#Fuck Francis ford Coppola
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hm. i should rewatch the outsiders movie.
#i really did not like it when i first saw it and i imagine some of those gripes are still going to hold on a rewatch#but some distance from the book might give me the space to appreciate the movie on its own a bit more#also what the fuck do you mean francis ford coppola directed it#talk tag
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Behind the scenes photos of Sonny’s murder and Michael killing Sollozzo and McCluskey, along with a special effects memo from Francis Ford Coppola. I believe the first effects scene referenced in the memo may have been a cut scene where Clemenza beats up the young men who attacked Bonasera’s daughter, per his request at Connie’s wedding.
The memo reads (including any odd phrasing):
The previous special effects memo was a result of the meeting with Howard Jensen and Danny Lee was compiled by a stenographer and really doesn’t set down what I had in mind.
As a result, I would like to lay out more specifically what I had in mind.
In general, I hope to have very stunning and original effects WITHOUT the need of merely going further in blood and guts than has ever been done before. Sometimes a striking detail and original detail, such as a shattered eyeglass or a bullet hole through the hand can be much more unsettling and moving, than a ton of innards and blood. Think in terms of such details; even beyond what is outlined in the script.
BLOOD: In general, blood has never looked right to me on film. I think in reality it is thinner and more liquidy than it comes off in films, where it is thick and syrupy. I noticed in some real crime stills we have, that the victim’s clothes seem to be soaked in blood; almost watery in texture.
There are four scenes in the picture, that I have pre-selected as being the most important scenes, effect-wise, of the movie. Therefore I want the effects in these scenes to be stunning. They are: The shooting of Don Corleone (Pg. 53), The strangulation of Luca Brasi (Pgs. 71, 72), The killing of Sollozzo and McCluskey (Pg. 103), and the series of murders built around the baptism (Pgs. 176-182).
THE EFFECTS by number and page number:
EFFECT #1: Two young men beaten up (Pg. 35)
This is fairly simply, scene I intend to use to the slowness of the action, and the use of sound to achieve most of the effect. We might consider what the brass knuckles would do to the face of the young man. Perhaps have a phony arm made that would bend beyond normal limits. Perhaps a scrape across the young man’s face, which then begins to bleed?
#the godfather#francis ford coppola#sonny corleone#james caan#al pacino#michael corleone#film history#my photos#i don’t know what the blue dot in the photo is sorry!#this memo is otherwise included in the $500 godfather set thing the museum store sells#but fuck that noise i was able to make out what it said for y'all
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*furiously writes “FUCK” on the side of an aeroplane*
#dougie rambles#personal stuff#my poor attempt at a joke#what#no context#shitpost#highbrow shitposting#aviation#fuck#weapons grade shitpost#apocalypse now#this sounded funnier in my head#if you know you know#if not#well…#marlon brando#obscene#francis ford coppola#films#cinema#vietnam
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the rainmaker (1997) - dir. francis ford coppola
“I'm hot. In fact, I'm so hot, there's no place for me to go but down. Every client I ever have will expect the same magic, nothing less. And I could probably give it to them, if it didn't matter how I did it. And then I'd wake up one morning and find that I'd become Leo Drummond [...] Every lawyer, in every case, crosses a line he didn't mean to cross. It just happens. And if you cross it enough times, it disappears forever. Then you're nothing but a lawyer joke. Just another shark in the dirty water.”
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No, George Lucas is not a "traitor"
You may have seen angry tweets and thumbnails such as these, in the last few days.
Context - Disney is going through a proxy battle, and George Lucas sent out a statement that read as follows:
So immediately, all the grifting influencers who based their entire platform around the narrative that "Kathleen Kennedy & Disney betrayed Lucas' legacy" banded together and agreed that the new line was:
"Fuck George Lucas, he betrayed us and betrayed himself. Lucas sided with his own abusers!"
Here's why this line of thought is absolutely childish and uninformed.
1- Get real, he's a shareholder, of course he'll say this.
I don't need to expand on this, do I?
He owns stock. Someone threatens your money, you defend the money. The question becomes: why does he think that sticking with Disney CEO Bob Iger will result in more profit than siding with?
Variety theorizes that it may be because Nelson Peltz has admitted that he has no media experience.
And if that's the case? I'm not surprised at all, because...
2- George has always hated amateur studio execs
The following is me simplifying a lot... but George's relationship with studios has never been a good one.
