Kubrick’s original version of A.I. It could have been an excellent film, but when Kubrick died Speilberg just had to tack on that sagging maudlin ending. It ruined the whole tone of the rest of the movie.
Does anyone know what’s happening with the film version of Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral”?
David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” or Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow.”
Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY
Von Stroheim’s 6 or even 10 hour GREED
Dylan’s EAT THE DOCUMENT
D. A. Pennebaker’s SOMETHING IS HAPPENING, the personal cut of the above movie, with primarily concert sequences
Welles versions of any of these films -
DON QUIXOTE
THE DEEP
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND
THE DREAMERS
etc. etc.
“Do you suffer from sore eyes, groovy forehead, or curly hair? Take Zimdon!…Come come, boy, it’s only a film. Pull yourself together.”
……
In Search of Lost Time by Proust and The Divine Comedy. Although I wish there was someone brave enough to attempt this just for fun.
heres the article with gilliam saying he will finish don quixote, from this november -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/nov/21/terry-gilliam-academy-tribute
Kieslowski was working on a trilogy before his death, the trilogy consisted of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory and he was writing them with Piesiewicz. Piesiewicz completed the screenplays and the films actually were made after his death, Heaven (2002) was directed by Tom Tykwer, Hell or L’Enfer (2005) by Danis Tanović and Purgatory or Nadzieja (2007) by a Polish director.
I have only seen the first one, It wasn’t great but I’m sure if Kieslowski was alive, the three films would be as good as his other films.
also Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible Part 3 couldn’t get completed because of his death.
Actually Kubrick’s AI script ends like the actual film. People’s reactions to this ending often reveals their bias for Kubrick and against Speilberg (mind you that Speilberg for me is only a good blockbuster filmmaker). I’m surprised that the ending is always percieved as happy and tacked on when its incredibly melancholic: a robot boy spends one final day with the mother who he will lose all over again.
Actually, there is a film version of In Search of Lost Time — or rather, just the last volume of it. It was made in France with all the usual suspects that crop up in the big French films (Catherine Deneuve as the aged Odette, Emmanuelle Beart as Gilberte). Plus, John Malkovich plays the Baron de Charlus! I haven’t seen it (I intentionally skipped a showing of it because I hadn’t finished the book), but I’m dying to see what Malkovich is like as the Baron.
I do, however, agree that a movie version of the FULL novel would be incredible, although I actually think that it might make a better TV series. I know, heresy! But you simply wouldn’t be able to capture all the little nuances without the in-depth character and plot development that you can get in a serialized form…
The name of the film version of In Search of Lost Time is Temp Retrouve, by the way (also that name of the last volume of the novel). Just imdb’d it because I couldn’t remember the title previously.
Dear God, that’s “Temps Retrouve,” not “Temp.” And I don’t know how to do accent marks here, so I won’t even attempt that.
I’ll echo Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye. I think the story could be filmed adequately, but I think it would be impossible to capture the essence of the novel, the essence of Holden Caulfield. You could try using all voice over narration, but that would doom the project.
I don’t think Palahniuk’s RANT could ever be filmed. It’s a damn good read, though.
I also saw someone post about Fincher’s complete vision for Alien 3. I second that, brother.
I can’t even say that I enjoyed A.I., it could have been so good but Spielberg had to put a damn mechanical talking teddy bear through out the whole movie.
Now tell me this… have you ever seen a talking teddy bear in a Kubrick movie?
What the fuck Spielberg?
Jerry Lewis’s “The Day the Clown Cried”
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Son of El Topo/Abelcain”
Catherine, Raul Ruiz’s film of TIME REGAINED (LE TEMPS RETROUVE) is really something wonderful. It takes a lot of assorted elements from all of the novels, it isn’t just a film version of the final novel itself.
There’s a very poor Kino DVD that is just begging to be remastered.
Coppola’s “Megalopolis” is one that came to mind.
