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Home , David Hemmings, David Puttnam, Donald Cammell, Donald Sutherland, Don Boyd, Jeremy Thomas

greenlit just before he died, was an adaptation of A PIN TO SEE THE NIGHT Walter Hamilton’s 1968 novel All the Little Animals, exploring the friendship between a boy and an THE PEEPSHOW CREATURES old man who patrols roads at night collecting the Dir: Robert Hamer 1949 Dir: 1957 roadkill. Reeves prepared a treatment, locations Adaptation of a 1934 novel by F. Tennyson Jesse Robert Neville is the last man on earth after a were scouted and Arthur Lowe was to play the about a young woman wrongly convicted as an mysterious plague has turned the rest of the lead. Thirty years later the book was adapted for accomplice when her lover murders her husband; a population into vampires who swarm around his the screen and directed by starring thinly fictionalised account of Edith Thompson and house every night, hungering for his blood. By day, and . the Murder case of 1922. With Margaret he hunts out the vampires’ lairs and kills them Lockwood in the lead, this was something of a with stakes through the heart, while obsessively dream project that Robert Hamer tried to get off searching for an antidote and trying to work out the ground at Ealing. Despite a dazzling CV that the cause of his immunity. Richard Matheson wrote ISHTAR includes the masterpiece Kind Hearts and Coronets the screenplay for The Night Creatures for Hammer Dir: 1971-73 (1949), Hamer was unable to persuade studio Films in 1957 based on his own hugely influential The co-director of Performance (1970), Cammell boss to back the project. Hamer novel I am Legend. The film was to be directed only completed three further features before once said that his goal was to “make films about by the versatile and prolific British director Val committing in 1996. His planned people in dark rooms doing beastly things to one Guest, who was well-versed in British Sci-Fi having follow-up to Performance was also due to another”, which was clearly at odds with the pre- just made The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) for feature and was described vailing trends of the British film industry of the Hammer. However after submitting Matheson’s variously as a parody, a suspense thriller and 1940s and 1950s; it also placed him at odds with script to the BBFC, the censors made it clear that a movie within a movie. In the complicated Balcon whose goal was to make films “projecting a film of the screenplay would be rejected. The premise, the central character Nonus Britain and the British character”. Ealing’s rejection of MPAA in America also expressed concerns about Smith (Malcolm McDowell) is shooting a the project seems to have contributed to Hamer’s some of the gruesome material, which included reconstruction of the kidnapping of a decline into alcoholism and eventual death in 1963. an uncomfortable scene in which Neville conducts Supreme Court judge by a revolutionary Critic David Thomson has called this “the most tortuous experiments on a female vampire. Overall, (Jagger). Norman Mailer was rumoured serious miscarriage of talent” of the postwar years. the apocalyptic nature of the work was considered to be involved and the action was to take too violent for the time. Hammer, keen to keep place largely in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. NOT SHOWING the BBFC onside for future films, abandoned the Cammell wanted “lots of soldiers and THE MAYOR OF project, using the title for another film. helicopters speeding down the valley of Hades at night with huge lights”. Possible CASTERBRIDGE financiers were concerned about the Dir: 1951 NO BAIL escalating budget, with the script’s heavy This Hardy adaptation was planned to coincide mythological elements also proving a turn-off. AT THIS CINEMA with the 1951 Festival of Britain, but various FOR THE JUDGE impediments stood in its way. For one thing, the Dir: 1958-1961 dark tragedy of the story didn’t suit the celebratory FAN TAN mood of the festival. More broadly, the Associated This adaptation of the thriller novel by former Dir: Donald Cammell 1978 British Corporation worried about the film’s viability judge Henry Cecil would have marked Another Cammell-helmed project, this was a in America, deeming it too highbrow and too Hitchcock’s return to , but it was 1920s pirate adventure set on the South China expensive. For Gaslight’s Thorold Dickinson, this was not to be. Hitch was keen to cast Audrey seas. The plot concerned an overweight Looking beyond the British film industry’s cycle of symptomatic of wider problems in the industry: “It is Hepburn as the barrister who is assisted adventurer who is seduced by a beautiful the incomprehension of these men, who hold us all by a gentleman thief in defending her father female pirate into stealing silver from a enmeshed in their bank balances, which inhibits and when he is accused of murdering a prostitute. British ship. paid Cammell boom and bust, it is possible to imagine an alternative imprisons the artists and strangles ideas at birth”. The screenplay included a scene, not in the to write the screenplay for him, which the original novel, where the heroine disguises studio loved. However, Brando changed herself as a prostitute and has to fend off his mind and insisted the story be first history, an unrealised catalogue of British cinema a rapist in Hyde Park. A newly-pregnant published as an epic novel which could Hepburn apparently left the film partly become a bestseller and allow them to because of this scene. Without his “cool produce the film independently. The pair spent that is only viewable in the mind’s eye. brunette”, Hitchcock lost interest in the project eight months rewriting the material as and told it was better to a novel only for Brando, bored and write off the $200,000 already spent, than to depressed, to pull out completely. The novel waste another $3 million on a film he had no was eventually published posthumously in intention of finishing. 