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Vanity projects

Started by Famous Mortimer, June 30, 2020, 10:33:43 PM

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Chriddof

Quote from: George White on April 11, 2021, 09:05:23 AM
Has anyone else seen the Astrologer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2wbgjmPXxE&t=22s

American astrologer Craig Denney makes a film where the script was decided by astrology.

An attempt to revive Republic Pictures.

It's an extraordinary piece of 70s weirdness. BTW, for the benefit of others, that link above is a link to the entire film (which can't be legally released in full due to music rights reasons). I do encourage everyone to see it as its basically the 70s equivalent of The Room in a way, only it ended up with Craig Denney seemingly faking his death to escape the people he got the budget from. I might as well post my review of it from Letterboxd (mild spoilers, but nothing that'll ruin it):

Quote


The Astrologer is a movie that became a cult despite not being commercially available anywhere - and being that this happened during the age of the internet, that was enough to make people take notice.

Completely forgotten since its limited release in 1975 (not that anyone realised it was out at the time), it was rediscovered by chance in the 2010s. The sole film print was digitized, but the masses of completely unlicensed music used on the soundtrack made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to legally release. So this movie made most of its reputation for a good few years through a series of limited screenings, and online reports of how the production came to be (and also the story of the possibly faked death of its director). The actual movie itself was simply not online, apart from a few silent clips that appeared as part of a newly-made trailer.

And then in March 2021, that digital print finally leaked onto the internet - though Youtube, of all places. Even more miraculously, Youtube's copyright bots allowed the frequent use of unlicensed music to pass completely intact. The artists who unknowingly contributed to the soundtrack, most prominent being the Moody Blues, are claimed in the closing credits to have been licensed via "special arrangement with MGM Records, Inc.", a barefaced lie that matches the blend of arrogant bullshittery and earnest delusion that occurs throughout the entire film.

The narration begins with this: "My name is Craig Marcus Alexander, and I was born to lie, cheat, and steal. I never meant to hurt anybody in life, but I found out that if you want to survive in my environment, you'd better get them before they get you." The narrator is director and star Craig Denney, who plays Craig Alexander as a barely disguised avatar of himself. He then goes on to point out a kid in the California fairground we're seeing - it's meant to be the narrator at the age of fourteen. Within the next minute, we see this movie first prove itself as something absolutely batshit.

After we leave the fairground, we abruptly cut to that same 14 year old arguing with his mother over "pouring paint thinner all over a police car". There's then an even more abrupt cut to the kid getting arrested and being told he's going to jail. And then there's another equally sudden cut to the kid on something akin to a chain gang, doing some obliquely portrayed menial work with the rest of the convicts, who are all fully grown adult men.

As I say, all this happens within a minute. Up to that part it seems more like a standard TV movie (albeit with some overly grand opening credits), but it's here you start to realise that this is a very special and thoroughly ridiculous vanity project. It's trying to tell some kind of Citizen Kane-esque story, but it's also utterly unaware of its sheer insanity and ineptness - like all the best vanity projects.

The script's weirdness is further enhanced by the baffling editing. Sometimes it cuts out required connecting scenes, and at other times it tries to go all experimental. There is an amazing moment some way into the film involving a shot of a man being rhythmically intercut with a different shot of a woman. The latter shot is in black and white, and is clearly taken from a 1940s movie. This was obviously meant to illustrate something that's being talked about, but instead it just comes across as jarring.

Indeed, "jarring" is the watchword for most of this. A perfect example is the now infamous moment near the end of the first reel where you think another movie's been accidentally attached to it, until you suddenly notice the lead character is standing there in a completely new environment. The location of this scene is inexplicably announced with a different font to the one that's been used before, furthering the confusion.

At other times the movie dwells on things for way, way too long, to the point where the first half feels like a different movie to the second half. Once we do get into the second half, we see the lead character build some kind of amazing media empire from being able to do astrology really really well, which is odd because the opening narration gave the impression of a total con man. Turns out he can actually predict the future, to the point where papers around the world announce the latest percentage of his foretelling accuracy in their headlines. Also Denney seemed to have something against "tropicalist" astrologers, and has Alexander boast about how he's putting them all out of business with his astrology TV shows (which are basically on all TV channels absolutely everywhere).

