the thirties?

[GUT]

Didn't orson wells do the radio thing with the matians invading that freaked everyone out?? In the thirties?

War of the worlds?????

[Sam Flynn]

I think Orion wells is awesome

Orion? What a star he was

[Henry Flower]

Orion? What a star he was

Awesome Wells was an Orion? I thought he was a Sagittarius!

[Robert]

Wasn't Orion Wells in Beetlejuice?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Wasn't Orson the person Mork used to talk to at the end of Mork and Mindy?

'Mork calling Orson, Mork calling Orson.'

Regards

Herlock

[Henry Flower]

Wasn't Orson the person Mork used to talk to at the end of Mork and Mindy?

'Mork calling Orson, Mork calling Orson.'

Regards

Herlock

Mindy was cute. Nanu Nanu!

[Mayerling]

Apocalypse Now is fantastic to be sure... and I love Heart of Darkness (the Novella it's based on) would love to have seen what Orson Wells would have done with it....Heart of Darkness was what he wanted to do for his first film....but due to problems ended up making a film nobody remembers called Citizen Kane hahaha

Steadmund Brand

Welles was studying (he claimed) how to make movies at RKO for nearly a year before he began to create the film "American" from a Herman Mankiewicz screenplay, that became "Citizen Kane". I say he claimed that, because we now know he made at least two small "embryonic" movies (both of which are on "You Tube") before "Kane" called, "Hearts of Age" (for his prep school project in 1933) and "Too Much Johnson" (which was really a set of shot sequences to be shown between acts of a 1938 revival of the play by William Gillette - oddly enough "Too Much Johnson" is Welles only real comedy. One of the cast of "Too Much Johnson" is a young Judy Holiday, which means she worked with three great directors in her brief but shining film career: Welles, George Cukor, and Vincent Minnelli.

Welles apparently studied "Stagecoach" by John Ford, to study the art of film cutting, claiming he ran it over forty times. By 1940 he had two projects in mind for possible filming. First was "The Smiler With A Knife", a political thriller about a fascist plot against Britain, that was written by Nicholas Blake (the pseudonym of the then Poet Lauriate, Cecil Day-Lewis, father of the famous actor Daniel). Welles actually started planning casting for this work, and wanted a young comedienne actress who was signed to RKO for the lead. The actress was Lucille Ball. It's hard to think that Welles made such an odd choice for the role, but Ball did demonstrate (in 1942) her ability as a straight actress in the film "The Big Street" with Henry Fonda, and later would do it again in the film noirs, "The Dark Corner" with Clifton Webb and William Bendix, and "Lured" with George Sanders, Cedric Hardwick, Charles Coburn, Joseph Calleia (later to be "Menzies" opposite Welles and Charleton Heston in "Touch of Evil"), Boris Karloff, and George Zucco.

But "The Smiler" did not get filmed. Instead, Welles turned to Conrad's study of imperialism and evil "Heart of Darkness". There are stills still in existence of Welles attempts at this film, in which he was to play both Kurtz (the central figure in the story - whom Marlon Brando played in "Apocalypse Now") and Marlowe, the narrator (Martin Sheen in the film). The film was to be shot with an "I-am-a-camera" point of view, like that used by Rouben Mamoulian for parts of "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde" in 1931, and by Robert Montgomery in "The Lady in the Lake" in 1946. Difficulties in filming this work prevented it from being Welles' first movie.

Welles turned to the Mankiewicz screenplay, based really on the life of William Randolph Hearst, and edited and changed parts of it. He dropped some points in the screenplay (Emily was to hate Charles for writing, in his newspapers, an incitement to the killing of her uncle, the President of the U.S., based on an incident of Hearst columnist, poet, satirist Ambrose Bierce writing a quatrain that may have influenced Leon Czolgosz in deciding to shoot President William McKinley in 1901; later in the screenplay, Susan says that Kane's valet, Raymond, knows where all the bodies are buried - it turns out that Kane kills a man and the murder (known to Raymond) is covered up somewhat - this was supposed to be based on the death of Thomas Ince on Hearst's yacht in 1924). The finished script (that won Welles and Mankiewicz the only "Oscar" for the film), was shot and Welles real movie career began.

Jeff

[Henry Flower]

Very interesting info, Jeff, thanks for that.

Lucille Ball!? I can't quite get my head around that...

[Steadmund Brand]

Lucille Ball did have serious acting chops...as she proved in the aformentioned films....plus she was downright gorgeous in her younger days (very pretty in the I Love Lucy era as well don't get me wrong....in fact she was my first childhood crush)

Steadmund Brand