2005. Fan Tan was one of many planned NOT We invite you to peruse this speculative programme prematurely announced “soon to be a major film” collaborations between Brando and Cammell. for Not Showing At This Cinema, a festival of and Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong still awaits a cinema THE ADVENTURES The director spent the best part of two “never-mades”, films that were left incomplete, adaptation. decades trying to capture “that performance OF HARRY DICKSON from Brando to see him bare his soul for once”. rejected, not-yet-made or never-will-be. They have Dir: Alain Resnais 1952-1966 As a twelve-year-old, Resnais became fascinated fallen prey to the vagaries of time, money, ego, and Not Showing At This Cinema focuses on post-1945, by a series of books by Flemish surrealist Jean Ray fate or were left to rot in development hell. They might so there is no room for one of the most famous of featuring “Harry Dickson, the American Sherlock Holmes”. In a kind of parallel universe, Dickson also have been a director’s dream project, a lost master- all unfinished British films, I, Claudius, Josef von lived in Baker Street, but his adversaries included piece, or a folly, but all share the enigmatic quality of Sternberg’s 1936 production starring Charles a hypnotising octopus, zombies, a flame-throwing automaton and a vampiric Buddha. Resnais was being frozen in a state of suspended imagination. Laughton, which was abandoned after two reels of determined to shoot in a fog-bound, dark and film were shot. Inevitably, the definition of “British” is rainy London, as he felt it had the vital surreal KALEIDOSCOPE screen presence, planning to shoot in 70mm colour Dir: Alfred Hitchcock 1964-67 British cinema has produced an intriguing collection always subject to debate, but we follow the current that would gradually evolve into monochrome. Set to be Hitchcock’s darkest film, the story of these phantom films, with many high-profile cultural test applied for tax relief in which points are Surrealist André Delvaux was to design the sets concerns a young bodybuilder in New York and Stockhausen to write the score. For Harry who is a serial killer and rapist, luring young examples, including ’s Proust screenplay awarded for a range of factors including British cast Dickson, Resnais considered Basil Rathbone (who women to their deaths. In a bold move, for Joseph Losey, ’s Nostromo and Joe and crew, locations, and subject matter. first played Sherlock Holmes on film in 1939) but the film was to be shown entirely from the his first choice was . However, the perspective of the killer. Hitchcock planned Orton’s Beatles project Up Against It. ’s formation of the National Theatre in 1963 coincided to experiment with hand-held filming and lost films range from The Tempest to a musical about Of course no claims can be made for their quality; with a planned start date, and Olivier couldn’t the use of natural light. A glimpse of this commit to 17 weeks filming. To cut the escalating proposed new vérité style exists on an hour- the life of , ’s from this is not a top 50 best never-made British films but production costs, the 3 and a half hour script was long tape of experimental colour rushes. Akhenaten to The Space Gospel, Alfred Hitchcock’s rather a tantalising glimpse of an alternative history. cut to just over 2 hours, but Resnais wasn’t happy Hitchcock’s final unfinished film, The Short with the end result: “A series of fascinating fragments Night (1976-79) was to be a “realistic Bond” REMEMBRANCE OF from Kaleidoscope to The Short Night. Not Showing At This Cinema… films only you can see. but only fragments, and I couldn’t find an ending”. loosely based on George Blake. , Walter Matthau and were all THINGS PAST proposed as possible leads. But Hitchcock, Dir: Joseph Losey 1972 This programme has been prompted by the release, Tim Brown then aged 79, was in no state to start a film, Harold Pinter devoted a year to reading the entirety finally, of two highly anticipated films based on MACBETH especially one with so much location shooting. of Proust’s seven-volume À la recherche du temps www.cine-city.co.uk Dir: Laurence Olivier 1955-58 Universal cancelled the project and Hitchcock perdu and condensing it into a single film. His script renowned novels that both endured protracted and died a year later. opens with a wordless sequence of thirty-six shots, beginning with a patch of yellow taken from complicated routes to the big screen. Vermeer’s View of Delft. Nearly four hours later, struggled for over a decade to bring his version of the patch of yellow appears again, closing the film. THE LOWLIFE The project invigorated Pinter — “the best working Sunset Song to fruition and High-Rise, first proposed In Alexander Baron’s 1963 Hackney-set novel, year of my life… I was swallowed up by it” — but as a film nearly 40 years ago, has now been directed Harryboy Boas describes his gambler’s life as “a proved too expensive and complicated to film. good life, if you’re not one of the goomps who thinks Potential leads included Alain Delon and . by . A film adaptation of Tulip Fever, there is some virtue in hard work”. The Lowlife, “a Pinter’s un-filmed screenplay is now available as a Deborah Moggach’s bestselling novel set in 17th riotous off-beat novel about gamblers, prostitutes standalone text and has since been produced for and layabouts of London’s East End” was optioned the stage. Century Amsterdam, which was suddenly abandoned as a vehicle for Harry H Corbett, best known for his more than ten years ago after the UK government re- role in Steptoe and Son, but never made. OCTOBER CIRCLE moved tax incentives for film production, is also now Dir: 1975 in the can and set for cinema screens in 2016. With thanks to: took out an option on