From wriddick at usa.net Thu Oct 28 19:38:27 2004 From: wriddick at usa.net (Wade Riddick) Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 18:38:27 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Production of _A Confederacy of Dunces_ falls apart Message-ID: In the Grip of the South, Where the Film Tales Are By DAVE KEHR Published: October 27, 2004 The director David Gordon Green went to New Orleans last year looking for a movie, which eluded him. But he found a home. As luck would have it, Mr. Green's much-anticipated film version of John Kennedy Toole's cult novel, "A Confederacy of Dunces," collapsed in a mire of legal, financial and personal entanglements that appear to have doomed a project written by Steven Soderbergh and Scott Kramer, for a cast that was to include Will Farrell, Drew Barrymore, Mos Def, Olympia Dukakis and Lily Tomlin. "I think it's shelved until either somebody dies or everybody gets paid off," said Mr. Green, a 29-year-old whose 2000 debut film, "George Washington," was a dreamlike portrait of childhood in the South that made the tour of the world's film festivals and has since received the ultimate accolade: a deluxe DVD edition from the Criterion Collection. While scouting locations in New Orleans, where "A Confederacy of Dunces" is set and was to be filmed, however, Mr. Green bought what he calls a "1919 shotgun doublewide" house that, once fixed up, will become his first adult address. An Arkansas native, he has been living out of suitcases and sleeping on couches since "George Washington" lifted him out of North Carolina, where he attended the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. Besides sinking roots in New Orleans, Mr. Green also managed to edit "Undertow" - his third feature, after "All the Real Girls" last year- which was shot in the summer of 2003 and was released last week by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's United Artists unit on a handful of screens after its well-received New York Film Festival premiere. The picture continues Mr. Green's exploration of the South, but introduces some new elements to his languid, lyrical style. Filmed in and around Savannah, Ga., the film follows a teenager (played by the young British actor Jamie Bell, from "Billy Elliott'') and his fragile younger brother (Devon Alan) as they flee the evil uncle (Josh Lucas) who has slit the throat of their father (Dermot Mulroney) in a dispute over a cache of gold coins. "I wanted to go a little heavier in this one and show a little bit more," Mr. Green said, comparing "Undertow" with "George Washington" and "All the Real Girls." "With the first two movies I was very much going for something slow and poetic. And here, I wanted to take some of that same execution but bloody it up a bit." It is also the first time that Mr. Green worked from a script he did not originate. "Undertow" came out of a program conducted by the legendary filmmaker Terrence Malick ("Days of Heaven," "The Thin Red Line") at the University of Texas in Austin. Mr. Malick and his partner, the veteran producer Ed Pressman, formed a company called Sunflower Productions to develop screenplays outside the Hollywood mainstream. "We had a coterie of young writers out of the university, and we paid them a little bit of money to try screenplays," Mr. Pressman remembered. " 'Undertow' was something Terry had the idea for based on true life events, and he gave it to Joe Conway" - a high school English teacher who also played on Mr. Malick's amateur basketball team. "We had seen 'George Washington' before it was released, and so Terry showed David the draft. We talked about it for a long time, and then David did his own draft, and the film evolved from that." "It was a script that worked within certain formulas and genre conventions," Mr. Green recalled. "What we were going for was to make something like an off-kilter 'Huckleberry Finn' or 'Treasure Island,' or like the Hardy Boys books. I remember having a box full of old books when I was 12, the kind that have a cover illustration of kids with a lantern looking down a cave - these awesome, odd mysteries and adventures. That's what I really wanted this to feel like, and so when I read the script with its true-crime horror I wondered how we could bring out the fanciful, hyperreal boy's adventure in it, almost to bring out elements of fairy tales, like 'Hansel and Gretel.' So a lot of it was to take something based on actual incidents and bring a fanciful frame to it." By living and filming in the South, Mr. Green celebrates the world he grew up in. "I'm inspired less by specific movies and books than I am by sitting on a porch listening to somebody,'' he said. "Given the choice for an evening's entertainment,'' Mr. Green said, "I want to go and listen to some old man I don't know, who comes from a place I've never heard of and has a story to tell that I don't believe. I can pay my 10 bucks and see a movie anytime, but how often do you get that face-to-face encounter, with those accents and exaggerations that only a great liar can conjure? And I think this movie was my reaction to the stories of good liars." But how easy is it to find those eccentric, individual voices in an America increasingly standardized by Wal-Marts and cable television? "It's easy in my neighborhood," Mr. Green said, returning to his New Orleans raptures. "In fact, it's hard to get away from them. It really is!" From Nikkibar at aol.com Fri Oct 29 10:58:13 2004 From: Nikkibar at aol.com (Nikkibar at aol.com) Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:58:13 EDT Subject: [percy-l] Production of _A Confederacy of Dunces_ falls apart Message-ID: <15c.421f6cae.2eb3b485@aol.com> Dear Mr. Riddick, Should you be in touch with David Gordon Green (and it sounds like you are) you might advise him to call me for the lying old man deluxe tour of the Northshore. And for all those on the list who are interested, I have the opening piece in Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe' Vol III. While I make no boasts about my own contribution to the collection, I commend it as one of the best gatherums of short stories available. It is notable for ccollecting somewhat longer pieces than most magazines these days will publish -- more like the length you would be like to find in the Saturday Evening Posts from the 40's. I'm really quite proud to be in it with Rick Bragg, Dayne Sherman, Tim Gautreaux and so many many others. it can be had online from Overthetransom.com or Lemuria.com in signed, hardcover first editions and probably by now from Barnes and Noble etc. For those who don't as yet know it the Percy Symposium will be November 13th this year at the Covington Center on Jefferson Ave (The former Baptist Church). I look forward to seeing all of the faithful there. Nikki Barranger -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: