There are a number of elements about this 'cock-up' (unquote) that strike me as very odd. John Rochefort, tied to the financing. John ... who? Okay, maybe he's well known in a niche market, maybe he has a cult following, and for all I know he might be the best actor in the world, but, I repeat - John WHO? The idea that a little known French actor could be tied to the financing of a big budget film is laughable. The number of actors who would be considered irreplaceable (i.e. the completion guarantors would pull the plug if they left the production) is tiny. Toms Hanks and Cruise, Harrison Ford, Johnny Depp. Maybe ten, fifteen more. John Rochefort doesn't get close. So, there was a hidden agenda there, count on it.
Second, when Rochefort became ill, but was considered temporarily hors de combat, why didn't they use a body double to do all of his wide and rear shots? Look at the make up and costumes - his face is barely visible. They could have done medium shots and got away with it while Rochefort was recovering from his injury. His dialogue could have easily been post synced in the lab later. They could have had half the film finished before he got back to the set. If you think I'm taking the p*ss, think again. This is how 'Back To The Future' was shot, when Eric Stoltz was replaced by Michael J Fox who could only be on set for a few hours a day because of his television commitments.
Third, why was Gilliam discussing the fate of his movie and the financing and insurance angles with his first assistant? Isn't that what producers and executive producers are for?
Fourth - noisy locations. Meh. Live with it. Sets are for shooting sync sound, locations, go wild and dub later. Basic fillum business procedure, Tel. Why Gilliam blew a tantrum when his location turned out to be "too noisy to use" is a mystery. It doesn't matter if the Brigade of Guards Band is playing Polly Wally Doodle at full blast on the bagpipes next door - shoot the bl**dy film, make it look good, and do the sound in the lab later. Everyone knows that.
There is so much more, but at this time of the night the details escape me. If anyone would like to argue, embellish, dis/agree or just plain tell me where I'm wrong, then they may have the floor for me.
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johnslegers
19 years ago
I find you making a lot of sense. I wonder what you implying, though. Are you implying that Gilliam had this project failed on purpose so he could make this famous documentary? Or do you think that there was fraud involved? If the problems were more than just accidental, why would they have been?
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19 years ago
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GONZODOODAH
19 years ago
Eckshually if you have a look at the production history of Apocalype Now and this fillum, they are remarkably similar - with one exception.
Both had leading men who became too ill to work during the production - Martin Sheen almost died of a heart attack he had on the set of Apocalypse now. As I suggested Gilliam should have done, Copolla hired Sheen's brother and son to do the wide and rear shots. That doesn't mean he planned the whole of the film (or at least Sheen's part of it) to be in wide or rear, but he shot the parts of the film he could without his lead and did the close ups later. I commend his efforts to Mr Gilliam.
Both had tenuous and very fragile support from their financiers. At one stage Copolla was funding the film himself and almost lost his famous Californian vinyards when he mortgaged them to pay for the film.
Both were beset with disastrous problems with weather on location. A whole set on Apocalypse was washed away in a torrential downpour. Months of shooting time were lost due to problematical locations and appalling filming conditions in The Phillipines.
The difference - Apocalypse Now was completed and screened. Gilliam's film, on the other hand, looks to be as dead as a sprat with little (realistic) hope of revival. Why the difference? Is is because Copolla read his insurance policies carefully, whereas Gilliam's insurers were allowed to welch on their policy on the grounds that an unexpected downpour was an 'Act of God' and thereby not insurable? This means Gilliam's film was not insured against bad weather! Unless you are filming every scene indoors, you have to have a bad weather policy in place, and it seems Gilliam did not. I am probably putting too much emphasis on this point but it is salient - Gilliam comments that he works best in an atmosphere of panic, and if a more fundamentally wrong statement about filmmaking exists then I haven't heard it. Panic? Chaos and disorganisation due to sloppy production, mismanagement and bad planning produces some sort of creative environment in which a director can work? Spare me.
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Mat-37
19 years ago
You're hard on Gilliam! He is a genius, and his reputation of being responsible comes I think from the fact that he made movies that cost less than the planned budget.
Those posts litterally add insult to injury. This documentary was painful to watch for me cos it seems the movie would have been great. One of the best novels in the world, directed by one of the greatest directors, with two of the world's best actors (Rochefort and Depp).