Robert Littell’s ONLY LOVERS novel about the effect of the 1968 Czech uprising on Catherine O’Sullivan, Alice Hattrick, After Olivier and Vivien Leigh had starred in a father and son in Bulgaria, and tried unsuccessfully Many never-mades are indeed based on cult or best- Jason Wood, 6970 Design. an acclaimed 1955 stage production (Terence LEFT ALIVE for years to get it to the screen. Hugh Hudson was Rattigan described his performance as Dir: Nicholas Ray 1966 lined up to direct and , Dirk Bogarde, Simone selling novels, constantly optioned but failing to make “definitive” and thought Leigh seemed like the perfect Signoret, , Sean Connery and it to the big screen – less than 5% of all books optioned was the best Lady Macbeth she had ever choice to star in this adaptation of Dave Richard Burton were all approached to form the cast. seen), Olivier was keen to adapt it for the Wallis’ dystopian counter-culture novel It looked like filming was finally set for the autumn of within the UK ever get to be filmed; D.M. Thomas’ big screen. It would have been his fourth in which all the adults in the UK have 1981, but ’s illness meant the script was controversial The White Hotel has had more near cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare following committed suicide and teenagers run wild. delayed. As Bolt’s health worsened and Puttnam and successful versions of , Henry V and The Stones were set to play the Seely Street Hudson’s commitments piled up, the project went into misses than most since its 1982 paperback version Richard III. However, Olivier was left bitterly gang, racing through the streets on their turnaround. Puttnam: “Some producers can’t wait disappointed when the proposed film was motorcycles in search of diminishing stocks to get going once they have a perfectly satisfactory scuppered by financial problems. The death of food and petrol. The band’s manager, script: but I plough through as many drafts as I feel is of Sir Alexander Korda in January 1956 Andrew Loog Oldham, and Jagger met with necessary until the germ of the idea is developed to curtailed an agreement between the producer Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause) but the perfection. Or else I don’t make the picture”. and Olivier and though Oscar-winning meeting came to nothing. Finally, at a screen near you producer Mike Todd was also interested in financing the film, he too died, in early 1958. VOSS Olivier later claimed there were no surviving UP AGAINST IT Dir: Patrick Losey copies of his screenplay and nobody would 1967 The hero of Patrick White’s historical novel is a SUNSET SONG High-Rise ever have any idea how his version would Considering that the script included scenes doomed German explorer who disappeared into Dir: Terence Davies. Dir: Ben Wheatley. have compared with those of where the band “become involved in dubious Australia’s vast desert. Voss’ fatal flaw, and his With: Agyness Deyn. With: , or . However, in early 2013, political activity, dressed as women, committed immense appeal as a character, is his pig-headed UK/Luxembourg 2015. , . numerous versions of the “lost” screenplay murder…”, it’s no surprise that Joe Orton’s megalomania. Asked whether he has studied the 135 mins. UK 2015. 118 mins. were found at the British Library, from early script for a third Beatles movie never got map, he replied, “The map? I will first make it”. drafts through to detailed shooting scripts. made. Paul McCartney later admitted it David Mercer’s screenplay came very close to Terence Davies finally brings his much cherished adaptation of Lewis Grassic Opening with the line, “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog…”, J.G. was the script’s homoerotic undertones being filmed, with several drafts completed, funding Gibbon’s 1932 novel to the big screen. After The House of Mirth, released in Ballard’s celebrated 1975 novel was never going to be the easiest work that scuppered that project: “The reason seemingly in place, and locations chosen. Although 2000, Terence Davies didn’t make another film until his documentary Of Time to adapt for the screen. The tale of a modern tower block with amenities THE TEMPEST why we didn’t do Up Against It wasn’t Losey had originally planned to and The City eight years later – and it was a further three years until his next enough to allow it to exist in relative isolation, the block is structured according (aka Trimikia) because it was too far out or anything. star, was eventually chosen to drama, . After protracted battles with the former UK Film to the bank balances of its inhabitants. The cocktail party loving wealthy Dir: Michael Powell 1970-75 We didn’t do it because it was gay”. The script lead. The project collapsed in 1977 when Australian Council to get Sunset Song greenlit, Davies, along with his producers Hurricane frolic in the penthouse suites above; the less privileged look enviously up at Powell first announced his intention for a was later adapted, with Mick Jagger and funders raised questions of creative ownership. Films, has found himself on safer ground with the more auteur friendly BFI the endless hedonism from the floors below. “surrealist Tempest” in 1970: “I had a way of Ian McKellen set to star but Joe Orton’s “Despite the outback setting, Voss had the potential Film Fund. The visionary director’s adaptation of the renowned novel about doing the story that wasn’t just Shakespeare murder caused the project to be shelved to be one of Losey’s simmering interrogations of rural Scottish life is masterful from first shot to last. Arguably the ultimate Dystopian tale from an author who regularly peered but a bit of Powell as well”. Going through once and for all. English class tension, as well as Mercer-esque behind the façade of respectable social behavior, High-Rise was once a various drafts and with most of the finance fantasies on the life of the mind”. (Quentin Turnour, Another