When he was working at American Zoetrope, with Francis Ford Coppola, they were commissioned to adapt George's short film into a feature, THX-1138. The studio execs didn't like it and forced Francis to refund them the money (which is why he agreed to direct The Godfather, to get out of debt).
Moving on to American Graffiti (1973). When George writes Graffiti, he shops it around to studios and they all essentially told him to go fuck himself.
"American Graffiti went around to every single studio twice and they all said, "It's not a movie, there's no story, and there are no movie stars in it." And Star Wars— it was, "What in the world is this? Wookiees and robots? I don't get it." [...]
It'd be hard to make a movie [like American Graffiti or Star Wars] today in the system because all these middle management people get in there and interfere in the process. I think that's much worse for filmmakers than it's ever been in the past."
- Star Wars Insider #43, 1999
Except Universal. But throughout the process they're being irritants.
They object to the title because they don't know what it means.
The president is convinced it's a bad movie to a point where when he sees audiences cheer for it in test screenings, he argues they're paid actors.
They force Lucas to trim 5 minutes out of the film. Why? Just because.
This approach the studio execs were taking comes from the fact that none of them were artists. At this point in time, studios had been and were being bought by corporations who thought they could make a quick buck in the movie business.
Eg: Warner Bros wasn't run by the Warner brothers anymore. Paramount was now a subsidiary of Gulf+Western.
So when he's receiving notes, they're coming from - you guessed it - amateurs who think they know what they're talking about, but in reality have no clue. They did market research and think they know everything.
This subject is covered in The Offer (2022), a series about the making of The Godfather (reeeeally good show, I watched it twice).
In this scene, for example, you have a studio exec with no artistic sense whatsoever trying to tell Coppola which poster he should go with, and you get the idea of what I mean.
youtube
(Fun fact, a young George Lucas even makes a cameo in the pilot episode, in Coppola's office.)
George also went into this subject during his 2015 interview with Charlie Rose.
It's a 4-minute clip, so here's the relevant bit:
"[Big corporations are] known for being risk averse. And movies are not risk averse. Every single movie is a risk, a big risk, like... The movie business is exactly like professional gambling... except you hire the gambler. You use some crazy kid with long hair, you give him $100 million and you say "go to the tables and come back with $500 million." That is a risk!
Now, the studios have been going to think of it that way, they say: "well, maybe if we told him that he couldn't bet on red, maybe if we told him because we did market research and we've realized that red wasn't" -- so they tried minimize their risk. [...]
They're basically corporate types. They think-- some of the worst things happens when they think they know how to do it, then they start making decisions that ensure it's not going to work. "
- Charlie Rose, CBS This Morning, 2015
Now, ironically, this is the same interview in which he compared Disney to "white slavers", but clearly he was still smarting from his own ideas for the Sequels having been ignored.
But considering how little a fuck he gave about those Star Wars films once they came out and how often he visits the now visits sets of like Ahsoka and The Mandalorian, I think he's over it.
Again, this doesn't align with some Star Wars influencers' narrative that "he's fuming, he hates these movies, he feels betrayed and angry!" But if you ask me, he likely couldn't care less, and dubbing Disney his "abusers" is giving them waaay too much credit.
He made his movies, told the story he needed to tell and is now probably just enjoying his retirement, raising his daughter and putting together his museum, part of which is possible because of the money Disney keeps generating for him, as an investor.
So it doesn't surprise me one bit that George Lucas, of all people, to side with the Devil he knows rather than the amateur exec, because the latter is a painful road he knows all too well.
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Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) Or Why The Probably Most Accurate Movie Adaptation Of Dracula Still Is Not Accurate Enough
I mentioned some time ago - while salivating over the marvellous razor scene of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula adaptation - that there is quite some stuff to unpack here. And now I found some time to unpack. So let's begin. I'll start with the good stuff, firstly the good stuff that's not in the book (i.e., the Flourishes), than the good stuff that's true to the book (the Well-Conserved). Thirdly, I'll make note of things that were, unnervingly, changed (by which I mean They Came Back Wrong), and then I'll deal with what is unfortunately left out from the book (the Missing). And finally, finally I'll rant over that one bad thing that never was in the book in the first place (a section I'll call JUST WHY?).
So. A tragedy in five acts. Here we go.
Act I - The Flourishes
The razor scene. I think I dealt with this enough by now. It's perfection and I'll die on that hill.
