Andrew chronicles several documentaries that take audiences behind the scenes.
With most documentaries surrounding the making of a
film, viewers are given unprecedented access behind the curtain where movie
magic happens. Typically intended for
promotional featurettes or saved for later use in DVD/Blu-Ray special features,
every now and again documentary crews assigned to a picture capture the
unintentional derailment or unmaking of a motion picture. Either due to production problems, clashing
egos or unexpected circumstances beyond anyone’s control, The Movie Sleuth
presents some of the best documentaries ever made about the blood, sweat and
tears that drive the art of making movies.
Hearts
of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991 – directed by Fax Bahr, George
Hickenlooper and Eleanor Coppola)
Inarguably the granddaddy of cinema-verite
documentaries on the making of a complex and daunting personal film, writer-director
Francis Ford Coppola’s transposition of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness from 19th century Africa to 20th
century Vietnam warfare, Apocalypse Now remains
the most infamously chaotic and ongoing film production in cinema history. Intended to be a routine shoot, Apocalypse Now quickly ballooned into a
5 year project beset by seemingly endless production problems including but not
limited to a typhoon destroying expensive set pieces, a war in the Philippines
interfering with choreographed battle sequences, and physical as well as mental
problems with Coppola’s cast that are both stranger than fiction and the stuff
of legend. Between Coppola’s leading man
Martin Sheen’s drunken tirade used in the film, Marlon Brando’s overweight and
unplanned ramblings and Dennis Hopper’s unhinged drug addicted madness,
shooting Apocalypse Now could be
compared to herding wild cats.
Frequently attacked in the tabloids for going overbudget with the
contention Coppola’s Apocalypse was
out of control, in confidence (as revealed by privately taped conversations
with his wife Eleanor) Francis Ford Coppola began to believe the press
clippings. Hearing Francis say
mid-production ‘This film is a $20 million disaster, why doesn’t anyone believe
me?! I’m thinking of shooting myself’ is
about as naked in its honesty you will ever get to the heart of brilliant
filmmaker in crisis. As grand in its own
way as Apocalypse Now itself, Hearts of Darkness sinks its teeth deep
into one of the most tumultuous examples of the creative process in living
memory and thus is a testament to one of cinema’s greatest directors working to
the very edge of his inspirations and beyond.
Overnight
(2003 – directed by Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith)
Ever wonder what it looks like to see a director
implode? Look no further than the
character assassination piece Overnight
following the downfall of The Boondock
Saints writer-director Troy Duffy.
Assembled by former colleagues of Duffy’s, Overnight chronicles the strange journey they took with Duffy when
Miramax mogul Harvey Weinstein caught wind of Duffy’s screenplay for The Boondock Saints. Impressed with bartender and The Brood frontman Duffy, Weinstein
offered Duffy the deal of a lifetime: $15 million to make the film, a record
contract for his band and full purchase of the bar Duffy worked at. Much like the title, Duffy found multimillion
dollar success virtually overnight and soon was among the big players in
Hollywood now, until he opened his mouth.
In scene after scene, Duffy proceeds with his conceited attitude,
unprofessional alcoholism and generally nasty words towards some of
Tinseltown’s most powerful veterans, to ruin the deal and alienate virtually all
involved in the production. After
mouthing off to A-list actors and threatening to leave the William Morris
Agency, Duffy is blacklisted in Hollywood, his record deal fizzles, and his Boondock Saints film is placed in
turnaround, thus phasing out any further work in film. While Duffy eventually did obtain independent
financing, distributors refused to release The
Boondock Saints due to the bad blood between Duffy and Weinstein. While Duffy would ultimately refute the
documentary’s validity regarding the situation, there are some things the power
of editing can’t make up, notably almost every single thing Duffy says. One of the few documentaries far more entertaining
and endlessly fascinating than the film its subject was making.