moving meditation on the past and the seemingly ceaseless brutality project developed by producer Jeremy Thomas with scheduled of men (initially encapsulated by Peter Mullan playing effectively to type), to direct. It never came to fruition, but Thomas kept the flame alive through in place, filming was due to begin in Greece Australian National Film and Sound Archive). Sunset Song utilises Davies’ “memory realism” to poignantly, but unsentimentally numerous other incarnations and now 40 years on, British director Ben in March 1975, with as contrast moments of bliss with more protracted periods of tragedy and suffering. Wheatley, whose previous work has explored themes of primal urges, secret Prospero, Mia Farrow as Ariel, Michael York O’HOOLIGAN’S MOB Exquisitely rendered with each scene evocative of an Old Masters painting sects and the sense of civilization teetering precariously on collapse, delivers as Ferdinand and Topol as Caliban. Frankie Dir: Michael Reeves 1969 (imagine Days of Heaven meets This Filthy Earth via Dovzhenko’s Earth), the a startling and audacious take on fragmentation, tribalism and class injustice. Howerd and Malcolm McDowell were also Michael Reeves is one of the great lost talents of film’s use of score is also, but unsurprisingly, a triumph. Understated in its on board. The sets were to be designed by British Cinema, completing just three features exploration of the novel’s themes of incest, suicide and infanticide, Davies also Adapted by Amy Jump and with a cast including Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy cartoonist Gerald Scarfe and including the masterly Witchfinder General (1968) resists over-playing the horrors of World War I with a brief tracking shot of a Irons as the god-like architect Anthony Royal and , Wheatley’s (married to Mia Farrow at the time) was before his death of a barbiturate overdose aged water-logged field post-battle conveying with fidelity and restraint scenes of film captures the source material’s alarming psychological insights whilst to compose the score. However the legacy 25. One of his planned films was the Irish Easter unutterable horror. also emphasizing the profoundly disturbing connections between technology of Peeping Tom (1960) and its critical Rising drama O’Hooligan’s Mob, told through the and the human condition. mauling still haunted Powell; attempting to get eyes of a young IRA man. Reeves had already Sunset Song is the work of a film-maker whose self-confessed inability to understand the modern world readily transfers itself to an intrinsic ability to some pre-production costs from Rank, they decided on a final scene where the hero escapes translate with great poetry our past. Jason Wood announced they were “not interested in any a firing squad by grabbing a machine gun and project involving Michael Powell”. turning on his would-be executioners and the watching crowd. Reeves’ pet project, which was Sunset Song is released 4th DECEMBER High Rise is released 18TH March 2016 GORMENGHAST BIRDSONG AKHENATEN Dir: 1978 DIR: VARIOUS 1994-PRESENT MONEY Dir: Derek Jarman 1975 Based on Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, this Sebastian Faulks’ bestselling novel following young 1998 This vision of excess and homoerotic fantasy was a project that had been preoccupying Gilliam Englishman Stephen Wraysford and his harrowing considers the failure to make an was to be, according to Jarman, “no Cleopatra” since Life of Brian. At one stage , a huge fan of experiences in the trenches of Northern France in adaptation of his 1984 novel “one of the great but “as simple as butter muslin with fine the novels, held the rights, and every couple of years WWI was first optioned in 1994 for a few hundred lost opportunities of cinema”. He wanted Gary white limestone walls, sand, and perhaps a Gilliam would get a call: “I’ve got the rights, what pounds. In 1999, Britain’s most powerful production Oldman in the role of John Self, a man with an SHOWING NOT gold bracelet or a scarlet ribbon”. Born out of about…?”. However, the adaptation never materialised. company, Working Title, came on board but despite insatiable appetite for money, alcohol, drugs Jarman’s obsession with Ancient Egypt and “I’ve lost interest because I’ve worked the film out the A-list talent attached to the project, attempts and porn. In a case of life imitating art, John the occult, the 1975 script is preoccupied in my head too often. Jabberwocky had a lot of to adapt it into a big screen epic have so far Self is trying to raise money for a film that with sexual politics and psychoanalytic theory. Gormenghast in it, so I’ve probably done it already”. come to nothing. , , Michael eventually falls through, which is just what The Sphinx was to narrate the Oedipal melo- Mann and Iain Softley were all tipped to direct. happened with this adaptation. Amis: “You never drama, in which the sons of a hypersexualised Eventually, said yes after directing know, though, with films. You’re pretty sure Akhenaten (), born of his mother GOSSIP Bloody Sunday. He wrote his own script and the film will be made when it’s in the rental Tiye (Lindsay Kemp), also become her lovers. Dir. 1982 considered both Ewan McGregor and Jake stores, and not before”. A television movie was After years of research, begun soon after the Scottish director and producer Don Boyd was Gyllenhaal as possible leads. However, the financial broadcast in 2010, with Nick Frost in the title role. British Museum’s Tutankhamen exhibition described by critic Alexander Walker as a one-man failure of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (2001) and in London in 1972, Jarman failed to secure film industry. He developed this screenplay with Charlotte Gray (2002), also based on a Faulks’ novel, funding and eventually lost interest. Village Voice writers Michael and Stephen Tolkien. meant big budget wartime literary adaptations THE NEW