Failed Vanity Projects

Beyond The Sea, man. What made Kevin Spacey, at 47, play Bobby Darin, who died at 45? What made Spacey think he could play Darin at 18?? There's ONE musical sequence in this film, and the rest of it is straight melodrama. Did you want to make a musical, or not? Was that a dream sequence? What gives?

Does anyone remember The Mirror Has Two Faces?

Streisand's turn into the object of desire was so desperate the movie actually made me genuinely sad.  

On my honeymoon flight, the plane showed a double of Beyond the Sea AND De-Lovely. Terrible, but I DID laugh a lot, between Spacey's weird earnestness and Ashley Judd's brave commitment to being Kevin Kline's beard.

A number of Warren Beatty films probably didn't begin as vanity projects but they sure as hell ended that way:

Ishtar

Town & Country (it cost $100m & made back $10m)

Love Affair

Dick Tracy

Granted, there is some genuine technical greatness in Dick Tracy but Beatty is completely miscast (distractingly old & lightweight) & the script is such a mess that it begins & abandons a number of narrative plotlines in it's first 45 minutes before deciding to go with one.

Also, Shyamalan's Lady In The Water probably wouldn't been such a despicable entry in his oeuvre if he didn't cast himself as a writer who's work will CHANGE THE WORLD. What an a-hole.

The Postman. Who can forget the slow motion shot of Costner on horseback grabbing a letter out of a kid's hand at the end. Or his statue. Or a woman wanting him to impregnate her.

My favorite part of The Postman is the giant narrative gap between Tom Petty's cameo and the cavalry showdown on the field in the very next scene, where Costner has obviously cut out at least another movie's worth of footage of his character recruiting around the nation and being awesome.  Fucking guy thought he was Homer writing the Odyssey.

Can any list of failed vanity projects be complete without including Pia Zadora, or is that low hanging fruit?  Butterfly was a crime against film and the Golden Globe that her Svengali husband bought for her ripped the Halloween mask off of how corrupt the awards shows are, but I'm listing Pia herself as Meshulam Riklis' vanity project gone horribly awry.

VANILLA SKY: Possibly the least watchable of Cruise's many vanity projects.

I think of ISHTAR as a vanity project for Elaine May. And it's not a bad movie.

Beyond the Sea was the first thought I had after reading the title of this thread.

Graffiti Bridge  needs to be mentioned here as well.

Slightly obscure, but John Derek's BOLERO (1984). Literal and figurative masturbation material. Yes, Mr. Derek, we know your wife is hot, yes we know she is currently the leading cause of blindness in approximately 64% of all hetero males between the ages of 14 and 35 in America, and yes, we know that you are the guy that gets to fuck her...but do you have to make a movie about it?

Also, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Financially successful, artistically hobbled, and vanity revealing. Look no further than the critic / philosopher DVD commentaries.

Can we count Clerks 2 here?  There isn't a genuine, honest moment in that entire film that doesn't amount to Kevin Smith turning into a fat bearded, shit eating Ouroboros.

Fuck yeah, we can count Clerks 2. The fact I don't actually hate Smith despite my anaphylactic reaction to this is a minor miracle.

Hudson Hawk definitely belongs on this list.   That one was based on a song of Bruce Willis'. 

I'll defend Hudson Hawk just for pairing up Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard on film. Their characters deserved to be the villains in a better, funnier movie.

Full disclosure:  I unashamedly love Hudson Hawk.   

Comedies like HH are alright, but I find the best ones are those that not only are products of the star's ego/clout/own terrible ideas, but that also take themselves extremely seriously (extra points if the film has something IMPORTANT to say). Like The Postman, or On Deadly Ground.

Has anyone mentioned Battlefield Earth?

edit: nvm, I never click on the green links...

Heaven's Gate?

vanilla sky?

See, I find Grant and Bernhard to be the absolute low points of Hudson Hawk, Grant (who I love) for seemingly forgetting how to act, and Bernhard for being the same harpy she always is. They give me a headache every time they're onscreen in that movie.

And oh God, On Deadly Ground. Does anyone have the original, long-ass speech Seagal gives at the end. Currently it's only about 3 minutes and still feels like it takes forever. I can only imagine how brutal the original version was.

The original version (I first watched this in theater) was AWESOME.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stelios 

The original version (I first watched this in theater) was AWESOME.

Define "awesome". Did it just ramble even further than the current version, or did he talk about more varied subjects?
 

AWESOME.

As in "your drunk uncle rambling wildly" awesome. As in "I can't believe how much I love the Earth! Look how much I love the Earth! Why doesn't everyone love the Earth as much as me?" awesome.

You know. AWESOME. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gabe T 

Beyond The Sea, man. What made Kevin Spacey, at 47, play Bobby Darin, who died at 45? What made Spacey think he could play Darin at 18?? There's ONE musical sequence in this film, and the rest of it is straight melodrama. Did you want to make a musical, or not? Was that a dream sequence? What gives?

I'll give the movie credit, it acknowledges in the script how Bobby is projecting himself into his fantasized memories. Still, the best way to describe that movie is awkward, even if some of the dance sequences are incredible (that little kid could move!)

For vanity projects, I'll say The Chronicles of Riddick. Love Pitch Black, but the sequel feels like a love note to an undeserving character, who comes across as a Mary Sue when made into a hero.