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Roeg was director of photography on 1967’s FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, which director John Schlesinger filmed primarily in Dorset England. Richard Rodney Bennett’s score was released on an MGM LP. The LP version was re-issued on CD by Chapter III in 2001, after an expanded version was issued by Sony in 1991 by including additional music from the film’s mixed tracks.
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Posted: |
Dec 4, 2018 - 11:14 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Working again with director Richard Lester, Roeg was the cinematographer on 1968’s PETULIA. The setting of John Haase’s novel, in and around Los Angeles, in the areas of Balboa, Santa Monica, and Hollywood, was moved to San Francisco. Lester was quoted as saying that Los Angeles was “too powerful a city” for the “sad love story,” and that he considered San Francisco a “more subtle” backdrop. Other cities considered before San Francisco were London, Rome, and Paris.
Principal photography began in San Francisco on 10 April 1967. The production was said to be the first major studio attempt to shoot a film entirely in San Francisco without any studio work. Locations included the Filbert Steps, the Embarcadero, the Presidio, Fort Scott, Tiburon, Sausalito, Muir Woods, and the Fairmont San Francisco ballroom. Eleven weeks in San Francisco were followed by one week of shooting in Tijuana, Mexico.
John Barry’s score was issued on a Warner Bros. LP, which was re-issued on CD by Film Score Monthly in 2005.
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Posted: |
Dec 5, 2018 - 12:30 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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PERFORMANCE was a collaborative effort between former painter Donald Cammell and cinematographer Nicolas Roeg. Although skewered by American critic Richard Schickel as "the most disgusting, the most completely worthless film I have ever seen," a generation later this film is considered a contemporary classic.
The origins of PERFORMANCE go back to Donald Cammell's immersion in the subculture of London's bohemian Chelsea quarter, a nexus from 1959 onwards for dandyism and decadence, for ethnic influences and unorthodox philosophies. Fascinated by the inclusion rituals of both drug-takers seeking spiritual transcendence and career criminals (such as the infamous Kray Twins) for whom secrecy and alternate identities were standard operating procedure, Cammell crafted a tale of the collision of artistic and criminal worlds which he intended to call “The Liars.”
The notion appealed to Hollywood agent Sandy Lieberson, who asked Cammell to tailor the piece for Marlon Brando and Mick Jagger, clients of Creative Management Associates. Cammell banged out the screenplay in Saint-Tropez. The title was changed to “The Performers” and ultimately the more existential PERFORMANCE. Brando dropped out of the project early on and the role of the gangster “Chas” was given to Cammell's Chelsea neighbor James Fox, who had appeared in the Cammell-scripted DUFFY (1968).
From preproduction to the final edit, PERFORMANCE was plagued by--or benefited from--a series of calamities that boosted the prevailing aura of madness. The production history is larded with myths about what really went on during principal photography (among the more long-lived rumors are that Fox participated in actual criminal burglaries and that he was dosed with psilocybin during filming) but the verifiable anecdotes make for equally good reading. Hollywood actresses Tuesday Weld and Mia Farrow had both agreed to appear in the film as the in-house concubines of Mick Jagger's reclusive “Turner” but both bowed out due to injuries; Anita Pallenberg assumed Weld's role and newcomer Michele Breton was given the part abdicated by Farrow.
The principal photography on PERFORMANCE commenced on Monday, July 29, 1968, with filming in the Wandsworth, Mayfair and Kensington neighborhoods of London. For the second act, set within Turner's tumbledown apartment, a Notting Hill walk-up east of the Portobello Road was used for exteriors while interiors were lensed inside a townhouse in the more upmarket Knightsbridge. The production received its first negative publicity when ten rolls of film that had captured a ménage à trois scene were seized as pornographic material and ordered destroyed. Surviving fragments turned up in Europe in later years as porn reels.
PERFORANCE was for all intents and purposes in the can by October 1968. The following February, the film was screened in Los Angeles for Warner Bros. executives, who deemed the material unreleasable. With a regime change at the studio later that year came the possibility that the film might be salvaged given an extensive re-edit (which would, among other things, bring star Mick Jagger into the action earlier). With Nicolas Roeg in Australia preparing his next film, Cammell was left with the task of cutting. Working with veteran editor Frank Mazzola, Cammell tendered a succession of possible cuts before the final version was approved by the Warners front office for release in August 1970. Nicolas Roeg, who had been primarily responsible for the “look” of the film, received co-director credit as well.
