Today's Blind Items - The Hapless Movie - A Back In The Day Blind

Nothing real scandalous here, but maybe you sleuths will have a bit of fun guessing this one. Having said that, the consequences of this movie did do some damage to at least one career.

Let’s go back a little while shall we, we have a director who I’d consider permanent A list  (academy award winner/nominee) but would probably not be on many peoples usual suspect list. He had just released his latest movie. At the time of the movie’s release he had already been around for a long time and directed some much acclaimed movies that were in the running for the top award. One movie in particular is still a beloved classic with a terrific ensemble cast and it essentially put the director on the map. Not to mention his involvement in those movies that you all know and know well.

Anyway, our director had fallen off the radar for a number of years until he jumped at the opportunity to direct this movie which was based on a book. He still had a bit of clout in the industry and his production company managed to secure the rights to this novel and get a pretty big budget from a major studio. Perhaps this could be his comeback into the mainstream after a long absence. Along the way a permanent A+ list writer got involved in the project and partnered with the director to bring the story to the big screen. After watching the movie it’s boggles the mind wondering what they actually saw in the material. It was hardly the kind of material that both the director and the writer had much, if anything, to do with in the past. 

All things aside, shooting of the movie got under way with a number of good actors signing on for rolls, probably just to work under the A list director with a script written by the A+ list writer, based on a novel by an acclaimed author, how could they go wrong? They all did their best with the script and direction they were given but playing it serious was arguably not the way to go about the material. The director was treating the movie like he would have normally done in the past and it just didn’t weave together this time round. 

The permanent A+ list actor (academy award winner/nominee) played against type in the movie and even he couldn’t save it or bring it any credibility, but hey, he was still responsible for delivering the best line so I guess that counts for something. The B+ actor who was on a recently axed almost network show seemed to recognize the silliness of what they were doing, but he made his scenes count and chewed through the scenery like no tomorrow. His scenes were some of the more “intentionally” humorous ones and at least he seemed to enjoy himself filming them.

Eventually the movie was released and quickly became a laughing stock. I doubt that anyone in the audience was prepared for how ludicrous this film would be. It was jaw dropping how bad it was considering the caliber of the people involved. You’d be forgiven for not expecting this type of movie to come from the A list director. Looking at the credits there a number of award winning cast and crew members across the board and somehow they caught up in the net. It’s not like they did a bad job, far from it, the film is actually pretty well made on a technical level, but the story and plot make no sense what so ever. 

For those who have seen the movie I’m sure they would only remember the one aspect that when spoken out loud, would either deter people, or encourage them to watch it just to see how ridiculous it plays out. And this is coming from a movie that has one ridiculous and awkward scene
after another. Suffice to say the movie was a bomb, and it wasn’t hard to see why. It quickly fell into obscurity and was forgotten. The timing of its release was probably not going to do it any favors either, considering a major world event had just taken place that everyone knew was a bad idea, but was powerless to stop from happening. This movie channeled a few things that were going on at the time. 

Surprisingly it doesn’t appear on many “worst of all time lists” which maybe a good thing for the multiple A list talent involved. As for the director, well, he will probably always be A list considering his track record & prior achievements, but even he admitted that this film screwed his career a bunch. He had other projects that he wanted to work on but because this movie was a disaster he never got the chance to do them. It was another decade before he got a chance to direct again and he went back to his comfort zone, albeit without any major studio backing this time. That film also bombed and after that he didn’t have anything to go on, at least until not until he got another chance to be involved in the movies that made his name