The most celebrated bit of this film is perhaps an argument at a posh restaurant which is presented in slow-motion, a little like if it were a scene in something by John Woo. It starts off at normal speed with the lead and his romantic interest engaged in lovey-dovey small talk (that we can't hear due to a dramatic song blaring away). But then the couple start yelling as the camera is ramped up to 48fps - she chucks a glass of wine over him, he throws a glass at the wall, and the uncleared music roars on. I couldn't help but imagine the MST3K crew speaking over it in pretend slowed-tape voices: "Yoooouuuu're maaaakiiingg aaaa sceeeenneeeee!" Shortly after that, the movie almost turns into a werewolf flick.

(Oh, did I mention that the romantic interest is played by Denney's real life cousin? Well, you know now, and you wish you didn't.)

But perhaps the funniest thing about this movie is how the main thing that brings his empire down is "over-diversifying" by making too many movies. Rather than some grand ending, he just overspends on stuff he's not good at and messes up his cash-flow. It's a tiny point of realism in an otherwise absurd and dementedly narcissistic movie, one which the end credits claim was "Photographed in Astravision".

shagatha crustie

Does Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise count? That.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: shagatha crustie on April 11, 2021, 10:00:55 PM
Does Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise count? That.
It's not remotely the same as the movies that have been discussed in this thread, so no.

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

Quote from: neveragain on April 11, 2021, 01:16:13 PM
Less said about Ted 2 the better!
I read the summary of it and was both impressed and disgusted that the setup for it pisses all over the main lesson of Ted 1.

Alberon

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on June 30, 2020, 10:33:43 PM
I just discovered the existence of Frank D'Angelo. He's an energy drink millionaire in Canada, and uses his money to host a talk show, which he airs in pay-to-play slots on late night cable (the bits you'd normally see those long adverts), and also make movies.

He's directed ten of them since 2013, and his gimmick is hiring the most washed up actors he can find, such as Daniel Baldwin, Margot Kidder and Robert Loggia (who was memorably described as "I don't think he's aware he's being filmed" in 2015's No Deposit). They look bizarre, and I'm kinda interested to see one. D'Angelo plays the brilliant, sexually irresistible, undefeatable hero in all of them, of course.

There's also Jalal Merhi, Neil Breen, and dozens of others. Do you have a favourite vanity project movie / director?

Just catching up on this thread. I've GOT to see this one. It's about a mobster bitten by a vampire and has a poster that deserves to be on the terrible posters thread.



I've no idea how the Isle of Man features in the film but I can't wait to find out.

mothman

Executive Producer FRANK D'ANGELO Story By FRANK D'ANGELO Screenplay By FRANK D'ANGELO Music By FRANK D'ANGELO Directed By FRANK D'ANGELO... well, I'll be dipped in shit (probably by FRANK D'ANGELO)...

Sebastian Cobb

Howard Stern plays Howard Stern in the film Howard Stern.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on April 12, 2021, 01:00:07 AM
Howard Stern plays Howard Stern in the film Howard Stern.

I don't think it's fair to blame him for being typecast.

famethrowa

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on July 04, 2020, 04:47:55 PM
I see Joaquin Phoenix's I'm Still Here (2010) is currently on Netflix. Worth a look? The premise never quite intrigued me enough to rent.

By all means, watch it for free and fast forward through a lot of it (especially the stupid stupid ending). It's just not good enough to be an actual movie. Bunch of badly edited clips of random larking about.

Absorb the anus burn

Gramps Goes To College from 2014.

According to Reddit: "... A movie written by and starring an aggressively Christian retired computer programmer, about an aggressively Christian retired computer programmer who goes to college and shows up all of the evil, secular, liberal professors and students... In the film, Gramps becomes the school sports champion, is referred to as good-looking multiple times (words he wrote, coming out of other actors' mouths).... Beats the evil female science professor in an evolution debate, but also she wants to bang him afterwards... Becomes so popular in the school, that students are running up to him and asking for his autograph (in act 1 of the movie)..."

Ant Farm Keyboard

As a crossover with another current thread, in the early nineties, Steven Seagal negotiated making Under Siege 2 with the condition he could direct another project, which turned out to be On Deadly Ground. It's more or less your usual Seagal action movie (the supporting cast is actually quite impressive, with Michael Caine, R. Lee Ermey, Joan Chen, Billy Bob Thornton, John Trudell and even Irvin Kershner), but with an environmental message pushed by Seagal himself, which results in some weirdness, as Seagal makes a lot of stuff burn and explode to save Alaska. Plus the self-serving imagery is at an all time high level.

