CHUD LIST: COCKBLOCKED! – DISCUSSION THREAD - Page 3

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Originally Posted by JGButler 

Plus, and maybe it's just the romantic in me, I think we need myths and legends like this and, sometimes, they're more valuable than the films themselves.

Nah I dig ya mate, that's a really nice way of looking at it actually.

Great article, Jeremy, and I agree. It's a sort of missed opportunity, while also being a bullet dodged. I, like Rain Dog, also love history, and would have loved to see Kubrick tackle the subject that he was most passionate about for a large part of his career. Then again, we wouldn't have the masterpieces that came afterward, and Barry Lyndon can kind of be seen as the closest Kubrick would ever get to doing Napoleon.

Kubrick's Aryan Papers getting shut down due to Schindler's List would be another great entry for this list.

Just want to pop in and say that I've really, really enjoyed this series. Truly one of Chud's best yet. Keep it up, guys.

RE: DAY 9

...is it really a genuine cockblock when Mann and co took so frikkin long to get Gates Of Fire up and running? I mean, they had a 6 year head start if not longer. At a certain point, you snooze, you lose.

I'd frikkin kill to see the Mann film tho personally. He hasn't done enough period epics in his career and this would've been a helluva one.

There also that the chance that Gates of Fire would never have been made anyway.  Mann isn't the best about sticking with projects.  If they don't get off the ground at a decent pace, he tends to let them wither and die.  Still, it would have been an excellent film had it actually been made.

This one was a funny one to research, since popular opinion (one I shared in!) has always been that Gates of Fire was outright cockblocked by 300.  But it seems to have been a victim of its own indecision. You could also argue that Universal balked at green-lighting it after Troy and Alexander were disasters, and that those films cockblocked it as much, if not more, than 300 did.

300 really seems to have been the nail in the coffin though.  But it's probably a handy excuse since I can't imagine any studio would actually have filmed Pressfield's Themopylae.   300 had a hard enough time getting their beheadings in.

If it was indeed a cockblock it was only in the faintest sense. 300 and Gates are as much alike as Captain America is with Saving Private Ryan.

If I had to choose I'd go for Gates 100% but I can't see a way the one's existence should preclude the other's. 300 is a fine movie and Gates would have been even greater.

Yeah, I wouldn't consider this a true cockblock, since GATES OF FIRE seems to be a victim of slow decision-making rather than a competing project dealing with the same event.

I want Mann to make this so much. It was right in his wheelhouse - plus Clooney, Willis, and who knows who else doing major historical asskicking. I really dig 300, but I hope at some point a more realistic version is made.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stelios 

If it was indeed a cockblock it was only in the faintest sense. 300 and Gates are as much alike as Captain America is with Saving Private Ryan.

While that is true to a degree, there is a pretty large gap in John Q's familiarity with WW2 vs Thermopylae.  WW2 flicks are pretty much their own genre, whereas ancient Greek war movies are fewer and farther between.  I can understand a studio being concerned about the superficial similarity putting off an audience with only a superficial knowledge of the historical event, even if the proper response to those concerns would be "fuck it, it's Mann, let him do what he does."

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Originally Posted by Schwartz 

While that is true to a degree, there is a pretty large gap in John Q's familiarity with WW2 vs Thermopylae.  WW2 flicks are pretty much their own genre, whereas ancient Greek war movies are fewer and farther between.  I can understand a studio being concerned about the superficial similarity putting off an audience with only a superficial knowledge of the historical event, even if the proper response to those concerns would be "fuck it, it's Mann, let him do what he does."

 

Yeah but sword and sandal epics are their own genre and if there hadn't been a lot of seeming piss-farting about and heel dragging Manns epic could have come out hot on the heels of Gladiator, instead of being worked on in a Hollywood where Troy and Alexander had already stunk up the place. Had that happened we could have seen a real reasurgence in one of my favorite epic movie genres instead of it disappearing as quickly as it had arisen.

Nah, this film cockblocked itself if you ask me. Oh for what could have been.

For the sake of decency, I'll refrain from any 'splainin' to do gags: Day 10

Thanks for illuminating a very small out there block, this is one I would never have heard of outside of CHUD. Neat. Always forget that Lucy did some film work, she's just so...television, I suppose.

We need more stories about people finding movies in the middle of god damned nowhere, films thought lost forever.

Heaven's Gated Community: http://www.chud.com/40902/chud-list-cockblocked-day-11/

Nice write up.

I never cared that HEAVEN'S GATE took down a studio. I just love the film.

HEAVEN'S GATE is to me the very definition of flawed masterpiece. An evocative, visually- stunning allegory of the corruption of the American dream and the death of a generation's idealistic spirit. I get that it's narrative incoherence can be off putting to the point of frustration, and the cinematography/look of the film, which I consider dirty authenticity, can be accused of ugliness, but even its many detractors must acknowledge that the film contains the greatest roller skating sequence in all of cinema! (During that dizzying, euphoric sequence I'm always 'Cimino, shine on you crazy diamond!') Add to this the uniformly excellent cental performances --Walken and Kristofferson especially --and you have a film worthy of a reputation beyond bringing down a golden era.

