Graveyard Of Dreams: Films That Never Were – Part 1

Napoleon
Involved Parties: Stanley Kubrick

In 1967, with 2001: A Space Odyssey going into post-production, Stanley Kubrick began pre-production on a film which for some time to come would become an obsession for him: a film about the life of Napoleon. Kubrick had large and rather immodest ambitions for the film right from the start, telling a friend, “It’s impossible to tell you what I’m going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.”

Kubrick contended that previous Napoleon biopics had left him dissatisfied, including Abel Gance’s critically acclaimed 1927 silent film.  Kubrick planned a sweeping epic covering all aspects of Napoleon’s life, including the sordid details of his sex life, as well as large scale battles involving 50,000 extras(Kubrick persuaded the Romanian army to lend soldiers for the battle scenes). Kubrick, a notorious packrat, amassed a huge collection of information on Napoleon’s life in doing research for the project, including over 15,000 images and 25,000 index cards detailing the general’s life practically day-by-day.

When asked why he was so passionate about making a film on Napoleon, Kubrick answered, “…he fascinates me. His life has been described as an epic poem of action. His sex life was worthy of Arthur Schnitzler. He was one of those rare men who move history and mold the destiny of their own times and of generations to come — in a very concrete sense, our own world is the result of Napoleon, just as the political and geographic map of postwar Europe is the result of World War Two.”

Unfortunately an ambitious project of this magnitude led to ever-increasing costs, and MGM wasn’t willing to risk the money. Kubrick continued to pursue the project in the years to follow, but to no avail.

Who Killed Bambi?
Involved Parties: Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert, The Sex Pistols

In 1977, Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert, who had previously collaborated on the cult movie Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, teamed up once again to make what was described as a punk rock version of A Hard Day’s Night. With Meyer directing and Ebert writing the screenplay, the film was set to have punk band The Sex Pistols as its stars. Ebert writes at length on his website about some of his experiences making the film, saying the Pistols “affected a total disinterest in the screenplay; their literary contributions were limited to penciling in “f – - -” every three words.”

Unfortunately only a day and a half of shooting was actually completed. When executives at Twentieth Century Fox read the script, they were reportedly so shocked by its content that they immediately pulled funding and the film was never completed.

Jaws 3, People 0
Involved Parties: John Hughes, Matty Simmons, Joe Dante

Around 1979, the producers of the Jaws series, in a stroke of byzantine whimsy, decided they would benefit from going in a slightly different, more humorous direction for the series’ third installment. They decided to bring National Lampoon founder and Animal House producer Matty Simmons, as well as an up-and-coming writer by the name of John Hughes,on board to come up with a script. The film was set to be directed by Pirhana director Joe Dante(who would later go on to direct Gremlins). What they generated was a parody of the series in the vein of Airplane!

The film opens with Peter Benchly, writer of the novel on which Jaws was based, sitting at home working on the screenplay for Jaws 3. After putting the finishing touches on the script’s title page, he decides to take a break and go out for a night swim in his backyard pool. As he preps himself on the diving board, we see several POV shots from just beneath the water’s surface, accompanied by the famous Jaws theme. As Benchly leapss from his diving board, the shark lunges from the water and picks him off in mid-air.

The rest of the film’s plot revolves around the original Jaws creators attempting to film Jaws 3, in which it is revealed the shark is an alien from outer space, only to have the filmmakers and studio executives attacked by an actual blood-thirsty shark in scenes that mirror the original film.

Spielberg’s fictional counterpart is particularly unlucky, having fingers and toes and limbs chewed off as the movie progresses. And apparently Spielberg didn’t take his lampooning in stride according to Matty Simmons, who stated in an interview, “The studio had already spent $2.5 million on pre-production. It was a great script written by John Hughes and Todd Carroll based on a story I had written, it starred Richard Dreyfuss and a young woman named Bo Derek, who would have been fabulous, and Spielberg walked into [Universal chairman Sid] Sheinberg’s office and said ‘you make this movie and I’m walking off the lot,’ because what happened is it made fun of the director. The movie was about making Jaws 3, and the shark kept attacking the director. One day he’d bite off the director’s toe and then his foot. Dick Zanuck and David Brown were executive producers and I was a producer on the movie, and they and I walked from Universal after that happened.”

We got Jaws 3-D instead.

A Day At The U.N.
Involved Parties: The Marx Brothers, Billy Wilder

In 1960, academy award-winning writer and director Billy Wilder was staying in a hotel in New York not far from the United Nations. Reflecting upon the current political climate, he decided that the increasing tensions during the Cold War were ripe for satire. And who better to send-up modern politics than the Marx Brothers? The Brothers, who had not made a film together in some 15  years, jumped at the opportunity.

Wilder said of the film, “We want to make a satire on the conditions of the world today, a satire on the deterioration of diplomatic behavior, on brinksmanship, wild jokes about the H-bomb, that type of stuff. It’s all so dramatic that a few jokes put over by the Marx Bros. should alleviate the tension.”

The story was to revolve around a gang leader, played by Groucho, who decides that with the police in New York distracted by having to protect the wave of UN delegates descending upon the city, he and his men could rob Tiffany’s and go relatively unnoticed. Other members of the mob included Chico, the strongman, and Harpo, the safecracker. They end up being mistaken for members of the Latvian delegation and are escorted to the UN, where Harpo delivers a speech using only sound effects and pantomime, with foreign interpreters translating.

Unfortunately before the film could be made, Harpo suffered a heart attack. Though he recovered, this prevented the film’s makers from being able to obtain insurance for the film. Not long after, Chico passed away, which effectively ended any chance the film had of being made.

Megalopolis
Involved Parties: Francis Ford Coppola

Much like Kubrick’s Napoleon, Megalopolis is another example of a great director’s vision burdened by its own ambitious nature. For many years Coppola has tried to bring to life his vision of a story about an architect who tries to create a futuristic utopia through architecture. Coppola has finished the screenplay and some early storyboards were drawn up, but financial issues continue to prevent the film from progressing beyond the pre-production stage.

Coppola says of the film, “The setting is modern New York. It deals… with the idea that the future world we’re going to live in is being negotiated today… It’s kind of a shape-of-things-to-come film in which the characters are concerned with artists, businessmen, proletariat all having a stake in the future but very few of them having a hand in what it’s going to be like. It’s a little bit like an Ayn Rand novel.”

The project seems dead at this point, largely due to the fact that studios are unwilling to commit to Coppola the level of funding needed. Though Coppola himself does not completely rule out the possibility, however slim, of the film eventually being made in the future.