The music. Obviously, Bram Stoker's gothic lil masterpiece is lacking some gorgeous score. But mourn no longer, because Wojciech Kilar cooked up some dashing, pushing tune for us, fitting perfectly to this dark tale of spreading darkness and deepening madness.
Some basic knowledge about blood groups. Yeah, Stoker can't be blamed for this, but still. It's a nice addition to remind us that we do indeed live in a world where blood groups exist.
The Westenra Estate. As much as I pity that the lovely town of Whitby did not make it into the movie, I do love Lucy Westenra's house. Because I'm a sucker for hedge mazes. Simple as that.
Those glasses. Those. Fucking. Nice. Glasses.
Act II - The Well-Conserved
The plot in general. Yes, there are a lot of maddening differences, as we will see soon. But still, this movie at least makes the impression that most of the people working on it had indeed read the darn novel. Which is something that I can't say about many other Dracula adaptations I have seen.
The costumes, the sets, the atmosphere. Well done, everyone!
The Actors. The good thing about being not native in a language is that one is not very prone to dialects that seem off. And as I happen to not be a native speaker of English, I have little problems with Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder adding some US touch to what should be very, very, v e r y British characters. I even find Reeves perfectly fitting for the oh so darn young Jonathan Harker. And the rest of the cast is marvellous, too (with the exception of Winona Ryder, see below for details). Especially Tom Waits, who is hard-wired to the name of Renfield in my brain ever since I first saw this movie. And Gary Oldman as Dracula… Well. I think I already made clear what opinion I have about that sexy bastard.
Some lucky few of lovely quotes made it over to the film. Dracula's welcome. The Fowl Bauble of Human Vanity, of course. And Qunincey almost making me faint when saying "Little girl" when I least expected it.
Act III - They Came Back Wrong
The dates. Goshdarnit, the dates! It's an epistolary novel, so why make the effort of making up completely new dates for events that already had a precise date in the novel? I just don't get it. And it unnerves me. Every. Fucking. Time.
Time in general. Watching the movie after Dracula Daily makes it feel so very, very hasty. Jonathan travels to Castle Dracula like it's no thing at all. And the first few days in Castle Dracula are condensed into one weird evening.
Dracula meeting Mina before Jonathan is back. I really, really loved the book for avoiding the most terrible tropes. And then comes this movie, and struts right into this terrible pitfall.
Mina. I'm sorry, usually I love the work of Winona Ryder, but here she was way too bland. Maybe it was because her character had quite a revamp (ha. ha.) and no one cared to tell her what new approach she should take. But whatever reason, the clever, adorable train fiend of the original did not deserve this!
Act IV - The Missing
The Voyage of the Demeter is way too short. Where is "But I am captain, and I must not leave my ship"? Where is the poor sea captain tying himself to the wheel? And where is his funeral? Oh, I really missed all that. And, I mean, I don't mind hearing Anthony Hopkins read the lines, but would it have been such an expense to at least hire an additional actor to voice the correspondent or the sea captain?
Jonathan Holding Mina By the Arm. That's really not an objectively big issue. That's just me who fell in love with JonMina after reading this chapter. And almost no one does it properly. They deserve justice!
(Thanks a ton to @smieska for capturing my mood just perfectly!)
Act V - JUST WHY?
Elisabeta. Don't get me wrong here: All of the oh so tragic Drac backstory they invented for this movie is terribly unnecessary. But in this sea of uselessness, the tragically deceased wife of Vlad Țepeș that just so happens to perfectly resemble Mina Murray is an audience-insulting island of unoriginality. I mean, yeah, I guess someone wanted to add some romance to the story of Vlad the Fucking Impaler. Because, well, nineties or so. But Mina, of all women? Why not invent some new character that can be bothered with such stuff? Why ruin an all-nice JonMina ship? I don't get the whole new backstory, and I especially don't get this aspect.
Dracula raping Lucy in his shitty werewolf form. Everything about this is wrong. And it has no relevance for the plot. Just. Blergh.
Epilogue
It's cruel to watch Francis Ford Coppola's take on Dracula right after finishing @re-dracula. I know that now. Everything is still too fresh. It's a good movie, after all, but especially because it's quite good it is frustrating to be so terribly aware of all its shortcomings. In a few weeks or so, I would recommend it, again, I guess. As long as it's still Dracula Off-Season. 7 out of 10 points.
