Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Well, looks like THE BIJOU isn't called THE BIJOU anymore.
For those of you who haven't yet heard, Frank Darabont is directing a new film starring Jim Carrey, Martin Landau, Jeff DeMunn, Alan Garfield, Bob Balaban, Bruce Campbell, among others. Set in the '50s, it's a Capraesque fable about the power that movies have to unite us as a community, and about how powerful dreams are in our daily life. When a young screenwriter is blacklisted, he goes on a drunken bender which leads to an accident that causes amnesia. His memory gone, he wanders into a small town that lost almost all of their sons to WWII, only to be "recognized" by a local man as his long-lost boy. I've reviewed the script here on the site, and I'm a big fan of the project. I was initially shocked when I heard that they were preparing a name change. To me, THE BIJOU brings to mind an image of days past, of a time with the town theater was the one theater in town, a single screen that became the one conduit to Hollywood's glamour factory, when it was an event to go to the picture show, and when there was a sense that we were all sharing one rich dreamlife, one movie at a time. It's evocative because of the associations I have with that word, associations that I'm sure Darabont and his co-writer Michael Sloane share. They used it on purpose.
Unfortunately, they're associations that are not shared by many people now. The title's evidently been the source of some debate, and the subject of THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION's title has come up. Some still feel that title was the reason the film didn't find a larger audience, based on how glowing the praise is from people once they'd actually seen it. Not wanting to give audiences an excuse for not seeing his new film, Darabont has changed the name of the film and, presumably, of the theater that's at the heart of the film, the theater that the newly-reunited father and son reopen, giving the town a new sense of life.
When the film hits this Christmas, looks like we'll all be taking a trip down the center aisle of THE MAJESTIC.
And you heard it here first.
"Moriarty" out.
