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Compiled by Terry Bourke
BRITAIN
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USA During the first quarter of this year, 22 features from major studios and more than 32 independent films were shooting or in post-production in the USA. This is an increase of four and five respectively for the same period last year. Late 1978 starters included director David Lowell Rich’s Airport—Concorde ’79 (Alain Delon), and Gary Nelson’s $18 million Black Hole (Maximilian Schell) for Walt Disney Studios, the company’s biggest budget film' to date. Nelson di rected the successful Paramount mini series Washington Behind Closed Doors. Steve McQueen finally started his long-cherished western saga Tom Horn, but after 10 days shooting, William Wiard took over directing from James Guerico (Electra Glide in Blue). Steven Spielberg (Jaws, Close Encounters) is wrapping his comedydrama 1941 (starring Ned Beatty, Toshiro Mifune, and Christopher Lee); John Huston (The Man Who Would Be King, Winter Kills) has started the feature Wise Blood; Robert Wise is supervising titles on Star Trek, The Movie; Hal Ashby (Bound for Glory, Coming Home) is shooting Being There (starring Peter Sellers). Ted Kotcheff (Wake in Fright, Duddy Kravitz, Who’s Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?) has finished North Dallas Forty, and has joined Warner Bros on a multiple-film deal; Lindsay Anderson (If, O Lucky Man) is in Hollywood to prepare “ a sweeping romance in India” for Orion Pictures-Warner Bros; Arthur Hiller (Love Story, Silver Streak) to make Southern Comfort, a comedy for United Artists, with Robert Wise as executive producer. Graeme Clifford, ex-Sydney editor (The Man Who Fell to Earth, Con voy), to direct EMI’s $3.4 million Tiger Man Nine in India mid-year; Francis Ford Coppola has confirmed that the longawaited Apocalypse Now will have its world premiere on August 15. Recent assignments: Bob Fosse (Cabaret), All That Jazz (New York); Robert Aldrich (The Choirboys), No Knife (starring Gene Wilder); Norman Jewison (F.I.S.T.), And Justice for All; Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke), The Amityville Horror (starring James Brolin); J. Lee Thompson (Guns of Navarone), Cabo Blancho (starring Charles Bronson); Paul Morrisey is directing a $5 million science-fiction version of Attack of the 50-foot Woman. Writers: John Milius (The Wind and the Lion), Extreme Prejudice for Peter Guber (producer of The Deep, Midnight Express); Abby Mann (Judgement at Nuremberg, Ship of Fools), Act of Vengeance for Warner Bros and director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, Wages of Fear); Colin Higgins (Harold and Maude, Silver Streak, Foul Play — made his debut as director on Foul Play), The Man Who Lost Tuesday for Para m ount; B rian T re n c h a rd Sm ith (Deathcheaters, Stunt Rock), Time Warp for Walt Disney Productions; Bo Goldman, Melvin and Howard (about Howard Hughes’ fake will) for Universal and director Jonathon Demme. Clint Eastwood will get a $3 million up-front salary and 10 per cent of the world gross on his next film Escape from Alcatraz, with Don Siegel directing (Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick); Michael 380 — Cinema Papers, May-June
Cimino (The Deer Hunter) had a lateApril start planned for United Artists’ The Johnson County War, starring Christ opher Walken and John Hurt, shooting in Hollywood. Andrew McLaglen is directing Roger Moore in Esther, Ruth and Jennifer for MCA-Universal, an oil rig hijack drama, with Elliot Kastner producing, and Tony Imi as cameraman. Tony Bill, actorproducer (Steelyard Blues, The Sting) directs My Bodyguard with Don Devlin (The Exorcist) producing; Ted Post (Hang ’Em High, Go Tell the Spartans) directs Memoirs of Hecate County, penned by Wendell Mayes (Spartans, In Harm’s Way). James Guerico, the original director on Steve McQueen’s Tom Horn, is back as producer of Hamster of Happiness, a family comedy with Hal Ashby. (Bound for Glory, Coming Home) directing Robert Blake and Barbara Harris. Alan J. Pakula (Klute) is supervising post-prod uction on Paramount’s Starting Over (starring Burt Reynolds, Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen). Sydney Lumet (Pawnbroker, The Hill, Wiz) is producing and directing Just Tell Me What You Want (starring AN MacGraw and Alan King). Paul Mazursky will direct Willie and Phil; Franklin Schaffner, Sphinx; Gordon Wiilis, Corky; Hy Averback, Glak; Milos Forman, Hadrian VII; Hal Needham, Ten-Four; Peter Hyams, The Hunter; Liliana Cavani, Loving Offend ers; Henry Jaglom, Sitting Ducks; Jan Kadar, Freedom Road; John Landis, The Blue Brothers; Michael Preece, The Prize Fighter; Harry Hurwitz, Remake; Melvin Frank, Lost and Found; Jeannot Swarc, Bid Time Return; David Cronen berg, The Brood; Dorn De Luise, Villain; Joan Micklin Silver, Chilly Scenes of Winter; Paul Schrader, American Gigolo; Sydney Pollack, Electric Horse man; Joel Oliansky, Macho Man; Tommy Wright, Hurry Tomorrow; Daniel Petrie, Resurrection; Robert Ellis Miller, Balt imore Bullet; Cash Baxter, Last Resort; Robert Moore, Columbia’s Chapter 11 (written by Neil Simon); Martin Davidson, MGM’s Captain Avenger; Menahem Golan, International Independents’ The James Family; Blake Edwards, 10; Gilbert Cates, The Last Married Couple in America; James Goldstone, The Day the World Ended; Marshall Brickman, Simon; Joseph Ruben, Gorp; Ken Russell, Altered States; and Peter Yates, Breaking Away. Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces) is d irectin g Brubaker for Twentieth Century-Fox in Ohio, with Robert