It closes with a rambling largely non sensical four minute speech about pollution and multinational companies, but the speech is rumoured to have been cut down from a much longer version by Warner, after some disastrous test previews, as Seagal wasn't granted final cut.

lipsink

Quote from: greenman on July 01, 2020, 04:33:36 PM
The latter was I believe a last minute replacement for someone dropping out and I think it sticks out a lot more than the early stuff which is IMHO work reasonably well.

I think he was meant to originally play Eric Stolz's drug dealer Lance but Tarantino wanted to be behind the hand held camera during the OD sequence. I'm not sure he'd even be able to pull of playing Lance cos he has quite a few shouty moments.

Famous Mortimer

Hail Caesar

Not the Coen brothers one, but (aside from one episode of his TV show) the sole directing credit for Anthony Michael Hall, with a solid assist from a mountain of cocaine. His star, such as it was, had faded by 1994, when this came out, so I'd love to know how this came to be. Who financed this? Who signed off on the script? This entire synopsis could be a series of questions.



Robert Downey Jr, doing a favour for an old friend and looking he only briefly paused doing lines to gibber his dialogue, is in it for two scenes. Judd Nelson is in one scene. Samuel L Jackson appears semi-regularly, at least, as a mailman who keeps getting mauled by AMH's rottweiler (but the rottweiler was too friendly so just lays on top of Sam, grinning, while he screams).

AMH is a wannabe rock star who has an extremely rich girlfriend. The girl's father makes a bet with AMH that if he can earn $100,000 in 6 months, he gets to keep seeing her (she's fine with the idea). But then, for some reason, he gives AMH a job in his pencil eraser factory (manager of the factory: Frank Gorshin, who's third billed despite being in two scenes), an eraser factory which is a front for making plastic explosives. He discovers the secret and exposes it, then gets everything he wanted at the end. Oh, and he realises his incredibly hot bandmate is a better choice than his kinda-awful rich girlfriend - the bandmate, Leslie Danon, deserved a lot better.

If you wonder why the evil Dad would put AMH in the perfect position to expose his massive criminal conspiracy, when he had no reason for doing so, you've put more thought into this than the writers or director. It feels like a treatment for another movie AMH was working on, but when it fell through he just decided to fold the factory plot into his rock band trying to make it big plot.

Every now and again, they'll luck onto a funny idea or performance (the band's drummer, Russian emigre Vlad, is pretty good fun) but it exists mostly to show how extremely cool and brilliant Anthony Michael Hall is. Also, he wrote all the songs! Most of them have a Stone Temple Pilots-alike backing, but the one at the end, done in an Unplugged style, where his now-girlfriend is reduced to a backing dancer, is perhaps the worst thing I've ever heard.

It's really really bad, like it should go to the top of any potential "bad movie night" lists you might have.

Junglist

Long time ago but if anybody wants any Frank D'Angelo films lemme know, my place seems to have loads of em.

Quote from: magval on July 01, 2020, 02:25:43 PMI love Quentin Tarantino films but his acting definitely qualifies as vain indulgence, whether it's the awful subdued turn in Pulp Fiction or the other end of the scale in Planet Terror and Duhjango Unchained.

I agree, except he was fine in Reservoir Dogs.

elliszeroed

Danzig made a softcore horror movie - Verotika. It was not good.

Red Letter Media did a show about it:


Menu

Quote from: curiousoranges on June 02, 2022, 10:44:18 PMI agree, except he was fine in Reservoir Dogs.

He's good in Planet Terror as well. It's almost the perfect role for him.

Menu

Quote from: JaDanketies on July 02, 2020, 11:28:14 AMThe Tarentino cameo in Pulp Fiction is definitely not the best part in the film, and he's too famous a face to say 'the n word' so many times while being white, in a movie he wrote. Would've been better to have almost any other actor in that role.

It's weird to think that that scene, in terms of the racism, went almost unnoticed at the time. It's now a very uncomfortable watch and I wouldn't be surprised if it's somehow amended in the future.