Since the end of principal photography almost two years earlier, Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton had both become severely addicted to drugs (the latter ultimately confined to a sanitarium). So unnerved was he by his participation in the X-rated film, James Fox retired from acting for eight years and embraced Christianity. In July 1970, Mick Jagger's Rolling Stones band mate Brian Jones (who had inspired the character of Turner) was found dead of mysterious circumstances, and that December the Stones' participation at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival was marred by violence and murder (chronicled in the 1970 documentary GIMME SHELTER). While Jagger, Fox and Nicolas Roeg continue to enjoy long and fruitful careers, Donald Cammell directed only three more features before taking his own life in April 1996.
Warner Bros. Records released an LP of songs from the film, which was re-issued on CD in 1991.
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Posted: |
Dec 6, 2018 - 12:00 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Nicolas Roeg had been developing a screenplay for National General Pictures, but the rights for the product were entangled with a company headed by Richard Lester. Unable to get approval to make the film, Roeg asked for the help of producer Si Litvinoff, who convinced executive producer Max Raab to help finance the project. According to Litvinoff, clearing the rights for production took another year. The film was WALKABOUT, which concerns two young siblings who are stranded in the Australian Outback and are forced to cope on their own. There they meet an Australian boy on "walkabout": a ritual separation from his tribe.
WALKABOUT marked the first film as sole director for Roeg, who also served as the film’s cinematographer. Lucien Roeg, who portrayed the stranded boy, was the son of the director, who had initially considered casting his older son, Nico, in the role. David Gumpilil, the aborigine, was a dancer in his small northern tribe before moving to Manninggrieda, Australia, where Roeg discovered him, and had no concrete proof of his age. Gumpilil’s friend who was fluent in Gumpilil’s tribal language, as well as English, served as his interpreter.
The film was based on a 1959 novel by James Vance Marshall, which was a pseudonym for the Englishman, Donald G. Payne. “Walkabout,” which first appeared as “The Children” in the Australian magazine Woman's Day with Woman, was a popular juvenile classic in Australia. The film’s adaptors made changes, adding touches of eroticism that were not so explicit in the novel.
WALKABOUT was filmed entirely on location in Australia. The movie features sequences shot in the red desert surrounding Alice Springs, in the Flinders mountain range area, and at locations never before visited by Western man. The opening and closing sequences were shot in Sydney.
WALKABOUT was initially given an [R] rating on the basis of two nude swimming scenes. However, after critics Judith Crist and Hollis Alpert publicly criticized the rating, Max Raab, Jonas Rosenfield, Jr., who was an advertising publicist for Twentieth Century-Fox, and several others argued the case for an appeal. The Codes and Ratings Appeal Board reversed the decision and awarded the film a [GP] rating, marking the first time that a vote was unanimously reversed.
John Barry’s soundtrack for the film was released by Roundtable in 2016.
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The 1973 film DON’T LOOK NOW shares the same basic plot as the Daphne du Maurier short story upon which it is based, but, as the Time reviewer remarked, the original feels "detached," while the filmmakers made a study of "levels of perception and reality." In the film, a married couple (Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland) grieving the recent death of their young daughter are in Venice when they encounter two elderly sisters, one of whom is psychic and brings a warning from beyond.
Both lead actors were initially busy with other projects, but unexpectedly became available. Julie Christie liked the script and was keen to work with Roeg who had served as cinematographer on FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966), FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1967), and PETULIA (1968) in which she had starred. Donald Sutherland also wanted to make the fil, but had some reservations about the depiction of clairvoyance in the script. He felt it was handled too negatively and believed that the film should be a more "educative film", and that the "characters should in some way benefit from ESP and not be destroyed by it". Roeg was resistant to any changes, however, and Sutherland ultimately acquiesced.
