Cinestream

Sometimes reading a script turns out to be a better experience than watching the final product.  In this case, I laughed harder watching this table read than I did during the entire running time of Superbad.

I often wonder how much fun the actors had on set when the resulting film falls flat.  Laughter, after all, is contagious - what might have been hilarious on set in front of a live audience (the crew) doesn't necessarily translate onto film.  Or a joke that was carefully delivered earlier in the film may never get the payoff, due to a scene being cut or a moment being trimmed to shorten the overall length of the film.  Editing comedies can be extremely difficult.  Timing and delivery are key as an editor.

However, some jokes are better heard on stage than on film.  You can "read" the reaction from the audience and know if you're going in the right direction or not and improvise.  That's why TV is perfect for comedy.  In TV, you have a shorter time span and less plot, and an episode is usually about a circumstance, where you can exploit the characters comedic strengths - it doesn't necessarily need to propel the overall story forward.  If a character's comedy begins falling flat for viewers, you have time to mold and change that character to make them relatable.  That's why so many comedy shows are inconsistent season to season.

Finally, the real reason this table read is more entertaining to me than the film is that the script relies purely on written comedy, which is always a danger for film.  Chaplin films are so memorable because, for all of it's technical trappings, silent film was about physical comedy, something that's often ignored in the era when words are king.

And seeing Chaplin walk across a tightrope -

or get "swallowed" by a giant machine -

or watching Buster Keaton almost get flattened by a house -

While filming the climactic scene in Sunrise, in which the main character (played by George O'Brien) takes his wife out onto the lake with plans to murder her, director F.W. Murnau forced O'Brien to wear lead boots so that when he walked, it appeared that the weight of his decision was pulling him down.

Another piece of Speilbergian advice: "Get as close to the actors as you can."

Andrew Stanton, director of the recently maligned John Carter warns, "Juggling weather and stunts and light and green screens - it's like trying to do synchronized swimming with aircraft carriers."

Chuck Jones, the great Looney Tunes director, explains that if you made a great film, "You should be able to turn the sound off and know what's going on."

Every artist has their list of could've-been's and almost-were's.  That one piece of art that got away which haunted them for the rest of their lives...  One of the most painful experiences that artists undertake is to look at a list of art you want to make and know you won't be able to accomplish even a fraction of that list in your lifetime.

While some directors have time left (still waiting on that small family divorce drama you talked about decades ago, Mr. Spielberg...), unfortunately for many, that time has passed.  They've shuffled off their mortal coil and all we have are whispers of films that could have been.

Although one of Mr. Kubrick's most ambitious projects that he was never able to realize was eventually finished by Mr. Spielberg (A.I.), his most famous project he never made has to be Napoleon.

    Fortunately, an extremely comprehensive book was put out by Taschen last year about the decades of painstaking research that Kubrick conducted for his Napoleon feature, which is the closest thing we can ever get to a final product... but we rarely hear about any of the other unfinished Kubrick projects.  Here is a list (via another Taschen book):

I MARRIED AN ARMENIAN: Said matter-of-factly to us by a woman publicist. Stanley thought it a great title for a 1940s-style Warner Bros. musical.

IF ONLY THE FÜHRER KNEW!: This was a common saying in Germany in the 1930s whenever something went wrong or somebody did something wrong. Used mockingly with the eyes looking upwards.

HOT SHEETS, LEG CANDY, LEG MAGIC, FEEL TIGHT, PARTITION MAGIC: Five vehicles for Sharon Stone. Partition Magic was the name of a software package in the days of DOS that almost allowed you to run two programs concurrently.

ONLY MINISTERS OF THE THIRD REICH MAY USE GREEN INK: Stanley read somewhere that this was, in fact, true. He thought it would make a great art house double bill with Wim Wender’s 1971 film, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick.

COFFIN NOT INCLUDED: A 1940s noir thriller. When I was researching props for the morgue scene in Eyes Wide Shut I had a catalogue from a company that supplied funeral parlour equipment. One of the illustrations showed a bier with a coffin on it. The caption read: “The Excelsior Bier (coffin not included.)”

DR STRANGLE-GLOVE: Stanley’s title misunderstood by a switchboard operator at Shepperton Studios while he was making the film.

OSMIROID AND OBLIVION and OTHER BARRELS, OTHER NIBS: Two art house films about European writers. Lots of sensitivity, lots of angst. Osmiroid made some of Stanley’s favourite fountain pens. Oskar Werner in the lead?)

TWIG THE ENHANCER: Heroic quest and Tolkien-type fantasy. Stanley’s house was in a sink as regards mobile phone reception, so, the company put in an enhancer to boost reception and transmission. After a few weeks it went down. An engineer turned up and fixed it. We asked him what he had done. He replied, “I had to twig the enhancer.”

NIGHTCLUBS, MORGUES, HOSPITAL: A comedy with Steve Martin.

It's interesting that Nightclubs, Morgues, Hospital was the name of a potential Steve Martin vehicle, since I had heard his name often associated with early casting ideas for Eyes Wide Shut before Tom Cruise came onto the picture.  Was this an alternate name for Kubrick's posthumous final film?

IN THE PENILE COLONY: Not penal … Kafka meets Marilyn Chambers?

ONE BAG, ONE NOTEBOOK: Art house angst, Oskar Werner again.

THE WIZARD OF AUSCHWITZ: A concentration camp film with a feel-good ending.

Funny how The Wizard of Auschwitz was basically made into the 1997 film, Life is Beautiful.

AUSCHWITZ AND ME!: A musical. The follow-up to Springtime for Hitler?

Kubrick always wanted to do a film about the Holocaust.  It's clear through the number of titles on this list that he was still struggling to find the right subject and tone for the film before his death.

SHARP SHADOW ON THE WALL: Arty noir film set in the 1940s with not a lot happening.

THE TWO WALLYS: From Wally Veevers and Wally Gentleman, two of the SFX supervisors on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

SIGHT GAGS FOR PERVERTS: How Dr. Strangelove was described on its release in a review in the Bulletin of the American Film Institute! Stanley cherished this.

SOME LIKE IT COLD and JACK THE SNIFFER: An intriguing double-bill for forensic science buffs.

SPEAKING ALARMS: Low budget Brit film seen by nobody.

KIRA THE KARAOKE GIRL: A low budget art house film from somewhere in the Balkans. Lots of tears. Depressing ending.

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Twig the Enhancer.  Speaking Alarms.  Dr. Strangle-Glove.  I wish these films had been made.  Kubrick's life was cut tragically short and I'm sure he still had many dreams and ideas fluttering around in his head that he never put down onto paper.

While reading the comic book series Sandman by Neil Gaiman, however, I came across a comforting idea.

In the series, the King of Dreams (Morpheus or Dream; he goes by many names in the comics) has a large castle where he rules over the domain of dreaming...

        And through the grand hall...

                                    Below Morpheus's private chambers...

                         Lies an extraordinary library tucked away in in the corner of his castle...

                     The library is made entirely of books that were dreamt.  Neil Gaiman explains in The Sandman Companion:

Many people dream of books but never become writers.  At the beginning of The Kindly Ones, for example, Lucien (the librarian in the series) shows a visitor a book the dreamer didn't even realize he created: The Bestselling Romantic Spy Thriller I Used to Think About on the Bus That Would Sell a Billion Copies and Mean I'd Never Have to Work Again.

Even a professional author typically dreams up a hundred books for every one he publishes.

And even a book the author has published is but a sad shadow of the one he dreamed.