A fun “what if” scenario would have been Lynch’s version of “Return of the Jedi”.
One of Susan Sontag’s few novels, “Death Kit” could make an awesome, haunting, frightening film. I’ve never met anyone who’s read this book, but it’s eminently filmable.
@Tom: Oh good, I’m excited to see it. Also a little worried, but that’s understandable, I think.
Also, re greatest films I’ll never see, I think it’s time they started adapting tax returns to film. I think twenty years of tax returns could supply enough fodder for a film of epic proportions — you have the names, the job descriptions, the marital status, the number and names of dependents, the rise and fall of fortunes, etc. I worked at a bank for a little while out of college, and people’s credit reports can be as poignant as anything else — what people spend their money on is so telling, and sometimes sad. Everyone should save their receipts, and we’ll reconstruct their lives from them.
@ Kifah Foutah
As far as i understand Malick’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’ is only a project he has hinted interest in doing in an interview with The Guardian newspaper. Wikipedia had it listed as a future project last time i looked but that never meant anything…
@ JP Belmondo
The footage that was cut from Welles’ edit of Magnificent Ambersons is, unfortunately, completely lost it would seem.
Dune I believe has been made into a shitty movie.
But catcher in the rye, doesn’t even seem to have one of those. (a shitty movie)
Catcher in the Rye. It’s not ‘unfilmable’ or anything, but I don’t think, in my lifetime, I will see a film poster or a board that says: Now Playing – Catcher in the Rye. Well, maybe Salinger had his reasons. I was told that one of his stories, which he allowed to be adapted to the screen was butcherd.
Holden Caulfield, as he did on many, had a great influence on me growing up. And yes, Holden disliked the movies. But I can’t bring myself to hate him just on that.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielswski is kind of unfilmable. James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake too.
We most likely will never get the full Stroheim cut of “Greed”, but sometimes I wish for an other adaptation of the novel.
I think of it as a kind of cosmic justice to actually get another sprawling interpretation out there, to make up for the great loss of Stroheim’s masterpiece.
At the same time, like Dr. Frankenstein, maybe I will deeply regret my wish, once I see the creation brought to life. I am not about to start suggesting who should script or direct.
Maybe one day we will get a definitive “Napoleon” on screen.
For unfilmability, Nathanael West’s “The Dream Life of Balso Snell” is up there.
Ronnie Rocket and Metamorphosis (Kafka). Lynch has written scripts for both. The first one was written after Eraserhead and as of 2009, will very likely not happen. The second one Lynch feels it is not the right time to make as CGI has not reached desirable levels to replicate Gregor Samsa in his full monstrous glory yet.
Andrei Tarkovsky was planning an adaptation of Germany´s Romantic novelist E.T.A. Hoffann and wrote the script “Hoffmanniana” which like many of his other proyects finally couldn´t be realized. Federico Fellini´s “Viaggo di G. Mastorna” which he wanted to make right after “8 1/2” would also have been fascinating to watch, but it developt into a nightmare project for him, that he effortlessly tried to realize until his death. In an interview Robert Bresson gave in the 1980s he talked about his planned film “Genesis” for which he was still searching funds, but ultimately L´Argent remained his last film.
Barry Lyndon
Hitchcock’s kaleydoscope
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (L’enfer) starring Romy Schneider. I saw a great documentary about the shooting on the film at the Toronto International film festival last year. L’enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot (2009) The surviving scenes from this incomplete film are strikingly beautiful.
Also Orson Welles has a few interesting lost and incomplete films. The Other Side of the Wind, Othello and Don Quixote.
david k
I really want to see “The Day the Clown Cried” but we all know that will only happen when Jerry Lewis dies (he is 82)
“She stated that the original draft was about the redemption of a selfish man, but that Lewis practically changed the entire story into a Chaplinesque dark comedy.”
I could see why people don’t want it released. When you make humor of the death camps; it easily would offend most people.