Posted on 07/08/2002 9:41:13 PM PDT by weegee
NEW YORK (Variety) - Director Ron Howard will not lead the charge on "The Alamo," because Disney is taking too long to get the prestige project into production.
Howard, off his Oscar win for "A Beautiful Mind," has begun concentrating on other film projects for his followup. However he and his Imagine Entertainment partner Brian Grazer may well continue as producers of the period Western.
The studio has already begun seeking a new director in hopes of keeping a late-year start date in place, as well as a cast that was to include Russell Crowe and Ethan Hawke.
Howard never formally signed a deal to direct the film, but such an accord was considered a fait accompli when word got out that he was scouting locations in Texas.
After winning all that Oscar hardware for "A Beautiful Mind," Howard and Grazer wanted to capitalize on the momentum and get a film started quickly; "The Alamo" just went back to the shop for a rewrite by "Traffic" scribe Stephen Gaghan.
Apparently, the cast will remain in place to see who Disney hires to replace Howard. That includes Crowe, who rearranged a very busy dance card to carve out a few weeks for "The Alamo," mainly because he wanted to reteam with its director.
Howard laid aside several high profile scripts to concentrate on "The Alamo," and there are numerous candidates for his next picture. One possibility is that he and Crowe will work together again on "Cinderella Man," a Universal/Imagine film about Depression-era boxer and folk hero Jim Braddock.
Howard has also shown interest in the fact-based Warner Bros. legal drama "The Burial." The studio was said to have once had Denzel Washington in its docket to play Mississippi personal injury lawyer Willie Gary, who represented a funeral parlor owner wronged by a conglomerate and helped win the plaintiff a $260 million verdict. The tale originated as a New Yorker article by Jonathan Harr, who wrote "A Civil Action."
Gaghan Drives to 'Alamo' GigYahoo article link
Fri Jun 28, 5:07 AM ET
By Cathy Dunkley and Claude Brodesser
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Remember the Alamo?
You probably don't, but Academy Award-winning "Traffic" screenwriter Stephen Gaghan wants to change all that. He has signed on to rewrite Ron Howard's upcoming period picture, "The Alamo," which was originally written by John Sayles.
The Disney picture, expected to be Howard's next, would reteam the Oscar-heavy team behind "A Beautiful Mind" -- Howard, his Imagine Entertainment producing partner Brian Grazer and Russell Crowe, who will be one of the ensemble cast of "Alamo." Though neither Grazer, Howard nor Crowe's deals are closed, all three parties are negotiating with Disney for a potential December start to shoot on location in Texas.
"Alamo" was at one time aiming for as early as a September start, though script delays and actor availability are understood to have played some role in the date change.
"Alamo" is expected to deal with many of the historical complexities -- including the Mexican point of view -- that were glossed over in John Wayne's 1960 film. Alamo heroes William Barret Travis' serial marital infidelities, Jim Bowie's slave trading and Davy Crockett's overall political incorrectness will also be addressed.
Gaghan recently made his directorial debut for Paramount Pictures on the Katie Holmes' starrer "Abandon," which will be released in September via Paramount.
Crowe is too big to play Braddock.
Hollywood had to have a villian and the business sector was it.
The flight director even voiced his dissatisfaction during the production.
No guns, certainly.
Harry is familiar with some details and recommends not making the movie that Ron Howard was going to make:
Don't bet on it. Disney is the epicenter for what Mike Ovitz accurately described as the "Gay Mafia". And like all homosexual (and left-wing) activists, Disney executives seek above all to undermine and eventually destroy traditional American values, religion, nationalism and patriotism.
When I think of the Alamo I think of those words, or maybe this. Those of you who don't believe I can never prove to you that he exists.
I realize the quotes are accurate but since I am toiling away making a living and don't have my copy of the Alamo running, wiill have to suffer.
I feel the need for a great movie lines vanity coming one.
LOFL !!!
Here we go.... This film is dead on arrival, hahaha....!
Dead on accurate, and very well said.
Peaceful Mexicans attacked by extremist right-wing militia. Many Mexicans lost their lives at the hands of these evil Americans. The Mexican military was called in, and, after long days of fighting the cowardly Americans who sought refuge in a Mexican Church, the militia members were killed. The heroic Mexican General Santa Ana was widely praised both in Mexico and the United States for handling firmly the emergency and restoring order in the region.
