10. Russ Meyer’s Who Killed Bambi?
What the film was about:
Originally titled Anarchy in the U.K., this film was set to be the first to feature the Sex Pistols. Director Russ Meyer wanted the film to put a punk twist on The Beatles’s A Hard Day’s Night. Movie critic Roger Ebert wrote a script while the Pistol’s manager, Malcolm McLaren, handled producing duties.
Why the film didn’t get made:
Only a day and a half into filming, 20th Century Fox yanked all funding for the project after taking the time to read the script. Studio executives said they found the content too vulgar and shocking. Recently, Roger Ebert posted the entire screenplay for Who Killed Bambi? on his blog.
Below Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert, and Malcolm McLaren talk about the film in a short documentary.
Comments (10)
Great feature – can’t wait to watch all the clips. There were a few I was unaware of, like Hitchcock’s Kaleidoscope. Frenzy is highly underrated!
The book The Front Runner, by Patricia Nell Warren, was optioned to death, and a movie which never was made…homosexuality and or homophobia plus terrorism just made people crazy… Paul Newman had the rights to it and sat on them… so to speak. And I quote,
“In 1975, Paul Newman’s agent, Hugh French, negotiated a one-year option on the Front Runner film rights. The script had to come first. How would the relationship be handled? The love scenes? Two men kissing? These are still big questions for actors today — and they were even bigger in 1975. The contract gave Ms. Warren the right to look at the screenplay, though not to approve it.”
More options, more nothing happened.
And more of that story at:
http://thefrontrunner.com/thefilm.html
I think The Front Runner is a possible # 11 for Great films never made. It probably still can’t be made even after Brokeback Mountain seemed to break the barrier.
awesome. really awesome. thank you!
I thought this was a great list, and a fun exercise! The only thing that saddens me is that all 10 imaginary films were films by men, about men. Do all the great films by women make it to the big screen? Or are female directors just not destined make great films? Something to think about.
maybe woman directors actually finish their projects while men of couse never quite finish any of their chores.
Don’t forget the screen adaptation of Patricia Nell Warren’s 1976 novel, The Front Runner, about a gay runner and his coach. At various times, such names as Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Tom Cruise have been bandied about as associated with the project, but nothing ever came to fruition. You’d think after Brokeback Mountain, there might be more interest, but as to why it never got made, the answer is simple: Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay! Gay!
Really great feature…
Fletch by Kevin Smith would have been awesome. He was staying true to the original book and not making a vehicle for the star to ham it up for the camera.
How is Jodorowsky’s Dune not on this list? Really? Featuring Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Pink Floyd?
Or even Jodorowsky & David Lynch’s King Shot, featuring Marilyn Manson and Nick Nolte?
[...] what would have happened if the unfinished dream projects of several legendary directors — namely Alfred Hitchcock’s Kaleidoscope, Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon, David Lean’s Nostromo, and Orson Welles’s Don [...]
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