Initially set in New York and described as a “moral were viewed as box office poison, and Birdsong odyssey through soul-destroying wine receptions”, went into turnaround. Paul Greengrass left to make CONFESSIONS NEUTRON Gossip recounts the story of society journalist Clare’s NOSTROMO ARYAN PAPERS the Bourne movies, and a host of other directors ’s 1987 novel, whose hero is Dir: Derek Jarman 1979-1983 (Anne Louise Lambert) rejection of the columnist Dir: David Lean 1986-1991 Dir: 1990-1993 have come and gone. As Faulks himself has obsessed with making a movie based on the life One of the most intriguing of Jarman’s never- lifestyle once she reconsiders the ethics of her profession. Planned as an epic to rival Lawrence of Arabia and The story of a boy and his mother hiding during commented: “I have been hired and twice fired from of Rousseau, has proved too epic to be adapted mades, this post-apocalyptic love story was The script was reworked by columnist Lucretia Doctor Zhivago, this is arguably the greatest English the Holocaust, Kubrick wrote the first draft of the the script. Harold Pinter accepted to do it but they for the screen. Boyd has admitted, “People have set to star David Bowie, Steven Berkoff and Stewart and “anglicised” by when the plot language novel never to reach the screen. David screenplay based on Louis Begley’s novel Wartime Lies. couldn’t afford him. I could go on! All film people circled around The New Confessions for years, Jack Birkett. Scripted by Jon Savage, the film shifted to London after being rejected by Universal for Lean and screenwriter Robert Bolt collaborated on a The film almost went into production before Steven are bonkers or dim, or both”. The BBC made a but its scale daunts them in the end”. When was scheduled to be shot around the decaying being “too arty and European”. After more than two film version of ’s Nostromo for years Spielberg’s Schindler’s List was released in 1993. television version in 2012 with Eddie Redmayne in asked if he prefers writing novels to screen- Wall, but according to Bowie, “nobody years in development, production finally got underway but neither lived to fulfil the ambition. Bolt, and later According to Kubrick’s wife, Christiane, the subject the lead, and a new feature film has been rumoured plays, Boyd replied: “If you write novels you live was willing to put up the bread for it”. According but was shut down after just two weeks of shooting , worked on script drafts for an itself had become too difficult and depressing for the to star Nicholas Hoult. in a world of perfect autonomy and freedom. If to Michael O’Pray in Up in the Air (Jarman’s when it emerged that the film had been deceived by a international cast including , Paul director, with Kubrick concluding that an accurate you write films you live in a world of constraints, collected film scripts), “its tight structure, fraudulent funding source — the certificates of deposit Scofield and Dennis Quaid. Various start dates were film about the Holocaust was beyond the capacity of compromise and endlessly ramifying parameters. powerful visuals and post-apocalyptic theme invested by “The Martini Foundation” didn’t actually exist. announced, but Lean’s increasing frailty and ill health cinema. Therefore there is no comparison”. would have made it perfectly apt for the early led to constant delays, with earmarked 1980s when Blade Runner (1982) and Brazil as a standby director just in case. Lean died aged 83 (1985) successfully occupied the same terrain”. IF…2 in April 1991, just 6 weeks before the proposed start Dir: 1984-1994 date. There have been further unsuccessful attempts Lindsay Anderson and writer David Sherwin’s planned to film Hampton’s screenplay, but the project has “If you write sequel to the 1968 classic was to feature the same ultimately come to nothing. “People complain it’s a ANGEL MAKER / characters, locations and actors, with Malcolm dark, difficult script. What can you say to that? It’s a films you live THE SPACE GOSPEL McDowell reprising his role as Mick Travers. Centred dark, difficult novel”. STRAY / Dir: Derek Jarman around the idea of a 25 year reunion, according to in a world of and 1976 McDowell, all the characters “return to the school much ORIGINAL BLISS later in life when we’ve become bank managers and Dir: Carine Adler constraints, The Bible as ? Jarman and things…”. David Sherwin says he wrote a scene for the CONFESSIONS OF A Adler’s widely acclaimed 1997 debut feature Under Russell co-wrote a script on this very premise, film where the cast and crew gather for a Gala screening THE MAN The Skin won the Michael Powell Award for Best compromise featuring astronauts as angels, visitors from of If… with the Queen Mother in attendance. After the JUSTIFIED SINNER British feature film, and starred Samantha Morton outer space artificially inseminating Mary, and screening, she knights Travers and The Crusaders Dir: Bill Douglas 1988-90 WHO KILLED in her first big screen role. Yet Adler has not made the Angel Gabriel as a projected hologram. on stage, and then slices off Sherwin’s head. A first Despite all the plaudits for his award-winning another film since. She did write Angel Maker, a and endlessly Unmade as a film, Russell turned the script draft of the screenplay was commissioned, but the autobiographical trilogy made in the 1970s, Bill DON QUIXOTE portrait of a young mother who arrives in Paris into a SF novel, Mike and Gaby’s Space Gospel, producers pulled out, viewing it as a “European project Douglas struggled to raise finance for his next Dir: Terry Gilliam 1990 from South America with her very young daughter, ramifying published in 1999. which will not be of interest in the US”. projects. He was finally able to complete his As Gilliam freely admits in Lost in La Mancha, and her efforts to land a rich husband. Budgeted film about the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Comrades, which