Opening Shots - brief film industry notes - Column

Don't believe the rumors: Vincent Gallo will be directing another film. Trade announcements in Cannes listed the title as The Brown Bunny, and all information beyond that is as scarce as kind words in a John Simon review (see The Chatterbox). Our tireless reporters did manage to track down the Buffalo '66 auteur, but the logorrheic Gallo is keeping uncharacteristically quiet on matters of plot, casting, location, distribution and dates. He would only allow that the music will be written and performed either by the Red Hot Chili Peppers' John Frusciante, Frusciante and himself, or just himself. When we know more, so will you.

AS IF IT WAS WRITTEN IN THE STARS ...

You can stop holding your breath -- Peter Greenaway and Madonna are joining forces. The newly British (accent and all) media star will play "Trixie, the femme fatale" in Greenaway's The Tulse Luper Trilogy, an impossibly ambitious history of the 20th century that's just one part of a vast smorgasbord called "The Tulse Luper Suitcase," set to incorporate 1,001 daily stories on the Internet, CD- and/or DVD-roms, TV and a plain old book in a binding. The three films, which will also star Kathy Bates, Lothaire Bluteau, Debbie Harry, Amanda Plummer, Isabella Rossellini, David Thewlis and the aforementioned Mr. Gallo, will start shooting in Utah and continue in Wales, Antwerp, Budapest, Moscow, Shanghai, Kyoto, and the Kubla Khan's palace in Manchuria. And the whole shmear will be "parametrically processed on Substrate Technologies." Where are the Luddites when you need 'em?

News ... on the March

France

Leos Carax has just finished preparing his preferred three-hour cut of POLA X for broadcast on the French television channel Arte, in early 2001 ... The 80-year-old but still vigorous Eric Rohmer is currently shooting L'Anglaise et le Duc, a story of the French Revolution based on the almost unknown memoirs of a British woman named Grace Elliot. The film,, which stars Jean-Claude Dreyfus (Delicatessen) and Lucy Russell (Following), is being shot digitally, allowing Rohmer quite a bit of creativity with sets and costumes. One thing's for sure: it'll have better dialogue than Gladiator ... The reclusive Isabelle Adjani is deigning to appear before the cameras once more, for the first time since the ill-fated Diabolique remake, with director Laetitia Masson (Eh avoir ou pas, A vendre).

Stateside

Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson have just gotten a green light from Touchstone on their new script The Royal Tenenbaums. Anderson will direct, Barry Mendel (behind Rushmore and that little something The Sixth Sense)will produce, and shooting is planned to finish sometime next year. No word on whether there's a part for Wilson, whose star (and paychecks) continue to rise. Among his upcoming projects is Zoolander, Ben Stiller's first directing job since the overratedly underrated The Cable Guy ... The wait is over: Tobey Maguire has signed to play Peter Parker in Sam Raimi's Spiderman movie ... Alan Berliner, of Intimate Stranger and Nobody's Business fame, is just wrapping up editing on Confessions of a Name-aholic, reportedly a self-examination "through the lens of his own name," for which he tracked down the rest of the world's Alan Berliners, including the Belgian director of Ma Vie en rose ... On the Ghosts of Mars front: due to an injury (although exactly what was injured remains unclear), Ms. Courtney Love will not be appearing in John Carpenter's sci-fi epic after all. Natasha Henstridge (Species) will be filling the empty space suit. In related news, the projected remake of Carpenter's forever golden Assault on Precinct 13 by Jean-Francois Richet (Ma 6-T va crack-er) has been stalled in the courts, making way for an alternate remake to be shot by none other than John Carpenter ... Late-breaking news: with American Zoetrope producing, Hal Hartley is finally creating his long-simmering Monster. Shooting in Iceland and New York, the film is set to star Sarah Polley, Julie Christie, Helen Mirren and Hartley stalwart Robert Burke as The Monster.

CHATTERBOX

"Ruiz, a prolific Chilean living in Paris, has made 90-odd films, most of which I have avoided. They are slapdash, frivolous, campy -- think of a lesser Almodovar. Here, however, he has made a more considered, respectable, elaborately produced film from a screenplay by Gilles Taurand and himself, in French and with decent subtitles. That the director is, as Proust was, a homosexual may be counted as an advantage." -- John Simon, in the National Review, on the decidedly non-Almodovar-ish, long-married Raul Ruiz. We agree with him about those subtitles, though: clear as crystal.

OFF THE SHELF

Notable forthcoming publications

Edited by videomaker Steve Reinke and Tom Taylor, Lux: A Decade of Artists' Film and Video (ABC Art Books Canada, 373 pp, $22.95) is a compendium of interviews, photos, sketches, scripts and theoretical essays related to Canadian experimental film and video. Though artists from other countries are represented as well, the editors use the exhibition activities at Toronto's Pleasure Dome as a departure point, addressing issues raised by past screenings and the community of artists and fans who frequent this eleven-year-old venue.