To create a continual sense of foreboding, Roeg depicted the sunny tourist city of Venice as a place full of damp, cold threat. He decided not to use traditional tourist locations to purposefully avoid a "travel documentary" look. Venice turned out to be a difficult place in which to film, mainly due to the tides which caused problems with the continuity and transporting equipment. The symbolism of water appears throughout the film, in rainstorms, ponds, canals, bath tubs and showers, and liquids spilling on items and off tables. Roeg used unusual camera angles, as well as frequent cross-cutting, often to brief flashbacks.
Renato Scarpa who plays “Inspector Longhi” didn't speak any English. He just read the lines he'd been given phonetically without knowing what they meant, which added to the sinister quality of his character.
Nicolas Roeg, Donald Sutherland, and Julie Christie on the set of DON'T LOOK NOW
A lengthy, nude love scene, which is intercut with shots of the Baxters dressing afterward for the evening, was described by the Motion Picture Herald Product Digest review as "the most explicit and erotic such yet participated in by stars of the calibre" of Sutherland and Christie. Slight changes were made in the scene in order to avoid an X rating in the United States (reportedly, only 9 frames (less than half a second) was cut). Nevertheless, the scene invited much speculation, as exemplified by the Ms. reviewer, who asked, "Do you suppose they really did it?"
Stories differ as to how the scene came about. One is that Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie had met for the first time on the set of the film. The first scene they were scheduled to shoot was the sex scene, as Nicolas Roeg wanted to "get it out of the way" and then move on to the "bone" of the matter. Another story says that the sex scene was a last minute on-set idea from Roeg, who felt that otherwise the film would have too many scenes of the couple arguing. According to this version, even most of the scenes around it are improvised.
The only disagreement over the musical score of the film was for the music accompanying the love scene. Pino Donaggio, on his first feature film assignment, had composed a grand orchestral piece, but Nicolas Roeg thought the effect was overkill, and wanted it toned down. In the end the scene just used a combination of the piano, the flute, an acoustic guitar and an acoustic bass guitar. The piano was played by Donaggio, who also played the flute. (Although a decent pianist, Donaggio was a renowned flautist, famous for it at the conservatory.) Donaggio conceded that the more low-key theme worked better in the sequence, and ditched the high strings orchestral piece, reworking it for the funeral scene at the end of the film.
Supposedly, Donaggio was chosen as the film's composer after one of the producers had an inspiring vision when he saw Donaggio riding on a gondola during location scouting in Venice. The soundtrack was released on LP in Italy, concurrent with the film. A British LP on That's Entertainment Records came in 1981, with a CD following in 1989. The most recent release has come from Silva Screen in 2017.
Daphne Du Maurier wrote a letter to Nicolas Roeg after seeing the film, congratulating him on making such a strong film from her story.
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Posted: |
Dec 6, 2018 - 11:43 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In the 1976 David Bowie film THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, an alien (Bowie) must pose as a human to save his dying planet, but a woman (Candy Clark) and the greed of other men create complications. Director Nicolas Roeg originally wanted to cast the 6-foot-10 author Michael Crichton as the alien, “Thomas Jerome Newton.” Mick Jagger was also considered for the part of the alien, and the film's backers wanted Robert Redford for the part of Newton.
Candy Clark was the first actor to be cast. She was romantically involved with Roeg at the time she starred in the film. Roeg cast David Bowie after seeing him in the 1975 documentary CRACKED ACTOR. According to Roeg, the singer-turned-actor threw himself into the film, was always on time and delivered a performance that everyone was very happy with including Bowie himself.
David Bowie said of this film in Kurt Loder's article "Straight Time" published in the 12 May 1983 edition of Rolling Stone magazine: "I'm so pleased I made that [movie], but I didn't really know what was being made at all". Further, in the article "Bowie at the Bijou" published in the April 1982 edition of Movieline magazine, Bowie said: "I just threw my real self into that movie as I was at that time. It was the first thing I'd ever done. I was virtually ignorant of the established procedure [of making movies], so I was going a lot on instinct, and my instinct was pretty dissipated. I just learned the lines for that day and did them the way I was feeling. It wasn't that far off. I actually was feeling as alienated as that character was. It was a pretty natural performance. ... a good exhibition of somebody literally falling apart in front of you. I was totally insecure with about 10 grams [of cocaine] a day in me. I was stoned out of my mind from beginning to end".