documents this film’s myriad disasters, at £8m, the project was abandoned when Miramax parameters”. in 1987 but it was to be his last film as he died “If it’s easy, I don’t do it”. Gilliam’s visions are folded its UK subsidiary HAL films. The story has IN THE BEGINNING in 1991 aged 57. With his death, the British often too eccentric for Hollywood’s tastes and since been adapted as a radio play for the BBC. William Boyd Dir: Sally Potter 1992 film industry lost a unique imagination and the too expensive for low-budget financing. After Sally Potter doesn’t consider this an unmade tantalising prospect of future projects. One of several false starts and an £8 million budget “A contemporary, sophisticated in the film, despite the intense research she under- his unfilmed screenplays, Confessions… was reduction, filming of this Cervantes adaptation vein of Polanski’s Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby”, took into astronomy and genetics to fuel this based on James Hogg’s celebrated novel about started in in 2000 with , Stray was set to star Emily Mortimer as Milla, a ambitious work of poetic feminist science a religious fanatic, who believes entry to Heaven Vanessa Paradis and Jean Rochefort. The worker at an animal shelter in London. She meets THE LOVELY BONES fiction. In her own words, “I realise I have is predetermined. Under the influence of the problems began on day one, which saw inter- a boy, falls in love and he moves in with her. Dir: Lynne Ramsay 2002 eventually made every film I have been truly shadowy stranger Gil-Martin, he stalks and ference by military jets flying overhead. Flash However, their idyll is irrevocably shattered when Alice Sebold’s novel was bought by Film4 as convinced about. In The Beginning has not been murders his own brother. At one stage Ingmar floods and hail stones destroyed equipment Purrl, an unusual stray cat, comes into their lives. a half-written manuscript before publication. made (yet) because it isn’t right, or finished in Bergman and were and transformed the landscape on day two, Somehow more than a pet, Purrl bewitches Milla, The dark subject matter seemed an ideal fit for my view… Slow though my output is, I don’t have considering adapting for the screen. Douglas’ destroying any sense of continuity. Despite and the consequences are deadly. Based on Vicky Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar), who any unmade films, just not-yet-made films; own script has been described by many as his Rochefort’s commitment — he had spent the Allan’s debut novel, with a screenplay from Richard spent two years developing the project. In 2002, in effect they (or the scripts) have to reach most brilliant work but he died without raising previous seven months learning English — ill- Stanley (Hardware), Adler was in development for a sold Film4, but they managed to a stage I experience as a kind of personal the money to make it. Lindsay Anderson was ness caused his late arrival to Spain and a pre- couple of years with this psychological thriller. retain the film rights until The Lovely Bones shot to necessity, at which point the battle to make then linked with the project but he too died in 1994. mature departure. Already on a tight schedule, the top of Best Seller list them commences and I simply don’t give up”. without Rochefort the film would have needed In 2007 the Evening Standard reported that Adler’s and Hollywood started circulating. Dreamworks entirely new financing. Shooting was called off next film was to be Original Bliss, based on the novella expressed an interest, Ramsay was taken off the and the script handed over to the insurers. Gil- of love and desire by A.L. Kennedy and starring Kristin project, and in 2005 independently liam is currently rumoured to be taking another Scott Thomas, who had bought the rights to the story purchased the rights. Jackson’s film was released crack at the material with John Hurt. after yearning for a different kind of role. Like Angel in 2009, a very different adaptation than the one MID-ATLANTIC Maker and Stray, the film has never materialised. originally envisaged by Ramsay. Dir: Mike Hodges 1976-1985

A black comedy about a PR man (Malcolm McDowell) in an out-of-season seaside resort who gets involved in a course on leadership dynamics propagating a form of extreme “turbo capitalism” THE WHITE HOTEL THE (WO)MAN WHO WASN’T THERE - NEVER-MADE BIOPICS run by a New Age guru (). Dir: various 1982-present Hodges wrote the script while in LA while The list of names that has been attached to making The Terminal Man (1974) but despite the this adaptation of D.M. Thomas’ acclaimed and great cast, which also included , he controversial novel is staggering. The story couldn’t get the money for it. Hodges tried again follows Lisa, a young opera singer who seeks at various stages over his career to make it. out the services of Sigmund Freud in post- filing system contained everything from fell to dust. “And that felt like five years of my life A decade later in the UK he directed Morons WW1 because she is haunted by MARY QUEEN what the weather was like during had been wasted. It hadn’t, because I’d read all of From Outer Space (1985) on the condition hallucinatory dreams of a white hotel. Together a particular battle to a catalogue of Shakespeare, all of Marlowe, I read Spenser. I’d been that the production company, Thorn EMI, would they unlock the key to her memories and her OF SCOTS 15,000 images of the Napoleonic to all these beautiful locations, so I actually did get a finance Mid-Atlantic as part of a 2-picture premonitions of the future. Dir: Alexander Mackendrick period. In the time it took Kubrick lot from that”. deal, but again the cameras never rolled. With originally optioned the book, looking for “an 1940s-1969 to compile all this information, Thatcherism now in full swing, Hodges’ script intelligent, demanding role” but after