Roger Corman filmed the cult classic Little Shop of Horrors (1960) in just two days and one night, but not every film production goes that smoothly. Sometimes a film shoot is so nightmarish, the filming process itself becomes a compelling story.
• The Thief and the Cobbler (a.k.a. Arabian Knight) (1995) — In 1968, legendary animator Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) recorded Vincent Price’s voice for a project he was working on — an animated Middle Eastern fantasy that was to have been the greatest animated film of all time. Then, the problems began. A copyright lawsuit forced Williams to ditch his completed footage and start over from scratch. Decades of delays kept progress at a snail’s pace. A completion bond company was hired to ensure that the film would meet its new release date. The company fired Williams from his own project, just as the almost-completed epic was drawing gasps of awe and admiration from those who had seen the workprint. Huge chunks of the film were then ditched and replaced with artless filler material, including cutesy-poo musical numbers and non-stop wacky narration from characters who had previously remained silent throughout the film. The resulting mess was halfheartedly dumped into theatres in 1995 as Arabian Knight, some 30 years after the project began.
I remember being baffled by the television ads for Arabian Knight, because they contained confusing, random images unconcerned with any cohesive storyline, and because they mentioned the participation of Vincent Price, who at that time had been dead for over a year.
The film was eventually released on video and DVD under its original working title, The Thief and the Cobbler, but it was the same butchered edit that had already earned the scorn of critics and audiences alike. Richard Williams’s original workprint is rumoured to be superior to the released version and is currently a favourite among bootleggers.
• Fitzcarraldo (1982) — Writer-director Werner Herzog's epic was 40 per cent complete when his two leading actors quit the production (Jason Robards had health issues, Mick Jagger had touring commitments). Undaunted, Herzog scrapped everything and started again, with notoriously hotheaded actor Klaus Kinski in the lead. Herzog and Kinski had worked together previously in Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972), a film that had cemented their reputations as artists but had been a punishingly difficult shoot. In fact, Kinski had almost killed people twice during the making of Aguirre: once while swinging a sword at an actor as part of a scene and once in the middle of the night, when he impulsively fired several shots from a rifle into an occupied tent, blowing the finger off of an extra. Kinski argued with Herzog constantly, and threatened to walk off the set, but Herzog threatened to shoot him if he did. Yes folks, this was their working relationship before starting work on Fitzcarraldo. It got worse.
The story of Fitzcarraldo was inspired by the true story of a turn-of-the-century rubber baron who found a novel way to exploit unclaimed land in South America. Using native labour, the entrepreneur dismantled a 30-ton steamship and portaged it from one river to another. Herzog decided that was too easy, and literally hauled an entire 320-ton ship up a 40 degree slope, using a bulldozer, a system of pulleys and levers and hundreds of native extras, who were in danger of being crushed at any moment. The engineer who designed the stunt begged Herzog to use a 20 degree slope instead, and left the production, fearful that the dangerous setup would cost lives.
The setbacks continued. When the rainy season ended, the river shrank, stranding the boat on a sandbar. Native extras were ambushed by rival tribes, some set off in canoes to do battle. The slope turned to thigh-deep mud, and the bulldozer broke down constantly. After months of delays, a bored Kinski had nothing to do but scream at the natives, one of whom approached Herzog and offered to murder Kinski for him. The fact that a finished film came out of all this is either a miracle or a sign that Herzog has a pathological inability to detect when it’s time to quit. Check out Les Blank’s outstanding making-of documentary, Burden of Dreams (1982), for the complete story.
Other tales of catastrophe-laden film shoots can be found in the documentaries Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), Lost in La Mancha (2002), Demon Lover Diary (1980) and American Movie (1999). Hundreds of other production horror stories remain to be told. It’s enough to make you wonder how crazy you need to be to make a film.
