Well our spy known only as The Man Who Never Was, reported in on a whole array of scuttlebutt, from Courtney Love and Robert Redford to Spielberg and Zemeckis to Ang Lee. Wierd hodgepodge, and as he says hold it with salt till later developments. Sounds cool though... so cool, I wonder if this spy sees snowcapped mountains and frozen peoplcicles out his window... hmmmmmmmm.....
Long time, your Red-Headedness. The site looks good with some very juicy bits here and there. Nice shot of you with Tarantino. Now for a very little bit of scuttlebutt gleaned on the open road - some of which you may already be aware of but might be worth a listen. Unlike some previous reports, this is just what it is labelled - "scuttlebutt" rumors-rumors-rumors and I can't vouch for anything in absolute confidence. The movie crowd tends to be very gabby once they've been lubricated a bit - everybody knows everybody and knows what everybody else is doing (yeah, yeah, yeah) - so take all of this with a grain of salt and see what bubbles up. Your "spy" in Sundance done good.
1) Sundance rather an odd conglomeration this time out although a bit more "manageable" than last year's goat rope. The great tongue-wag of choice has been the Courtney Love In Not. Some of the more cynical of the crowd are saying that the film was dropped not because Love objected but because Redford did not want Love using Sundance as an opportunity for some sleazy publicity ploy. The buzz is that Love really did want the documentary to air so she could make a large stink and thereby get her name splashed all over the media under the heading "There ain't no such thing as bad publicity." Redford was not about to play the game. If this has any truth to it, for my money it was a good call.
2) Very hush-hush rumours about a Spielberg project in development in collaboration with Robert Zemeckis about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dreamworks crowd is so paranoid about leaks that it's now in the "if I told you, I'd have to kill you" mode. Caution on putting this out for wide distribution but keep your ear to the ground and milk your solid contacts for all they are worth. There is no script or anything as they are just now going into the "research mode"
3) Ang Lee is getting closer to principal shoot date for "To Live On" although it sounds like there are problems on the "historical research" side - Lee, who is a stickler for accuracy, is a bit uncomfy with the details and was hoping to use re-enactors both to flesh out the cast (low budget at $35mil) and get a few details right. Lee is now leery as a lot of them are a bit well-fed and the "bushwhackers" who are the subjects of the film tended to be lean and wiry guys from being on the run and underfed. Riley Flynn of Austin was called to NY to talk about re-enactor coord but he appears to be locked in with a comittment on "Ghost Riders in the Sky" (which now seems to be in trouble and may not shoot on schedule). From a conversation overheard at Sundance it sounds like that although Canadian pop singer Jewel is signed on in the cast, Ang Lee's people were interested in lining up Celtic singer Connie Dover for the soundtrack. Dover was Raoul Perez's choice for "The Devil's Own" soundtrack but was out-voted when Pakula signed Sarah Clancy from Riverdance. The Clancy deal, however, was a great disaster and they wound up buying bits and pieces from other artists at the last minute.