#thank you for coming to my ted talk#dracula 1992#bram stoker's dracula#dracula movie#francis ford coppola#keanu reeves#winona ryder#anthony hopkins#tom waits#dracula daily#jonmina#jonathan harker#mina harker#movie recommendation#movie review#schroed's thoughts
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Jonathan Harker: The ‘Absolute Love Corrupts Absolutely’ Villain That Almost Was*
*LONG before Francis Ford Coppola’s Cinematic Gary Oldman Fanfiction
Spoilers ahead for the Dracula Daily enjoyers, because I’m whipping out all my literary receipts on this.
I recently finished speed-rereading Dracula because I have no self-control. In doing so, I got a refresher on quite a few incendiary factors of the book that time had dulled in my memory.
1. There’s a TON of ‘I’m not like other girls!’ and ‘men good, women dainty,’ and ‘What no I’m not projecting, honest, I just really like the words manful, voluptuous, manful, aquiline, manful, God, and manful again. –Bramothy Stoker,’ so brace for that from basically the whole cast. I’m blaming it partly on Bram Flakes’ own prejudices, of which there are plenty, and the fact that he’d clearly never met a thesaurus in his life.
(I appreciate everyone’s mental revamp of Mina as the New Woman to Lucy’s Classic Damsel, but…oof. Everyone’s in for a harsh Period/Stoker Accurate reminder.)
2. Brammy Pajamas was either hanging around some exceptionally devout Christians to write some of the second/third act scenes with everyone basically thrashing and wailing and falling on their knees and clasping/kissing hands as they pray to/thank God, all while thinking it was perfectly natural behavior for these characters…or he legit had no clue how any kind of ordinary human being, Christian or otherwise, would react to the situations he puts them in.
(Seriously, it’s not even that everyone’s devout, it’s that they’re all written to act like they’re in a soap opera where the only direction they got was to be as hammy and histrionic as physically possible. You’ll know the scenes when you see them.)
3. Jonathan Harker has not only been done dirty by every adaptation since the book in terms of being a main character, along with being the character to spend the most time with Dracula in close quarters, period, and being the love interest for Mina—his whole character arc by the second half of the book is the most blazing hot, “If my beloved is destined for damnation, I’m heading to Hell with her, fuck all else,” shit I have ever read in classic literature, full stop.
Not Dracula. Not any character based on Dracula.
Jonathan fucking Harker is the OG archetype for Love Corrupts (Violently), and the canon story avoided him going full tragic villain by t h i s much. You want proof? Let’s go.
NOTE: MAIN SPOILERS STRAIGHT FROM THE BOOK, SHIELD YOUR EYES
Here’s the part most Harker fans scream over, myself included:
“To one thing I have made up my mind: if we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many; just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks.”
Good shit, good shit! Jonathan was already prepared to risk falling to his death from a cliff or being eaten by wolves rather than stay in Castle Dracula for a bloodthirsty eternity with the ladies. But now? Mina is quite literally his, “You are worth Hell,” Beloved. But there’s more. Fast forward to one of Team Fuck-Up-That-Old-Undead-Man’s first head-on encounters with the Count. As they’re waiting, Jonathan gets impatient, declaring:
“I care for nothing now,” he answered hotly, “except to wipe out this brute from the face of creation. I would sell my own soul to do it!”
He says as much in front of his Christian+ buddies who, by now, had pretty fair reasons to believe in the legitimacy of Hell and all its demons. Van Helsing is definitely startled and seemingly talks him down from such an oath. Key word being seemingly. Because we jump forward again to a point where Mina, in full saintly forgiveness mode (and apparently selectively forgetting Van Helsing’s history lesson about Dracula’s pre-vampire days being ones of a slaughtering tyrant), saying that if/when they destroy the Count, oh, how happy his soul will be to be free of his torment on Earth, et cetera. Jonathan Harker has a rebuttal to share. Namely:
“May God give him into my hand just for long enough to destroy that earthly life of him which we are aiming at. If beyond that I could send his soul forever and ever to burning hell I would do it!”
God forgives. Jonathan Harker emphatically does not.
Onward again, and he speaks volumes by what he does not say. Chiefly, there’s a point where Mina, now in full martyr preparation should the worst happen, makes the boys swear an oath to destroy her body if/when she succumbs and dies to Dracula’s vampiric poisoning so she cannot rise again as one of his ladies. The boys swear. Mostly. What we get from Jonathan is…
“And must I, too, make such a promise, oh, my wife?”
