Fly Away Little Butterfly, Just Flutter Away
You’re furious. I never taught you to sing. You carry rocks in your head and pitch them. Without warning. Happy drunk. You’re furious. I beg you for sin. I beg your skin. You buy a whore. Don’t give her water. You’re furious.
Back in March, the Tim Robbins film The Heretic, scheduled to begin filming here in Portland, dropped into hiatus instead. Earlier this month, The Hollywood Reporter said that the film “fell apart for reasons likely connected to financing”.
But this week, the latest edition of Production Weekly has a new listing for The Heretic. Unfortunately, they’ve gone subscription only and finally learned to protect the directory from which they serve their files, so I can’t see what it says.
Apparently the Weinstein Company, rather infamous for being somewhat dickish, is moving to gut Fanboys, “in which a group of Star Wars fans in 1998 go on a road trip to break into George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch to steal an early print of Episode I so that their friend, who has been diagnosed with cancer, can see it”.
Weinstein apparently wants to “eliminate the cancer storyline and punch up the comedy”. Or, in the words of the fan campaign to stop Weinstein, to recut the movie “so that it portrays Star Wars fans as idiotic criminals who would break into George Lucas’s offices just because they’re hopeless dorks.”
Here’s the problem: This fan campaign’s tactics include urging people to email seventy random Weinstein employees, whose addresses were harvested via Google, to warn them that fans will boycott every Weinstein movie.
It’s an incredibly moronic tactic. And, if people engage in it, all it’s going to do is demonstrate to the Weinstein Company that the fans, indeed, are idiots, if not criminals, and hopeless, if not dorks.
Addendum: Bizarrely, it appears that Weinstein has partially caved, announcing it will release the original and the butchered versions on DVD, but still hasn’t decided what it’s doing theatrically.
I say bizarrely for two reasons: One, this seems rather un-Weinstein-like. Two, even though the company was in the wrong, they’ve now, unfortunately, legitimized the mass spamming of dozens and dozens of random company employees as a protest tactic.
When I was either four or five, I was taken to the 1974 re-release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are very few specific memories of actually being in the theater for it, but the story that’s always been told is that I sat for the entire running time with eyes wide and mouth agape.
For a time afterwards, I would curl up in our family’s green beanbag chair, and my father would lift it into the air while letting out with Also Sprach Zarathustra. That made me, of course, the Star Child at the end of the film.
It’s unclear to me just when I first saw the movie again, but when I did, and despite having no specific or concrete memories of being in the movie theater in 1974, there was no question that the movie was deeply familiar to me. It had been ingrained into my consciousness, after all, when I was four or five years old.
The movie, in no uncertain terms, was responsible for the fact that when everyone else was answering “policeman” or “fireman” to the question of what they wanted to be when I grew up, my first real answer was that I wanted to be an “outer space moving van driver”, helping (and this part was very specific) families to move into orbiting space stations.
It was an outgrowth, inevitably, of the Pan American spaceplane in the film ferrying Dr. Heywood R. Floyd to such a space station.
No other work of my childhood, and to a very large degree almost entirely at an unconscious level, likely did as much not just to steer me to an eventual appreciation of science fiction, but to an almost innate understanding of how deeply art in general, whether words or pictures or sounds, could implant itself into a person.
At any rate, and while of course the film is Stanley Kubrick’s creation in addition to his, all of this is the long and winding introduction simply to noting the passage of one Arthur C. Clarke.
For whatever it’s worth, here is the full set of photographs from yesterday’s Twilight shoot on SE Morrison, including one from rehearsing a shot that I then tried to get again when they were actually filming it only then to be told taking pictures was not allowed. I already posted my two favorites (#9 and #18) here last night.
“About a week ago, I contacted the production office and was asked to give them some time before they would be able to entertain press queries, says Shawn Levy. “Well, I just tried again and learned that the production is ‘on hiatus’ and has no new start-up date planned. It’s anticipated that the film company is merely taking some time to reshuffle its schedule and will be ready to ramp up production at a future date.”
This would explain why no matter how many times I mention this film here, I can’t seem to get anyone to come up with who’s in the cast.
There appears to be one blogger who claims that Tim Robbins, when asked what he was doing in Portland, said he lives here. It’s unclear, however, whether he meant he outright lives here, or is living here for the duration of filming The Heretic. Unfortunately, they don’t appear to have asked him the most pressing question about who is in the movie.
So little news on The Heretic, even though it’s scheduled to shoot beginning in March. The earliest mention I can find is Willamette Week a couple of weeks ago, followed by a mention that Tim Robbins might have been putting in an appearance at Kelly’s Olympian.
Apparently, he was spotted at City Hall today, and nearly a month ago Bend Weekly reported that Susan Sarandon would have a “small part” in the film.
But for a movie slated to begin shooting in a couple of weeks, there seems to be a huge lack of information as to its cast. You’d think we’d know by now, but it doesn’t even have a listing on IMDb yet.
Addendum: By the way, the bookstore at which I work has been known to do rentals to local movie shoots. So, you could always just come by to arrange book rental (presuming we’re even still providing that service) and let us know who the Hell is in the movie.
Addendum: Apparently while at City Hall today, Robbins watched part of a police accountability protest. But, still no news on who is in the movie.
Anyone know anything about a film called The Heretic, written and directed by Tim Robbins (”a multi-layered ensemble about three spiritual figures in today’s world, the film is an exploration of faith, spirituality and hypocrisy”), which seems to be slated for filming here in Portland sometime this Spring?
Addendum: Looks like its supposed to be shooting from the middle of March to the middle of May.
Jay-Zus, 28-35, African-American, “charismatic, charming, a good natured guy, but when circumstances change so does his persona”. Jesus: 28-38, Latin or Middle Eastern, “a patient in a mental hospital who believes he is Jesus; he leads and breaks out with his ‘disciples’ and takes to preaching on the road”. Eight Disciples, 45-55, Male & Female, Indian, African-American, Asian, Native American, Hispanic, “have some sort of ‘criminal like’ feel to them … they break Jesus out of the mental ward”.
If the rumor that Hayden Christensen has been cast in the lead role of Case is true, then “complete shit” would appear to be the direction in which they are heading.