discussing Ealing Studio’s Alexander Mackendrick however, Rod Steiger’s Waterloo had proved eerily prescient. Hodges eventually the frequent and graphic sex scenes with her had big plans for this proposed biopic (1970) had proved a flop at the turned the screenplay into his first novel, proposed director, , she of Mary Queen of Scots, including a box office and MGM, wary of Watching The Wheels Come Off, which was dropped the option. Meanwhile, , list of possible lead actresses that repeating this failure, abandoned the WAS HERE published in the UK in 2010. Emir Kusturica, Terrence Malick, , included , , project. Kubrick left the studio for Warner Dir: Alex Cox 2001 , and Pedro Almodóvar have “I wanted to do and . Brothers, where he made A Clockwork Orange Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid and all been rumoured to be interested, and Meryl The director envisaged the project as a gritty, instead, and some of his historical research was Nancy) was commissioned to BURIED ALIVE Streep, , , Kate a story about avowedly anti-Romantic study in realpolitik, eventually channelled into Barry Lyndon. write a screenplay based on the Dir: Mike Hodges 1980 Winslet, , , describing the set-up as “a sophisticated French life of Keith Moon, legendary Mike Hodges readily admits his CV has “holes in and all set to star. all the films I lady in Boot Hill”. Shooting was finally about to drummer with , by Roger it like a Swiss cheese”. The director of Get Carter, The film at various times has been blocked by start at Pinewood but Universal pulled out in 1969, FLYING HORSE Daltrey. Described by Cox as prob- Flash Gordon and Croupier has made just 9 war, death and litigation, with Thomas himself nearly directed cancelling all European productions and consigning Dir: Bill Douglas 1990 ably the best script he and collabora- features in over 40 years, partly due to his being dragged into a legal fight when one of the the biopic to the chopping block. Early cinema held a particular fascination for Douglas tor Tod Davies ever wrote, they decided unwillingness to compromise. Buried Alive was producers was sued and tried to share liability which didn’t get and this completed screenplay was based on the life Keith Moon’s antagonist should be Pe- based on Arnold Bennett’s 1908 satiric novel with him to the tune of $4.2 million. and works of English-born photographic pioneer ter Sellers. “Sellers first appears as a about an extremely shy painter, Priam Farll, who made, or at THE GOLDEN YEARS Eadweard Muybridge. The script juxtaposed two giant spider, then as himself, assumes the identity of his dead valet as a Dir: Michael Powell 1952 stories, a contemporary tale about a film-maker who then as Harry Nilsson, in means of avoiding press attention. He marries Powell and Pressburger’s biopic of composer was trying to find a lost son of Muybridge alongside whose London apartment a widow and lives a happy life until the loss MOLL FLANDERS least not by me. Richard Strauss was conceived as an innovative a biography of Muybridge himself, whose life was rock stars inevitably die. of his wife’s money means he has to take up Dir: Ken Russell 1985 “auto”-biography, being shot entirely in the first-person. certainly dramatic. He introduced his wife to a Supporting cast includes painting again. An art connoisseur recognises Ken Russell was to direct this soft porn romp, based The list is According to plans, the figure of Strauss was never theatre-critic friend of his and encouraged them the other members of The his style but thinks the paintings are by an on the 1722 novel, with its budget to be actually seen on screen until the very end, when to go to the theatre together. When Muybridge Who, , and Steve imposter. Meanwhile Priam Farll refuses through variously reported as between £4m-£11m. With an endless and he is glimpsed on a screen within a screen watching discovered they had been having an affair, he McQueen”. Cox describes why his obstinate shyness to prove his own identity. “extremely erotic” script backed by Penthouse magazine a home-movie with his family on his 85th birthday. subsequently shot and killed his former friend. The the film wasn’t made: “I think Dirk Bogarde and were cast, and with as a producer, “the title role mindless”. This ambitious concept, as well as Strauss’ association case went to court and he was acquitted of murder, was the execu- but before shooting started, Hodges was taken calls for extensive nudity and very strong, though with the Third Reich, eventually sank the picture. with a ruling of “justifiable homicide”. The court case tive producer and so maybe it ill and had to have major surgery. The project stimulated sexual activity of every description”. Model Nicolas Roeg temporarily interrupted his famous experiment, The didn’t fit his recollection of events resurfaced in 1984 with a new version of the Janice Martin was selected to play Moll, the only Horse in Motion, when he photographed a galloping or vision of the story… I think that script with Peter O’Toole and Geraldine Chaplin actress acceptable to Russell who would also comply WILL! horse using a series of 24 cameras. the people who wanted to make now set to star and though the sets started to with Penthouse’s “publicity requirement”. However, (AKA THE BAWDY BARD) the film were expecting more of be built, the production finance had melted away. casting a non-union member in the title role proved CHICAGO LOOP Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1968-1969 a mainstream biopic – which is problematic as the production ran into trouble and Dir: Nicolas Roeg Strange as it may seem today, the idea of a musical MONSTER BUTLER really hard, to make a guy like was boycotted by Equity. The producers then tried to 1989-1991 adaptation of the life of William Shakespeare Dir: Lindsay Anderson 1993 that sympathetic”. take the film to Ireland, but Irish Equity also refused The