In the same article, Bowie said of his relationship with director Nicolas Roeg: ". . . we got on rather well. I think I was fulfilling what he needed from me for that role. I wasn't disrupting . . . I wasn't disrupted. In fact, I was very eager to please. And amazingly enough, I was able to carry out everything I was asked to do. I was quite willing to stay up as long as anybody".
Despite what Bowie says regarding his ability to perform, reportedly, he was unable to work on the movie for two days because he had drunk some "bad milk". Bowie saw "some gold liquid swimming around in shiny swirls inside the glass". According to the “Bowie Golden Years” website, Bowie is "still to this day unsure of what actually happened. No trace of any foreign element was detected in tests, though there were six witnesses who said they had seen the strange matter in the bottom of the glass. Already in an extremely fragile state, Bowie felt the whole location had 'very bad Karma'".
Nicolas Roeg wanted to get rid of any sense of time in the movie, thinking it surprising how often people mention it in their lives. However, one reference almost got past him until the cutting stage, when he suddenly noticed the line "I've been here three months already", and he had to overdub it.
David Bowie and Nicolas Roeg on the set of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH
Paramount Pictures, who had distributed Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW, committed to pay $1.5 million for the American distribution rights to the film. This guarantee enabled the film's producer, Michael Deeley, to finance the picture. However, when Barry Diller of Paramount saw the finished film, he refused to pay for it, claiming it was different from the movie the studio wanted. Co-producer British Lion sued Paramount and received a small settlement. Eventually, Cinema V paid $850,000 for U.S. distribution rights, and the film obtained a limited release in America. With this and the film’s foreign sales, the film's budget was just recouped.
The picture was temp-tracked with music from Pink Floyd's album "The Dark Side of the Moon". David Bowie worked on a soundtrack for the film that was rejected. Many of the ideas he had for the soundtrack would later be utilized in his 1977 album “Low”. The final score was by Stomu Yamash'ta and John Phillips. Due to a creative and contractual dispute with Roeg and the studio, no official soundtrack was released concurrently with the film, even though the 1976 Pan Books paperback edition of the novel (released to tie in with the film) states on the back cover that the soundtrack was available on RCA. The score finally had a release in 2016 on the European UMC label in conjunction with the film's 40th Anniversary re-release.
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In 1980’s BAD TIMING / A SEXUAL OBSESSION, amid the decaying elegance of cold-war Vienna, psychoanalyst “Dr. Alex Linden” (Art Garfunkel) becomes mired in an erotically charged affair with the elusive “Milena Flaherty” (Theresa Russell). When their all-consuming passion takes a life-threatening turn, “Inspector Netusil” (Harvey Keitel) is assigned to piece together the sordid details.
The story was first conceived by Italian producer Carlo Ponti, who suggested that director Nicolas Roeg develop it into a feature film. Although Yale Udoff is the only writer credited onscreen, the first version of the script, which was set in Italy, was reportedly co-written by Roeg and Udoff. Producer-director Roger Corman, whom Roeg had worked for as director of photography on THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964), was attached to the project at the time but was unable to raise production funds. By mid-1977, the script was no longer considered viable, but producer Jeremy Thomas, the twenty-eight-year-old son of British director Ralph Thomas, read the script and wanted to work with Roeg to promote his career. When Roeg agreed to direct, Thomas bought out Ponti and negotiated a $4 million deal with Rank Film Distributors.
Principal photography began in March 1979 for a planned ten-week shoot in Vienna, Austria. In late May 1979, production moved to London after only five weeks in Vienna, and principal photography continued in Morocco and New York City. Production wrapped in mid-June 1979.
Nicolas Roeg and Theresa Russell on the set of BAD TIMING
BAD TIMING opened in Europe in the spring of 1980. In Britain, the film did not find favor with the Rank Organization, one executive calling it "a sick film made by sick people, for sick people". As a result, Rank's logo was removed from all UK release prints. In Ireland, the sex scenes were heavily cut by the Irish censor.
The film received an [X] rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the filmmakers’ appeal was denied. Producer Thomas told Variety that the film would be advertised and released without a rating. It opened, unrated, in New York in September 1980, and in Los Angeles the following month.
In February 1981, after the second appeal was refused, the filmmakers submitted an edited version to the MPAA and an [R] rating was granted. However, a 20 March 1981 Los Angeles Times advertisement for the picture still did not include a rating.