Also, you didn't mention it, but I hope in your 'Alternate Universe', YEAR OF THE DRAGON still exists.

Bampf! http://www.chud.com/41421/chud-list-cockblocked-day-12/

And thank god for it, too! Best cockblock yet in terms of "thank the heavens that didn't happen."

A Lucas Apocalypse Now would be intriguing, but I'd be much more interested in the story of how Kurtz went crazy and how he is actually Captain Williard's biological father. [/easy joke]

Seriously, though, the Lucas version would probably be an experimental footnote nowadays, along the lines of, and about as unmemorable as, 84 Charlie Mopic, perhaps.

I love this version of Lucas: the crazy maverick. his version of APOCALYPSE is one of my favorite "what if"s. With Milius serving as a devil on his shoulder, who knows what kind of insanity we would've gotten.

The more interesting story here I feel, is how different modern cinema(and editing, and effects, and tie-ins, yadda yadda) would have been if Lucas had done Apocalypse Now. Who knows if Star Wars would have even happened, and there was such a domino effect from that one film...

I'd love to see Lucas' version, personally, but not at the expense of losing the one we have. 

Great article.

Day 13!

I feel like there should be a sub-column category of Stanley Kubrick Films That Got Cockblocked. Thanks for the write up; and Walker, that exchange made me giggle more than it should have (which is zero).

I know, right?

I laughed pretty hard at it, and then it dawned on me that I don't want to read a called "The Destruction of the European Jews, PART TWO" since the first one was non-fiction.

There's a strong possibility that a Kubrick helmed movie about the Holocaust could have been the most punishing movie ever made, but I like to think that Kubrick would have interjected The Aryan Papers with humor that's similar in the antedote above. Slightly deranged, but unexpectantely humane. It's easy not to give Kubrick credit for the latter trait, but I don't think he was as misanthropic as people made him out to be.

Any more of these on the way?

Yep. Hiatus happened while I SXSW'ed, but I'm back and leading a regrouping. At latest, expect it to rebegin with the new week.

Oh hey, look what slipped onto the site this morning: http://www.chud.com/47779/chud-list-cockblocked-day-14/

I'm probably in the minority, but Jessica Lange's horrendous performance aside, I rather like '76 Kong.  I definitely think it's more rewatchable than Jackson's version, despite being lesser filmmaking.    

Ah, the Song of the Kong Dongs.

King Kong is actually responsible for the death of another film too! The film bombed at the Japanese box office in the 70s and was responsible for Toho putting off their Godzilla reboot until the mid 80s.

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Originally Posted by Ratty 

I'm probably in the minority, but Jessica Lange's horrendous performance aside, I rather like '76 Kong.  I definitely think it's more rewatchable than Jackson's version, despite being lesser filmmaking.    

With the exception of PJ's Kong fighting the two V-Rexes, I'm with you. PJ's is a "better" film in every respect, but the '76 Kong is generally far more watchable. I've even read halfway convincing arguments that, like the original film, the movie isn't really about the surface plot but is a critique of big oil in the 70s, and indirectly the energy crisis.

The scenes of Kong approaching Dwan that first night were truly terrifying - in an intoxicating, holy shit kind of way - to me as an 8 year old when I first saw it on the big screen. And despite PJ's poo-pooing of the 1976 version, the dynamic between Ann and Kong in his film seemed to borrow directly from it rather than from the '33 version, in which Ann was always terrified of Kong and never developed an empathetic connection with him.

God, I thought the '70s version (which I watched for the first time for this piece) was just awful and boring. All the cheesy bullshit of old Hollywood, mixed with the bland "tyranny of reality" type shit from the modern sensibilities. The oil company stuff is so thin and worthless as commentary- it's just a surface coat of modernizing. Filmmaking is flat as shit, and the effects --all due respect to Baker-- are rarely that interesting. It was all I could do to not fast forward through half the film.

I can't really argue with that assessment, Renn - and I know there's no doubt that I view the film through a thick sheen of nostalgia. The '76 Kong was the first movie (for me, I should specify) wherein the making of and production was big news and I knew it was coming months ahead of time. Contrast that with Star Wars, which landed the next year; I only knew about it a couple of weeks out, due to TV trailers. And even then I knew nothing about it.

Yeah, 76 KONG was the first movie I specifically remember the pre-opening hype for (I was a bit too young for JAWS), so it's one of the first major big-screen movies I saw that wasn't Disney.   So, nostalgia aside, I still enjoy it for the most part.  Grodin is actually kind of great as a walking cartoon of a Big Oil Huckster, and John Barry's score is pretty glorious.  

Oh, and it's got one of the all-time great misleading posters in film history that basically makes KONG look like he's 600 feet tall.  

The '76 Kong used to make my teen self horny beyond belief. Now I get why.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Renn Brown 

 the effects --all due respect to Baker-- are rarely that interesting.

Rick Baker performed Kong in a suit and mask he didn't design. That was the end result of his participation (despite great ambitions early on).

The giant articulated hand remains impressive. The full Kong figure appears to be falling apart in the one shot in which it is seen standing up.