“You too, my dearest.” (Note: The rest of her paragraph here is full of the most knife-twisting, utterly warped martyr ‘pep talk’ I’ve ever read, and I have no idea how she/Bramarama thought it would remotely convince Jonathan this was all a reasonable and chill thing she was talking about. Anyway.)
It’s important to note that absolutely nowhere in the ensuing text does Jonathan ever speak the promise out loud. He does read the goddamn Burial Service at Mina’s request, which he barely chokes his way through. But he never makes the oath.
Another jump ahead. They are on the hunt for Dracula and, alas, have just missed him at a key point. Most of the gang are shaking their fists at the sky, cursing up and down. And what is Jonathan doing? Well, to quote Jack Seward, just before the epiphany…
“We men were all in a fever of excitement, except Harker, who is calm; his hands are as cold as ice, and an hour ago I found him whetting the edge of the great Ghoorka knife which he now always carries with him. It will be a bad look-out for the Count if the edge of that ‘Kukri’ ever touches his throat, driven by that stern, ice-cold hand!”
And upon discovery of the Count slipping them…
“Harker smiled—actually smiled—the dark bitter smile of one who is without hope; but at the same time his action belied his words, for his hands instinctively sought the hilt of the great Kukri knife and rested there.”
For context, by this point Jonathan had already come at Dracula with said Kukri knife a while back, having nearly landed the blow after charging out of the pack and nearly fucking gutting the Count. For extra context, this is a Kukri knife:
He’s just been walking around with that. For half the book. Plotting.
And, with all of this in mind, we can only assume Jonathan had two plans of action in mind.
Plan A, follow Van Helsing’s lead.
…Not counting the moment he almost bit the Professor’s head off for saying he had to bring Mina along with him to Castle Dracula. Another good scene which includes his very succinct reaction to Van Helsing’s suggestion, even if he does have to agree in the end:
“Not for the world! Not for Heaven or Hell!”
Anyway. If the plan works out, cool. He gets to kill Dracula, Mina is saved. Best case scenario!
But then there’s the unspoken, explicitly unwritten (in case his pages need to be read), but heavily foreshadowed Plan B. They cannot destroy the Count, in time or otherwise. Mina is now either a corpse waiting to awake as a vampire, or a vampire already. The others, true to their vow, mean to destroy her.
Jonathan Harker, true only to Mina, in whatever form she may take, still has that Kukri. And the element of surprise. And a full acknowledgment of the realities of Heaven, Hell, and his holding Mina’s continued existence above them, his friends, his sanity, his humanity, and himself.
In short, all your tragically romantic Draculas can kindly go fuck themselves with a wooden stake. Jonathan Harker is the first and best gothic horror example of a person in love to the point of madness, damnation, and willingness to deceive or destroy anyone who would endanger the one he loves. The only reason we never got to see it in action was because Stoker had to tack on a happy ending. If he hadn’t?
The census would be less four unsuspecting heroes and plus two newlywed vampires.
The End.
Suck on it, Francis.
#Jonathan Harker is a good boy a lovely young man and he Can and Will Kill for His Wife :) :) :)#seriously there's a whole other essay to go with how gloriously fucked up-passionate this stance is within both the time it was written#and the novel itself which is SATURATED with God Christ and more God#for this fucker to have gone through what he did in the castle on top of all the very clear proofs of divine VS infernal goings-on#this dude is flipping the bird to all of it#the whole mess (be it of God or the Devil or fucking Dracula)#none of it ranks higher than Mina in his mind#my guy is fucked up and I love him#jonathan harker#dracula#mina murray#mina harker#dracula daily#spoilers
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guys what the fuck. nicolas cage’s real name is nicolas kim coppola, and yes it’s THAT coppola family. he’s sophia coppola’s cousin. francis ford coppola is his uncle
#no wonder he was able to become so big while being so. unconventional.#nepotism CITY in there#ryddles
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Why, then, did the killings go on for so long? The same irrationality lies at the heart of many other mass murders. In the Soviet Union, for example, shooting or jailing political opponents at first helped the Communist Party and then Josef Stalin gain absolute power. But after there were no visible opponents left, seven million more people were executed, and many millions more died in the far-flung camps of the gulag. So many engineers were seized that factories came to a halt; so many railway men died that some trains did not run; so many colonels and generals were shot that the almost leaderless Red Army was nearly crushed by the German invasion of 1941.