John Sayles, though he be extremely left of center, is a fantastic writer who NORMALLY gets called in to fix everyone else's scripts. This is the first time I've ever heard anyone come in to fix a Sayles script! If you ever want to see an awesome Sayles film, go rent/buy "Lone Star" (1996). Absoluetely excellent movie, and Sayles both wrote and directed it.
Sayles does not were his left-of-centerness on his sleeve, so most of his movies come off fairly neutral, and some even a conservative can love. Not so with Gaughan --that dude is out to slant things as far to the left as possible, but do it in an "artful" fashion --like "Traffic."
As far as I'm concened, the Duke's "Alamo" (1960), with warts and all, is the last "Alamo" movie that needs to have been made. May not be the most historically accurate, but it captures the spirit of the Alamo fairly well. Also, Disney's old "Davey Crockett" made for TV movies have an excellent episode where Davey goes off to the Alamo. Not quite the epic of the John Wayne film, but definately leaves a good impression of the men who fought there.
The historical revisionists have been wanting to get their hands on the Alamo story for a long time, and show that Bowie & Co. were only fighting for the right to keep slave ownership alive, since Santa Ana, in his loving kindness and mercy, made slave ownership illegal in Mexico. (Of course slavery in a country where everyone is enslaved is kinda redundant...)
I don't look forward to seeing a new "Alamo" --unless it were written and directed by Ridley Scott, or possibly Mel Gibson. Sadly, the "foriegners" do more justice to American history than do Americans...
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Even as one film about the Alamo is being conceived in Hollywood's warm glow of A-list celebrity, another is suffocating in a stifling-hot warehouse in Glendale, Calif., soon to disappear forever.
Much has been made of a new "Alamo" being rewritten by Oscar winner Steve Gaghan, directed by Oscar winner Ron Howard and starring Oscar winner Russell Crowe.
Little, however, is known about what's happened to John Wayne's 1960 MGM epic "The Alamo," a gloriously expansive 70mm pic that's nearly been ruined by improper storage. If nothing is done, the picture will shortly join Orson Welles' cut of "The Magnificent Ambersons" and Erich von Stroheim's "Greed" as yet another "lost" film.
Producer and film preservationist Robert A. Harris (who produced 1990's "The Grifters" and saved "Lawrence of Arabia" from ignominious demise after finding the uncut version in a Queens bowling alley) has been working with MGM's permission to raise money needed to restore the only remaining 70mm "roadshow" print -- essentially a director's cut shot on 70mm -- and save it from total decay.
MGM senior VP of technical services Gray Ainsworth says the studio is willing to contribute roughly $500,000 to the restoration effort, but admits that more is probably required. Harris estimates an additional $650,000 is needed to save the film; Ainsworth is not sure, calling that amount "premature."
The troubles started for Wayne's version of "Alamo" almost as soon as MGM was alerted to the existence of the last 70mm print, discovered by a Toronto projectionist in 1990. MGM used it to make a video master so it could sell videocassettes of the picture.
"Have you ever been to Toronto?" asked Harris. "There are penguins and polar bears walking down the street most of the time: That's why the color was still in the (70 mm) print."
Unfortunately, after the video master was made, the guts of the Toronto print of "The Alamo" were tossed into cartons and stored unrefrigerated in Glendale, where temperatures regularly soar into the 90s and 100s in summer.
Because of the heat damage and the steadily deteriorating condition of the 70mm Toronto "Alamo" print, from which sequences would be digitized and restored, the film elements necessary to save it will not last beyond mid-2003 or 2004 at the latest, Harris says.
Reuters/Variety
Peaceful Mexicans attacked by extremist right-wing militia. Many Mexicans lost their lives at the hands of these evil Americans. The Mexican military was called in, and, after long days of fighting the cowardly Americans who sought refuge in a Mexican Church, the militia members were killed. The heroic Mexican General Santa Ana was widely praised both in Mexico and the United States for handling firmly the emergency and restoring order in the region.
Perhaps they can cast Janet Reno as Santa Ana..? ;-)
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