Despite the film’s rating controversy, it received the People's Choice Award at the 1980 Toronto Film Festival and ranked as the top-grossing exclusive run film in New York City during its opening week, taking in $41,338 at the Sutton Theater. The film also marked the theater’s largest first-day grosser to date.
BAD TIMING was released to mixed reviews. While the 12 October 1980 Los Angeles Times called the picture an “engrossing study,” the 3 November 1980 Time noted that the film’s “jumble of quick-cut flashbacks” was distracting and allowed for too “few enlivening leaps or juxtapositions.”
U.S. distributor World Northal Corp. failed to provide a timely credit list for BAD TIMING to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the film was thereby excluded from contention for the 1980 Academy Awards. Richard Hartley’s score for the film has not had a release.
Director Nicolas Roeg and Theresa Russell fell in love during the shooting of the film. They later married, had two children, and were subsequently divorced.
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EUREKA begins in 1925, when Arctic prospector “Jack McCann” (Gene Hackman) becomes a rich man when he strikes gold. But 20 years later, he faces major personal and family problems. Theresa Russell co-stars, in her second Nicolas Roeg film.
Roeg said of the picture: "I was initially interested in a character who wanted to satisfy an all-consuming desire...'that's what I want'...but when he gets it, what happens after his brief ecstatic moment? Nothing more than left-over life to kill".
EUREKA was produced under the aegis of David Begelman's troubled reign at MGM/UA. The film opened in May 1983 in only two theaters in London. In the U.S., the film was shelved for almost two years and then dumped into a handful of cities in late 1984 where it grossed about $125,000.
Stanley Myers' score has only appeared as an isolated score track on the 2016 Twilight Time Blu-ray release of the film.
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Posted: |
Dec 8, 2018 - 11:42 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In 1985’s INSIGNIFICANCE, four 1950s icons meet in the same New York hotel room, and two of them discover more in common between them than they ever anticipated. According to Variety, the film's "four celebrated American figures of the 1950s . . . for legal reasons are not specifically named". The four are identified only as “The Professor” (Michael Emil), “The Actress” (Theresa Russell), “The Senator” (Tony Curtis), and “The Ballplayer” (Gary Busey). This was Teresa Russell’s third film for Nicolas Roeg.
The film was based on a play originally produced at the Royal Court Theater, London, on 8 July 1982. After Nicolas Roeg first saw the stage play, he believed that it "might be a tool to use. An incident came up in my own life and I thought, 'Good God, nobody knows a damn thing about anyone.' That was the premise that started me thinking about the piece again."
Roeg asked playwright Terry Johnson to work on the screenplay, which at first meant simply reducing the play to approximately ninety minutes as opposed to two hours. But then Roeg began making suggestions which would expand the screenplay and include flashbacks to the characters’ histories, and flash-forwards of imagination. His suggestions inspired Johnson to focus on a deeper development of the characters, while Roeg himself began to imagine how the film could open the play spatially as well as laterally. “He opened it backwards,” Johnson said".
After BAD TIMING (1980) and EUREKA (1983), this was the third and final collaboration between director Nicolas Roeg and producer Jeremy Thomas. Since the film was a British production, all of the interiors were shot at Lee Studios in Wembley, London, with only limited on-location filming of exteriors in New York.
The $4 million picture was entered into competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985 where it was nominated for the prestigious Palme d'Or Award but won instead the Technical Grand Prize. The film’s score, by Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer, was released on an Island Records LP in Germany and Japan, and on a ZTT Records LP in the UK, but there was no U.S. release. The LP, which also included dialogue, has not been reissued on CD.
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Posted: |
Dec 9, 2018 - 12:52 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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CASTAWAY finds middle-aged Gerald Kingsland (Oliver Reed) advertising in a London paper for a female companion to spend a year with him on a desert island. Young Lucy Irvine (Amanda Donohoe) takes a chance on contacting him and after a couple of meetings they decide to go ahead. Once on the island, however, things prove a lot less idyllic than anticipated.
