The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made (Paperback)

by Chris Gore (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In a business that produces over 40,000 spec scripts each year, of which only 3000 are optioned, and a mere 50 made, a project that never sees the light of day isn't a failureAit's the norm. In the spirit of Film ThreatAGore's alternative movie glossyAthis book celebrates the most remarkable of aborted projects: "they might not have turned into great films," he writes, "but as ideas they were truly great." Many of these jettisoned movies are already Hollywood legends, and Gore's descriptions of the surviving material are full of promise: potential classics by Hitchcock and Wells, Garbo's comeback film, a Walt Disney/Salvador Dali collaboration called Destino. Among the star turns we'll never see are Frank Sinatra in The Jimmy Durante Story and Marilyn Monroe in Something's Gotta Give. Other ideas are intriguingly demented: Howard Stern's superhero parody Fartman, or a gangster movie about a Mafia don made out of ice cream. For some of these projects, there's still hope. The major players are still alive and the ideas are still film-ready, as is the case with The Betty Page Story, which Variety recently announced was slated to feature Liv Tyler. But as Gore demonstrates, casting the lead is merely a beginning, and a beginning doesn't get you far in Hollywood. This archive of stillborn pictures attests to the great feats of development and persuasion necessary to get a major film off the ground, and to the countless projects that crashed and burned along the way. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
Think you know Hollywood movies? Think again!

No matter how many movies you've seen, no matter how many trivia contests you've won, this book is sure to have some surprises for you.

The fifty flicks featured here aren't playing at the local Google-Plex or renting at your video store. These films never actually made it to the big screen---they're the gems that got lost in the Hollywood shuffle, consigned to Development Hell. Imagine, if you will:

--Alfred Hitchcock's The Blind Man, about a pianist suddenly given the ability to see
--Destino, the surreal fusion of two gigantic artistic talents: Salvador Dali and Walt Disney
--The unmade Star Trek film, Starfleet Academy
--Greta Garbo's triumphant return to the screen that never happened, Lover and Friend
--A senior citizens' Animal House

Each movie here is a treat for the imagination, and also a lesson in the dos and (mostly) don'ts of Hollywood. In here are dramas, sci-fi flicks, comedies, sequels, animated films, and biopics certain to stir the imagination! For the movie enthusiast, this book is a speculative joy, and for the aspiring filmmaker, it's a crash course in cinematic survival.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (July 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031220082X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312200824
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #915,745 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A more accurate title would leave out the word "greatest", July 26, 2000

By	Steven Bailey "Cinemaven" (Jacksonville Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Did you ever see the Marx Brothers comedy A Day at the U.N.? How about the Roger Rabbit sequel where it turns out that Bugs Bunny is Roger's father? If you never saw these movies, don't worry--nobody else has, either. However, they are (or were) legitimate movie projects, well-chronicled in Chris Gore's book, The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made.

The book lovingly details 50 films which never got beyond the planning stages for various reasons. Many of them involved heavy Hollywood hitters, from Steven Spielberg (who helped to get the first ROGER RABBIT off the ground), to DOUBLE INDEMNITY director Billy Wilder (who brainstormed the aborted Marx Brothers film as well as a Laurel & Hardy comedy), to Alfred Hitchcock (who proposed a movie about a blind pianist whose sight is restored).

While the book is a fast-paced, popcornish read, the book's not-so-subtle point is to make film purists gnash their teeth at the thought of these potential film classics never getting made. For me, the book's only surprise was that they left out many of my favorites, including Buster Keaton's proposed take-off of Grand Hotel, Charlie Chaplin's The Freak (about a girl who sprouts wings), and an aborted Western starring The Beatles.

It's easy to cry about potential film masterpieces that never got beyond the planning stage. The trouble is that, like many real lost films that come to light after being re-discovered, they often turn out to be classics only if they remain lost. And considering some of the awful ideas which do make it to the light of a movie theater--as witness the recent bomb AT FIRST SIGHT, starring Val Kilmer as (shades of Hitchcock) a blind artist who regains his sight--maybe these movies have rotted in Development Limbo for some very good reasons.

That said, the book will be an eye-opener to novices who have never heard the term "turn-around," and brain candy for those who have seen awful ideas that *did* get made into movies.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Great idea, poorly executed..., May 22, 1999

By A Customer

Chris Gore was at his journalistic peak when writing and editing "Film Threat" Magazine. Then he sold out to Larry Flint. I believe that if Chris attempted this book a few years earlier it might be more of an honest endeavor. THE 50 GREATEST MOVIES NEVER MADE reads like tabloid journalism, and offers no serious or insightful cinematic commentary. Chris spends too much time talking about the stories behind the screenplays instead of addressing what makes them great. They are not presented chronologically, which might have helped his presentation. He could have grouped them by decades, prefacing his discussion of the screenplays with background information on the climate in Hollywood then. He rarely presents material from these unproduced screenplays, nor offers much insight in the form of quotations or interviews. The nature of his commentary leads me to question whether he actually read many screenplays he discusses. Further, several of his facts were not current. What should have been interesting quickly became boring and repetitive. Almost every chapter ends with an attempt at negative sarcasm on the film industry. I have no idea who the audience for this book is. Many people who would purchase a copy already know the stories, and probably have most of these screenplays in their collection. In addition, there are numerous free sites on the Internet that contain similar, if not more detailed and current, information on these projects. What should have been a memorable film book is reduced to a waste of paper in the age of the Internet.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Was There An Editor?, July 5, 2000

By	John (Long Island, NY USA) - See all my reviews

While I did enjoy this book somewhat, I was baffled by the overwhelming number of typos and factual errors contained within. This was an amazing distraction from the otherwise enlightening content that Gore's book provides.