rikke & hanne kesten (rbkhbk@bcn.net)
Wed, 08 Sep 1999 19:15:40 +0000
Mario Taboada wrote:
> I hereby propose....Donald Westlake as
scriptwriter
> and Roman Polanski as director.
Westlake DID write a screenplay for Red Harvest. So did
Bertolucci
(twice), Neil Jordan, Volker Schlondorff (oversaw an
adaptation) and a host of others. Best of the bunch was --
naturally -- Bertolucci. He wrote it for Jack Nicholson to
play the OP back in the late Seventies. We even went to visit
Bisbee, AZ to stand in for the copper mining town of Butte,
Montana. However, in those days the cost of filming on
location and in period with Bertolucci at the reins scared
the money people. Jordan wanted to actually shoot the film in
Butte, which was a real possibility, but the studios balked
-- he had only done Mona Lisa up to that time. The guy he
chose to design the film was Anton Furst who went on to do
the first Batman which, if you'll recall, was best reviewed
for the look of the film and climbed to popularity on that
count more than any other. His and Neil Jordan's approach to
Red Harvest was splendid. Would have been a wonderful
film.
It's a project that's still around out there. One
of these days...... maybe the producer will get back together
with Bertolucci, who really had, IMHO, the tone and the
melody of the film in beautiful, original proportion without
violating the Hammett original.
--steve
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