He seems to one of The Uncancellables.

phantom_power

I think characters in films are allowed to say and do things that real people aren't

Old Nehamkin

Quote from: Menu on June 04, 2022, 03:10:58 AMIt's weird to think that that scene, in terms of the racism, went almost unnoticed at the time. It's now a very uncomfortable watch and I wouldn't be surprised if it's somehow amended in the future.

I think contemporary audiences probably noticed that Tarantino's character is being racist in that scene.

jamiefairlie

Was there not some batty America millionaire who made a Star Trek series with himself as star? Even had cameos from real Trek actors.

kalowski

Quote from: Old Nehamkin on June 04, 2022, 01:04:27 PMI think contemporary audiences probably noticed that Tarantino's character is being racist in that scene.
Whilst true, it still feels like a vanity project. "I can write myself a character that says all these abhorrent things!!"

Menu

Quote from: Old Nehamkin on June 04, 2022, 01:04:27 PMI think contemporary audiences probably noticed that Tarantino's character is being racist in that scene.

Of course. But it was nowhere near as much of a problem as it is now. Not remotely. Put it this way: there's no way he'd include a scene like that in one of his films now.

The Ombudsman

Was there not some very wealthy businessman who set up a TV channel just so his wife could present on it and try to get her a proper presenting gig? I recall the whole channel was just his wife.

QDRPHNC

Quote from: The Ombudsman on June 06, 2022, 01:43:28 PMWas there not some very wealthy businessman who set up a TV channel just so his wife could present on it and try to get her a proper presenting gig? I recall the whole channel was just his wife.

You're thinking of the end of Wayne's World.

Ferris

This thing starring Steve Mnuchin's wife that he funded. She also wrote and produced it, for the Marenghi Trifecta.

Worst rated film of 2021, unsure if that's due to bloody woke snowflakes or what.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: jamiefairlie on June 04, 2022, 02:50:37 PMWas there not some batty America millionaire who made a Star Trek series with himself as star? Even had cameos from real Trek actors.
That was "Star Trek Continues", and the star was Vic Mignona, who is probably better known for being one of the main voices in...Dragonball? One of those shows, anyway. And also for being a sex pest who sued a bunch of people for firing him after the allegations first surfaced and lost.

Grant Imahara off of "Mythbusters" was Sulu in it, and to be polite he was never really an actor. Chris "son of James" Doohan, blessed with a similarity to his father but not any acting ability, too. Have a gander at the Wikipedia page for a list of the folks who Mignona got to be in it. They also used a script which was actually written for the real original series.

Up to relatively recently you could go and tour the set (which was built to TOS blueprints and looks exactly the same), but I think they sold it a while ago. It's much better than you'd expect it to be. 

Ant Farm Keyboard

Quote from: The Ombudsman on June 06, 2022, 01:43:28 PMWas there not some very wealthy businessman who set up a TV channel just so his wife could present on it and try to get her a proper presenting gig? I recall the whole channel was just his wife.

It was Charles Foster Kane who got his wife a leading part in the opera! It was Charles Foster Kane!

By the way, British actress Charlotte Kirk has had affairs with multiple studio executives, including the married heads of Universal (Ronald Meyer) and Warner Bros. (Kevin Tsujihara), who had to resign after their involvement was revealed (I'd bet a heavy sum on Kirk trying to blackmail them to get lead parts). The Warner guy got her minor parts in stuff like Ocean's 8 after they broke up.
Ultimately, she got cast as Nicole Simpson in Nicole & O.J., officially directed by a former boyfriend. Shooting started in Bulgaria (which was, according to production, the perfect stand-in for mid-90s Los Angeles). The project hasn't been completed, but it defends the theory that O.J. Simpson was actually innocent.
Since then, she's moved on to being engaged to Neil "The Descent" Marshall, who directed her in a script that she had co-written, The Reckoning (shot in Budapest as a stand-in for medieval Northern England). It got poor reviews in 2020.

Alberon

Quote from: The Ombudsman on June 06, 2022, 01:43:28 PMWas there not some very wealthy businessman who set up a TV channel just so his wife could present on it and try to get her a proper presenting gig? I recall the whole channel was just his wife.

Was that the Angelle pop video? As I understand it, her boyfriend owned several shopping channels at the arse end of Sky's EPG and had a spare channel for a while. So he used it to show her pop video and another PR video about her on rotation for several months.

Single never got anywhere and neither did her pop career, but she ended up marrying him and apparently works with him in one of his companies.