And to the poster who wrote "John who?" and thinks he is smart; you're apparently proud to be ignorant. Jean Rochefort is a great actor, even if you don't know him - there just happens to be other countries in the world, and sometimes their inhabitants are talented people (Rochefort is also known for being a good horserider). Also, the idea to cast a younger actor is plain stupid. Don Quixote has to be old!
- A point in every direction is the same as no point at all.
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MisterWhiplash
19 years ago
I see what you mean with the Apocalypse Now comparison, but the big difference between the two is that Coppola just got off winning a Golden Palm for The Conversation and four oscars for his Godfather films, so he had a LOT of clout, and the money was practically all his through American Zoetrope. And on Don Quixote nobody was ever sure when Rochefort would come back, but with Martin Sheen they had an idea he would recover within a month or so, and there were shots that could be done with a double, likely not the case with Rochefort.
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GONZODOODAH
19 years ago
"...And to the poster who wrote "John who?" and thinks he is smart; you're apparently proud to be ignorant ... "
That was me, and I was being neither "smart", nor "ignorant". I made it clear that Jean Rochefort may have been the new Olivier, the best actor on this or any other planet, but that doesn't matter. It may well be that he appeals to French speaking audiences all over the world, but the fact remains that no serious financier of a film in the budget range of this one would attach him to the financing. He isn't well known enough internationally - critically, he is almost unknown in the United States - and that is a technical and factual judgement, not an artistic or emotive one.
Short version - any financier with a few million in a film will pull the plug if the lead actor, the reason for the audiences paying to see the film leaves the project, but the names that fit that category are very few and far between. Jean Rochefort is defintely not one of them. The simple answer to his being unable to continue filming is to replace him, perhaps with an actor as well-known and as popular with audiences in Europe. Tough, but that's the film business. It has happened before and it will happen again.
Anyway the point I was making and will stress again - the fact that the financiers torpedoed the film through shifty manipulations of the insurance policy rather than allow filming to continue with a replacement actor tells me that they had a hidden agenda, a reason for killing the film that has not been overtly stated.
Be interesting to know what it was.
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19 years ago
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Mat-37
19 years ago
GONZODOODAH I'm sorry I got taken away, I just really really love Jean Rochefort.
- A point in every direction is the same as no point at all.
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moenobber
17 years ago
I just got finished watching this doc and had pretty much the same impressions as GONZODOODAH and Alan Smithee. I came to the boards to see if I could find someone who was noticing the same things I was.
The impression I came away with, just as you G, was that there was a failure of responsibility on several levels and some very risky decisions were made. Situations like that often lead to failure so I wasn't sure why anyone was surprised by and in denial about it's eventuality.
In rock climbing, there's a phenomenon called 'non-event feedback'. That means that sometimes climbers make risky decisions or engage in unsafe behaviour, but if nothing bad happens as a result of that bad decision, or if they manage to get themselves out of the scrape they led themselves into, the person starts to regard this risky behaviour as acceptable and it may become habit. This is often what leads to accidents and tragedies on the mountains. I got the impression that many of the people involved in this film had worked in similar filming situations before and managed to salvage things in the end so they thought they'd be able to do it again this time.
The other major cause of climbing accidents is simple - bad planning. People forget a key item of equipment, go climbing when they don't feel well, don't check the weather etc. I saw a lot of bad planning going on in this film. The AD admits from the get-go that there isn't margin for error and there isn't really a plan B. I also agree with G that it seemed weird that people didn't seem clear about the insurance policies and other major contractual issues. In such a tenuous and tight situation, you'd think people would have been on top of those things more than anything else since the likelihood of things going south was so high. I also found it odd that Gilliam is angry that Vanessa Paradis's contract wasn't sorted a week before shooting and in the Special Features, it's revealed that his own contract wasn't sorted out until the day before shooting.
It was an accident waiting to happen.
Climbing accidents result in real tragedies. Lucky for these guys, no lives were lost and I'm not sure I would use the word 'tragedy' to describe what happened although I'm sure it was disappointing draining and frustrating for all involved.
I'd love to see the film when it's finally made. Better luck (and planning and everything else ) next time, if there is one.
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