Movies

Chaotic shoots, lost films and cult classics.

7 rabbit holes

• New
  SoundThe scream you’ve heard a hundred timesA man is dragged under water by an alligator in a 1951 western and lets out a short, strange scream. The recording goes into a studio sound library. Decades later it turns up in Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Toy Story and hundreds of other films. Once you hear it, you can’t stop hearing it.3 stages · 37 min
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  Cult filmsThe best worst movie ever madeIn 2003 a mysterious man named Tommy Wiseau wrote, directed, financed and starred in a drama called The Room. It played to almost empty cinemas. Then people started coming back, again and again, shouting the lines and throwing plastic spoons at the screen.3 stages · 30 min
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  Unmade filmsJodorowsky’s DuneIn the mid-1970s the director Alejandro Jodorowsky set out to film Dune with Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles and Mick Jagger in the cast, Pink Floyd on the soundtrack and Moebius and H. R. Giger designing the world. Every studio said no.3 stages · 14 min
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  Unmade filmsKubrick’s Napoleon, the greatest film never madeAfter 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick wanted to make the definitive film about Napoleon. He read hundreds of books, catalogued Napoleon’s life on index cards and planned battles with tens of thousands of extras. Then the studio pulled out.3 stages · 36 min
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  Behind the scenesThe shoot that almost destroyed Apocalypse NowThe Philippines, 1976. Francis Ford Coppola plans a few months of filming. A typhoon wrecks the sets, the lead actor is replaced, his successor has a heart attack, Marlon Brando arrives unprepared, and the money runs out. More than a year later, they are still shooting.2 stages · 36 min
• New
  Unmade filmsSuperman Lives, the film that almost wasIn the late 1990s Tim Burton was set to direct Nicolas Cage as Superman. There was a script by Kevin Smith (with a giant spider), costume tests, sets in progress and millions already spent. Then, weeks before filming, the studio pulled the plug.2 stages · 8 min
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  DocumentariesF for Fake: Orson Welles on forgeryIn 1973 Orson Welles made a film about a forger who painted fake Picassos and Modiglianis, and about the man who wrote his biography and then forged an autobiography of Howard Hughes. Then Welles admits that his own film contains a lie.2 stages · 22 min