list of films attached to Roeg seemed like a bankable Hollywood proposition David Sherwin wrote a screenplay of “the extraordinary to cooperate. Production was set to resume in Rome is certainly longer than his actual after the success of British musicals such as true story” of debonair thief, serial murderer and con- A STAR IS DEAD with Glenda Jackson, , David Hemmings, filmography, with many abortive My Fair Lady and . The “sensual and man Archibald Hall (aka Roy Fontaine), a butler who THESE Dir: Peter Walker 1977 Rod Steiger and Trevor Howard all being considered projects passing to other directors violent” script was written by , lunched with the Queen Mother before murdering his Brighton-born horror and sexploitation director for roles. After falling out over script changes, including Flash Gordon (1980), who elected All About Eve’s Mankiewicz ex-boyfriend, a prostitute, his brother, a member ARE THE Peter Walker (The Flesh and Blood Show, House Penthouse held Russell responsible for the film’s costs Hammett (1982) and Out of Africa to direct. The proposed cast included of parliament, and his wife. Eventually arrested, of Mortal Sin) was hired by Malcolm McLaren and sued for over £1m. Almost two years later, Russell (1986) eventually directed by Mike Robert Stephens as Shakespeare, he was locked up in Broadmoor and died in 2002. TIMES: to direct this film within a film about The Sex and Guccione finally came face to face during seven Hodges, , and as Anne Hathaway and Malcolm McDowell was due to play Hall and Gary Pistols. Diana Dors was set to star as Johnny days of courtroom drama. After a great clash of egos, Sydney Pollack respectively. Roeg Peter Ustinov as Ben Jonson, with Oldman his lover, Michael Kitto. The project had a new A LIFE OF Rotten’s mother, with filming due to start at Russell “won”; Guccione was not awarded any of his claim, once “wanted to do a story Burgess himself suggesting lease of life in 2005 when McDowell, now acting as Bray Studios once the band returned from their though Russell still had to pay his own steep legal fees. about all the films I nearly in the role of Shakespeare’s mysterious producer, commissioned another screenplay from THOMAS PAINE US tour. However, the Pistols played their last directed which didn’t get made, Dark Lady. The project was abandoned Peter Bellwood, but as yet has been unable to raise Dir: Richard Attenborough 2001 ever gig in San Francisco in January 1978 and or at least not by me. The by Warner Brothers in 1969. the money. Lord Attenborough’s long cherished film is an account the cameras never rolled. The following year AN ICE-CREAM WAR list is endless and mindless”. of the life of radical 18th Century reformer Thomas McLaren hired to make The Great One example is Chicago Loop, Paine. “I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. IN AFRICA written by Paul Theroux, NAPOLEON MARLOWE who ever lived… he was an Englishman who was Dir: Gavin Miller 1985 in which a psychotic killer Dir: Stanley Kubrick 1969 Dir: John Maybury 2000 involved in the writing of the American Declaration William Boyd had high hopes for the big screen (James Spader) on the After the success of 2001: A Space John Maybury, a frequent collaborator with Derek of Independence, the American Constitution, the BYE BYE BABY adaptation of his own novel about two brothers and loose in Chicago is hunted Odyssey in 1968, Kubrick embarked on Jarman, made his feature debut with 1998’s Francis French Constitution, wrote the great book called Dir: Courtney Love 2000-2002 their experience of the First World War in German by a female undercover cop his epic biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, Bacon portrait Love is the Devil. In 2000, Natural The Rights of Man”. An acclaimed screenplay by Love bought the rights to Caroline Sullivan’s East Africa. Boyd wrote the script himself and Gavin (). MGM agreed with either Ian Holm or Jack Nicholson Nylon announced a $20m project with Maybury Trevor Griffiths has been published and the story book Bye Bye Baby: My Tragic Love Affair With Miller was to direct, with casting and location recces to finance the $8 million film set to star as the Emperor, directing a portrait of controversial 16th Century poet was eventually staged at Shakespeare’s Globe. The Bay City Rollers with the backing of REM’s underway in . Thames TV were going to put in with shooting due to start in as Josephine, and playwright Christopher Marlowe. With Johnny However, Attenborough, who died last year, Michael Stipe, hoping to make it her directorial “a million quid… a lot of money in those days. Suddenly January 1989, but following and 75,000 extras to be enlisted Depp and set to star, the film was to remained committed to filming it for the screen: debut. The English press seized on the project, Thames TV lost its franchise as the then Conservative management changes the from the Romanian army. Napoleon focus on Marlowe’s relationship with Shakespeare, “But nobody wants to make it. Nobody. Because reporting that Ewan McGregor and Leonardo government had decided in its wisdom to open up project floundered. Paul was something of a lifelong and the theory that he wrote some of the latter’s it’s politics, it’s period, it doesn’t have any of the DiCaprio were going to star, but Love eventually UK commercial TV franchises to competitive bidding. Theroux later wrote the obsession for Kubrick and the plays. Maybury spent the best part of five years things that now are supposedly our prerequisites to pulled out. Thames went and with them went their million for novel based on the research for this film was exhaustive trying to launch the film, but Law’s rising profile and commercial success. I’m going to make it, provided An Ice Cream War. I blame Margaret Thatcher”. screenplay. even by his own standards. An enormous commitment to other productions took over and it all I’ll stand on my feet”.