Burden
of Dreams (1982 – directed by Les Blank)
Werner Herzog’s most ambitious and arduous production
to date without a doubt is his 1982 historical drama, Fitzcarraldo. Loosely based
on the true story of Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzgerald, the film depicts
an entrepreneur determined to move a 320 ton steamship across a mountaintop
utilizing a pulley system manned by indigenous natives of the region. A grandiose, near impossible task for its
titular character (played by Herzog enfant terrible Klaus Kinski), the film’s
original financier 20th Century Fox salivated at turning the premise
into a tangible reality. That is, until
Herzog stressed instead of models and miniatures, the cast and crew were really
going to perform the daunting task as written.
What would unfold would go down in history as one of the most taxing
ordeals ever undertaken for the sake of making a film, one that would take its
toll on both the film’s director and the documentary filmmaker, Les Blank,
capturing all the mayhem on film. Between
enormous physical obstacles of actually carting a steamboat over a mountaintop
and scenes of the boat crashing amid wild rapids, sending the film’s
cinematographer through the air and splitting his hand in half down the seams
of his digits, there was Klaus Kinski.
Manic, passionate and raging, Kinski proceeded to make everyone’s lives
a living Hell, throwing vitriolic tantrums over trivial matters such as
complaining about the quality of food.
At one point a native confided in Herzog his tribesmen would be happy to
murder Kinski should Herzog so desire, to which Herzog replied he still needed
Kinski to complete shooting. Even the
documentarian Mr. Blank found himself at wits end over what felt like an
endless wallow in chaos and disorder.
While Fitzcarraldo, Herzog and
Blank would uniformly triumph over the adversity of a nightmarish shoot, one
can’t help but regard the entire enterprise as among the most draining
experience the three have ever had the displeasure of undertaking.
Gambler
(2006 – directed by Phie Ambo)
After writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn attained
mainstream success in Denmark with his gangster drama Pusher and his circle-of-friends follow up Bleeder, the young auteur set his sights on his first English
language film, Fear X. His most expensive production to date, around
$6.6 million, Fear X tanked at the
box office and bankrupted Refn’s production company, Jang Go Star. Having recently sired his first child, Refn
and wife Liv Corfixen found themselves buried over their heads in debt. Trying to reel in the damage wrought by the
failure of Fear X, Refn is forced to
put his next project Billy’s People on
hold in favor of making two sequels to Pusher,
his most successful film up to that time.
One loses track of how many glasses of alka seltzer and water the
nervous wreck of a director downs in between meetings with investors and
potential cast members for his shoestring budgeted Pusher sequels. Among Refn’s
street casting of real criminals for authenticity and saving production costs
is the immense upheaval taking place within his home, as entire living rooms
are rearranged to make room for writing and assembly of the screenplay. Working at breakneck speed in a state of
emergency, Refn just barely manages to get his scenes on film, meanwhile
dealing with tabloids eager to watch the young auteur fall and fending off creditors
complaining about his overdrawn bank accounts.
At one point Refn breaks down in tears over the sheer magnitude of
stress, trying to rebuild his company in between changing his newborn infant’s
diapers. While in the end Refn did
reclaim his finances with the commercial success of his Pusher sequels before landing international work behind the
director’s chair, you could cut the anxiety and tension built up in Gambler with a knife.
Lost
in La Mancha (2002 – directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe)
Most directors, notably great ones, have had a few
passion pieces of theirs disintegrate and fall through the fingers. Very few, however, manage to get the
implosion of a director’s baby on film in the way Lost in La Mancha does. Originally
intended for inclusion in a making-of advertising campaign, filmmakers Keith
Fulton and Louis Pepe instead captured on film the unraveling of a film
production. In the case of Terry
Gilliam’s ill-fated The Man Who Killed
Don Quixote, everything that could possibly go wrong inevitably does and
then some. Preproduction on Gilliam’s
project goes smoothly at first, but within the first day of shooting Gilliam
found himself living out a director’s worst nightmare. Military fighter jets near Gilliam’s location
whoosh by, ruining sound and flying into shots.
Extras show up unprepared for their scenes. Then a flash flood washes away set pieces,
camera equipment, and the scenic look of scenes already shot. Worst of all, Gilliam’s leading man Jean
Rochefort, who spent a year learning English to play the role of Don Quixote,
develops a double herniated disc and withdraws from the production
indefinitely. As Gilliam troubleshoots
getting whatever footage he’s able into the can, investors begin pulling out
until Gilliam’s primary producer breaks the dreaded news he will not be able to
make the film. Seeing Gilliam’s
disappointment spread across his face at the news of his hopes and dreams
withering away is positively heartbreaking to watch. You don’t have to be a Terry Gilliam fan to
feel his dismay and grief. While Gilliam
resumed work in the film world and continues to strive towards one day making The Man Who Killed Don Quixote a
cinematic reality, it’s hard to forget the horrors that befell Gilliam’s first
try at a film he once considered better left alone.
Full
Tilt Boogie
In between his filmmaking efforts, Quentin Tarantino
began collaborating with numerous filmmakers throughout Hollywood by stepping
down from the director’s chair and bringing forward potentially great material
to be made by experienced, visionary artists.
Among them were Tony Scott for True
Romance, Oliver Stone for Natural
Born Killers, and most notably, his longtime colleague and friend Robert
Rodriguez for the vampire road movie From
Dusk Till Dawn. Capturing the
process of bringing his homage to B-horror of the late 1970s and early 80s is
Tarantino’s production assistant Sarah Kelly’s documentary Full Tilt Boogie. Often
confused by fans as a companion piece or sequel of sorts to From Dusk Till Dawn based on the cover
art and title, Full Tilt Boogie is as
in-depth of a documentary on the creative process as you can get, covering all
the ups and downs of the production.
Some viewers expecting elaborate interviews with Tarantino and Rodriguez
will be somewhat disappointed as most of the screen time goes to producers and
crew members, although there are some stellar highlights of the bumps in the
road encountered mid-production. Aside
from sandstorms making the desert scenes difficult to shoot in and a
pyrotechnical mishap that nearly destroyed an expensive film set, the kitten
caboodle of Full Tilt Boogie surrounds
a brief standoff between the filmmakers and the International Alliance of
Theatrical Stage Employees for the filmmakers’ use of non-union employees. For a moment, the film becomes an age old
tale of the starving artist stacked against the towering conglomerate,
including an attempted ambush of a union negotiator at a convention by Kelly
and her own non-union documentary crew.
It’s an odd detour that sheds more light on the business end of
filmmaking that’s typically swept under the rug, and reinforces director Terry
Gilliam’s stance that filmmaking is not about cameras and lenses but rather
about tangling with the suits.
Making
‘The Shining’ (1980 – directed by Vivian Kubrick)
Though only short documentary running approximately 35
minutes, the daughter of Stanley Kubrick turns her camera on her father’s work
on the set of his 1980 horror classic The
Shining, offering a unique behind-the-scenes look at a great cinema artist
in motion. Up to the time of its inception, few people saw footage of Kubrick
beyond still photos on the set and even fewer heard the man speak. While Kubrick himself doesn’t address the camera
beyond occasionally bumping into it, intently focused on directing his actors,
we do get interviews from the actors conducted by Kubrick’s longtime personal
assistant Leon Vital (who played Lord Bullington in Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon). Moreover, Making
The Shining gives fans of the director a taste of what an endurance test
working with him must have been.
Consider Kubrick’s treatment of actress Shelley Duvall, who looks weary
and worn as the director continues to work her over, leaving her an emotional
and physical wreck. While eliciting a
performance from Duvall that exemplified the ordeal of character Wendy
Torrance, watching Kubrick systematically chip away at her defenses is both
stressful and hard to take. Most
infamously is a brief moment where Kubrick loses his temper and accuses Duvall
of ‘wasting everybody’s time’. Duvall
admitted years later the experience was both a stepping stool that taught her
more about acting than any of the previous pictures she had done while also
adding it was a Hell she wasn’t ready to visit again.
-Andrew Kotwicki