Redford starring in the title role as an Ohio State Prison inmate. European cinematographer Bruno Nuytten (Bronte Sisters) makes his American camera debut. Jerry Lewis is back, again directing himself, Susan Oliver and Harold J. Stone in Florida with Hardly Working. Lewis' last film was One More Time (1971). Michael Apted, who directed Dustin Hoffman, Vanessa Redgrave and Helen Morse in Agatha, is directing Coal Miner’s Daughter in Kentucky, Tenne ssee, with Sissy Spacek and Tommy Lee Jones in the leading roles. Alan Parker (Midnight Express) will delay his three-film deal with Twentieth Century-Fox to direct Hot Lunch for MGM in New York mid-June. The story is set in a New York school for performing arts, and is the work of young American writer Chris Gere. Australian presence in the USA has been highlighted by the initial box-office returns on two Peter Weir films, Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave, which have secured Weir a development contract with Warner Bros to direct a" film; Fred Schepisi (The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith) has been signed for an Avco Embassy romance-drama Bitter Sweet; Brian Trenchard Smith (as reported elsewhere in this column) is writing a script at Disney Studios; and A d e la id e ’s Robert Stigw ood has announced a four-film $17 million program for the next two years. Australian writer-director Philippe Mora (Mad Dog Morgan) has aban doned plans for his “ black hole” film, now that Disney Studios are spending $18 million on their space epic, and has also shelved plans for his re-make of the classic For the Term of His Natural Life, now being tackled by ABC-TV in Sydney as a mini-series. Mora, however, is making his third compilation docu mentary The Times are a’Changing, to be p ro d u ce d by David Puttnam (Casablanca Filmworks — The Deep, Midnight Express, Agatha), covering the 1960s in the USA. Mora’s first two docu mentaries Swastika and Brother Can You Spare Me A Dime were worldwide cinema successes. Richard Lang (television’s Kung Fu) is directing Charlton Heston and Brian Keith for Martin Ransohoff’s Wind Run, described as a “fast-paced western”. Ransohoff, one-time head of Filmways, when that company had many major film successes, plans two more films this year, and says he has lined up startdates and finance for three major films next year.
Richard Donner’s Superman II, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Herbert Ross’ Nijinsky were shooting in Britain as 1979 got into full swing. Only six other features were in the country’s main studios when the first quarter ended, although seven features (includ ing the latest Bond opus) were being made in far-flung locations. Pinewood Studios is busy with Super man II; Bear Island (Don Sharp); The World is Full of Married Men (Robert Young); and Nijinsky (Herbert Ross — who is signed to shoot Thorn Birds for Warner Bros in October, with Robert Redford starring, and locations likely in Australia). Kubrick’s The Shining (starring Jack Nicholson) is at EMI Elstree; Shepperton Studios has Saturn 3 (writer-director John Barry resigned after three weeks); and Titanic, (directed by William Hale), starring David Janssen, (and not to be confused with Sir Lew Grade’s version of the CJive Cussler best-seller Raise the Titanic). Twickenham Studios’ sole production is The Bitch (directed by Gerry O’Hara), starring Joan Collins, in a follow-up to her successful The Stud (with Oliver Tobias — Luke in the Nine Network TV series Luke’s Kingdom). Films being shot on location flying the British flag are Roman Polanski’s Tess (on which cameraman Geoffrey Unsworth died just before Christmas) in Normandy, Brittany and Paris; the James Bond epic Moonraker (Lewis Gilbert directing) in Brazil, France and Italy, with special effects at Pinewood; the comedy Porridge (Dick Clement), in Essex; Hussy (Matthew Chapman), starring Helen Mirren (Age of Consent; The Tempest (Derek Jarman), at Stoneleigh Abbey and Bamborough Castle; Radio On (Chris Petit), London and Bristol. Fred Hift, longtime London-based publicist, who has been associated with some Australian films at recent Cannes festivals, has moved to New York to become head of advertising and publicity for Columbia Pictures. Set to boost the production rate in April were Dino de Laurentiis’ space fantasy Flash Gordon, on which Mike Hodges replaced Nicholas Roeg as dir ector; and Yesterday’s Hero, a football drama directed by Neil Leifer for busy producer Elliott Kastner, starring Ian McShane and Lesley Ann Warren. Otto Preminger is in London preparing Human Factor for a July start
Director Herbert Ross with actress Leslie Browne during the shooting ofNijlnsky. Ross has been signed to shoot The Thorn Birds for Warner Bros.