The film is based on a true story: At 25, Lucy a former clerk, monkey keeper and waitress, was looking for adventure when she responded to Gerald Kingsland's magazine ad: "Writer seeks 'wife' for year on tropical island". It was 1981, and London was preparing for the first installment in the never-ending media saga of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Despite her reservations, Lucy agreed to marry Gerald in order to satisfy Australian immigration restrictions. She also learned that she would have to finance the trip as Gerald was broke. The less-than-happy couple wound up on Tuin, between New Guinea and Australia. Thirteen months later, Lucy returned to England alone, and her vividly written best-selling book on her experiences was dedicated to Gerald and published in 1984, six months before Gerald's "The Islander" saw print.
Nicholas Roeg shot the 1986 film in The Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, off East Africa. UK singer Kate Bush was initially asked to star in the film, but she was put-off by the sexual material of the screenplay. Instead she provided a song. The film's score, by Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer was released on an EMI LP only in Britain. It was re-issued on CD by Quartet in 2013.
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Posted: |
Dec 10, 2018 - 12:25 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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For the psychological drama TRACK 29, writer Dennis Potter reworked his 1974 BBC television play, “Schmoedipus,” transposing the setting from London to the United States. The title "Track 29" is taken from the lyrics of the song "Chattanooga Choo Choo." In the story, distraught and dreamy “Linda Henry” (Theresa Russell) complains to her husband, surgeon “Henry Henry” (Christopher Lloyd), about their sex-less, childless marriage, but he's obsessed with his basement model railroad layout and also engaged in an affair with a nurse. When mysterious stranger “Martin” (Gary Oldman) drops in on Linda, he claims to be her long-lost illegitimate son.
Originally, principal photography was set to take place in August 1983 in Dallas, TX, with director Joseph Losey, and featuring actress Vanessa Redgrave, actor Lee Marvin, and actress Louise Fletcher. The drama department of the BBC and Pennies From Heaven Co. were listed as the film’s production companies. A month later, Variety reported that “financing fell apart,” and Joseph Losey had moved on to direct the British film STEAMING (1985), starring Redgrave. However, an article in the 14 December 1983 Variety reported that filming on the picture “was shelved” due to a disagreement between the BBC and their “rule that all BBC films be made in 16mm,” and the film’s producers wanting to shoot 35mm film.
With a new cast and director Nicolas Roeg, filming finally began on 7 May 1987 in North Carolina. Filming took place on locations around Wilmington, NC, as well as at the Dino De Laurentiis Studios. Filming also took place at the North Carolina Trainorama, an annual railroad train-themed festival. Shooting lasted approximately seven weeks on an accelerated “six-day” per week schedule. The film’s budget was approximately $3 million.
The film was screened on 15 May 1988 at the Cannes Film Festival. The picture was released on 9 September 1988 in New York City, and opened on 14 September 1988 in Los Angeles. TRACK 29 was Theresa Russell’s 4th feature film with Nicholas Roeg. Stanley Myers’ score for the film has not had a release. The film received only a limited 13-theater release in the U.S., and grossed less than $430,000.
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Posted: |
Dec 10, 2018 - 2:30 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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The 1990 adventure fantasy THE WITCHES, told of a young boy (Jasen Fisher) who stumbles onto a witch convention and must stop them, even after he has been turned into a mouse. Anjelica Huston starred as the “Grand High Witch.” The film was based on the 1983 book of the same name by Roald Dahl. The $11-million collaboration between director Nicolas Roeg and executive producer Jim Henson was Henson’s last project.
Jim Henson’s Creature Shop designed and built the prosthetics for the witches and animatronic rats and mice that were used interchangeably with real mice. The Creature Shop created three different sizes of puppet mice. The 'A' mice were the size of actual mice, being operated by almost hair-thin cables. The 'B' mice, also cable controlled, were about the size of a very large rat. The 'C' type was a very expressive large hand puppet, about three feet tall. However, the largest size was only used in about four shots, since director Roeg found it difficult to cut from a close-up of a human to a close-up of a mouse. He preferred to keep the width of the shot the same, thus the miniature mice in scaled down sets were most often used.
The filmmakers found a section of old Bergen, Norway, that looked as if little had changed over the previous century. In Newquay, Cornwall, they used the exterior of a “grandiose, decaying Edwardian seaside hotel,” but production designer Andre Sanders built the interiors on a soundstage at Bray Studios in Berkshire, England. For the sequences in which children were turned into mice, sections of the hotel’s interior and furniture were built to a larger scale. Principal photography began in Norway on 11 April 1988, and lasted sixteen weeks.
