The Ghost of Peter Sellers is about the making of Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1974). Sellers basically undermined the production. The most amazing incident: He had a heart attack and was hospitalized in Cyprus where the film was shooting. Two days later he was socializing in England as shown in a newspaper.
This is one of two films in this group that was damaged by Marlon Brando’s erratic behavior
This one is about a low-budget Fantastic Four film that was completed but never released.
Hearts of Darkness is an outstanding film about Eleanor Coppola’s documentation of the troubled filming of Apocalypse Now (which included Brando).
I’ve added the script for Wake Up Dead Man to my site. This is the final shooting script, so it has stuff that was cut and moved around, which I always think is more interesting to see than a conformed cleaned up version. Enjoy! http://www.rian-johnson.com/screenplays
I have been watching a lot of French films lately. I started by watching Bertrand Tavernier’s My Journey Through French Cinema. It’s over three hours long and is an outstanding overview by a director who knew many of the people he discusses. I started to watch his follow up Journeys Through French Cinema which is over seven hours long but stopped to watch some actual films.
For the most part, I didn’t watch films by the most famous directors such as Truffaut, Godard, Bresson and Renoir since I had seen many of their films. I concentrated on films by lesser known directors like Claude Sautet and Jacques Deray. I am partial to crime films.
I did watch a few films by my favorite French directors. I saw Robert Bresson’s early Les Dames du bois de Boulogne (1945). This was made before his mature films featuring non-professional actors and has a great performance by Maria Casares. It’s not one of his best films and is conventional compared to his later work but it’s still worth watching.
Then there is Elena and Her Men (1956) by Jean Renoir. The best part is the performance by Ingrid Bergman. Otherwise, it’s an above average story about Elena and her many suitors. It’s in color too unlike most Renoir films.
I enjoyed La Poison directed by Sascha Guitry (1951). It has an unusual sequence showing Guitry thanking his actors. The film is about a husband and wife who despise each other and both plot murdering their spouse. It doesn’t sound like it but it’s actually a comedy. The husband is played by Michel Simon who does a great job of making a despicable character likeable.
All three are available on the Criterion Collection discs which is how I watched them. They always do an outstanding job.
Sad! 