The movie had been completed and readied for release in 1989, but Lorimar Productions' theatrical division folded. Lorimar struck a deal with Warner Bros. to release the film, but Warners shelved it for over a year. According to newspaper reports, the film was given “minimal exposure at nine theaters” in Orlando, FL, and Sacramento, CA, on 16 February 1990, to test it on American audiences.
After the test screening, Roald Dahl angrily expressed to the producers how "appalled" he was at "the vulgarity, the bad taste" and "actual terror" in certain parts of the film. Dahl demanded his name and the title be removed from the film prior to release, but after receiving an apologetic, complimentary letter from Jim Henson, Dahl grudgingly withdrew his threat.
Henson died on 15 May 1990, four days before the film debuted at the Seattle International Film Festival. THE WITCHES was released nationally three months later, on 24 August 1990. Reviews were generally favorable, although the 15 March 1990 Daily Variety review stated that the film was “too sophisticated” for children and “not quite right for older audiences.” The 24 August 1990 Los Angeles Times commented that Roald Dahl despised the film, partly because the filmmakers gave it a “questionably ‘upbeat’ ending.” Several reviews, including the 24 August 1990 Toronto Star, also felt the ending was unsatisfying. The film did not cover its costs, grossing only $10.4 million. Stanley Myers’ score did not receive a release.
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Posted: |
Dec 10, 2018 - 5:28 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In COLD HEAVEN, an adulterous woman (Theresa Russell) has her faith in God tested when her husband (Mark Harmon) dies and miraculously comes back to life. This was the sixth film that Russell made with director Nicolas Roeg.
Two years after the publication of Brian Moore’s 1983 novel, Cold Heaven, Roeg and writer Allan Scott planned to adapt the work for the screen. The pair had previously collaborated on the acclaimed supernatural thriller DON’T LOOK NOW (1973). However, other film projects commanded their attention over the next three years, and development on COLD HEAVEN stalled. On 11 June 1989, the Los Angeles Times reported that filming would begin in August under the Schwartzman Films banner. Scott’s script shared the same basic plot as Moore’s story, with a few changes. He cast the married couple as Californians, rather than New Yorkers, and set their ill-fated vacation in Acapulco, Mexico, rather than Nice, France. Principal photography began 18 September 1989 in Mexico, with Management Company Entertainment Group (MCEG) overseeing production.
A year later, Roeg, Scott, and executive producer Jack Schwartzman had filed a bankruptcy petition against MCEG, claiming they were still owed approximately $162,000 on their uncompleted $4.5 million picture. Whether or not the financially troubled company ever reached a settlement with the complainants has not be determined. Another year passed before it was announced that COLD HEAVEN, newly acquired by Hemdale Pictures, would open nationwide on 28 February 1992. However, after a world premiere at the Palm Springs Film Festival on 10 January 1992, the release date was pushed back to 29 May 1992.
Critical reception was resoundingly negative, with a 14 January 1992 Daily Variety review comparing COLD HEAVEN to a “jumbled bad dream.” Los Angeles Times critic Peter Rainer concurred in his 29 May 1992 review, describing Roeg’s work as yet another “visual aria without much of a tune.”
The film barely grossed $100,000 in the U.S. Stanley Myers’ score was released by Intrada, on a CD paired with TRUSTING BEATRICE (1993).
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Posted: |
Dec 11, 2018 - 11:27 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Nicolas Roeg's final film was 2007's PUFFBALL (aka THE DEVIL'S EYEBALL). In this horror thriller, powerful supernatural forces are unleashed when a young architect (Kelly Reilly) becomes pregnant after moving to an isolated and mysterious valley to build a house. When the neighboring farmers take against the unborn child, it's her very survival that is threatened.
The film was shot in Ireland. The advertising for the film was still trading on Roeg's successes from 30 years earlier, describing him as the director of PERFORMANCE and DON'T LOOK NOW. The film barely got a U.S. release, and the film's score, by three composers, received none.
Writer Dan Weldon , actress Rita Tushingham , director Nicolas Roeg , and actor William Houston
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