In the Congo, as in Russia, mass murder had a momentum of its own. Power is tempting, and in a sense no power is greater than the ability to take someone's life. Once under way, mass killing is hard to stop; it becomes a kind of sport, like hunting. Congo annals abound in cases like that of René de Permentier, an officer in the Equator district in the late 1890s. The Africans nicknamed him Bajunu (for bas genoux, on your knees), because he always made people kneel before him. He had all the bushes and trees cut down around his house at Bokatola so that from his porch he could use passersby for target practice. If he found a leaf in a courtyard that women prisoners had swept, he ordered a dozen of them beheaded. If he found a path in the forest not well-maintained, he ordered a child killed in the nearest village.
Two Force Publique officers, Clément Brasseur and Léon Cerckel, once ordered a man hung from a palm tree by his feet while a fire was lit beneath him and he was cooked to death. Two missionaries found one post where prisoners were killed by having resin poured over their heads, then set on fire. The list is much longer.
Michael Herr, the most brilliant reporter of the Vietnam War, captures the same frenzy in the voice of one American soldier he met: "We'd rip out the hedges and burn the hooches and blow all the wells and kill every chicken, pig and cow in the whole fucking ville. I mean, if we can't shoot these people, what the fuck are we doing here?" When another American, Francis Ford Coppola, tried to put the blood lust of that war on film, where did he turn for the plot of his Apocalypse Now? To Joseph Conrad, who had seen it all, a century earlier, in the Congo.
—King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, & Heroism in Colonial Africa
Reading this due to current events (Congo, Palestine, Ukraine, Myanmar, Azerbaijan, Xinjiang, Tigray, Manipur… nothing ever changes, does it)
#can’t tag it as genocide when it wasn’t meant as one#but worth mentioning#for blacklist sensitivity#since mass terror and mass torture aren’t exactly common tags#history#congo#belgium#russia#vietnam#america#king leopold's ghost#imperialism#communism#colonialism#capitalism#all the big -isms#torture tw#murder tw#child death tw
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every year the academy is such a parody of itself i don’t know why we keep pretending they aren’t either they don’t watch the movies or they shove a stick up their ass to seem more refined than they are with self imposed rules like “no sequels. only original ideas.” well then fuck the godfather part 2 am i right lads someone go take out francis ford coppola’s kneecaps and take back every award won for a biopic or an adaptation of a book or play
#watching top gun 13 times is normal though idk what to tell you#the only bad part of that was framing it like it’s top gun’s fault they didn’t watch any other movies
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While we’re all rightfully dragging Francis Ford Coppola for his crimes against our good friends Jonathan Harker and Lucy Westenra, I do want to give him credit where credit is due for hiring Eiko Ishioka as costume designer. Because dubious historical accuracy aside they all fucking slap:
Also, not from Dracula but one of my favorite costumes of hers:
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Hey! Do you have the metal hammer interview that contained the questions that the fans asked?
Sure
I got into horror movies because of Ghost. What are your favourite horror movies, and what horror movies would you recommend? @The_Moon_Thief, Twitter
“There’s two branches of horror movies for me. There’s old classic slasher films, as in Friday The 13th and stuff like that, but then you have the really good horror films, the ones made by really talented directors who primarily don’t do horror, and do other films as well. The best horror films ever made are The Shining by Stanley Kubrick, Jaws by Steven Spielberg, Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola, The Exorcist, The Omen. But then, you have classic cult directors. Lucio Fulci was an Italian director who made a lot of films that are entertaining. The House By The Cemetery is a classic one by him. The horror genre is hurt by the fact you have these really heavy-hitters who come in and do these fantastic films, and then unfortunately a lot of the genre is a swamp of really bad films.”
Would you ever play Glastonbury or other ‘mainstream’ festivals? Carly Daly, email
“We have played a lot of festivals like Pukkelpop, Rock En Seine, Roskilde - a lot of festivals where we are one of the few ‘metal bands’ but the headliner can be Bjork, Primal Scream and Drake. We played Coachella and Lollapalooza, lots of festivals like that… except for Glastonbury.”
Hammer: Is Glasto on your bucket list?
“It would be cool of course, but it’s never really been one of my most important ones, so no. I don’t know if this is the same for Glastonbury, this is my interpretation, but at Coachella, if you’re on the bill, you don’t have to play because no one will watch you anyway. Everyone is there for the big hip hop headliner. When we played Coachella, we went to see Dead Can Dance there and it was a few people in a tent. For fucking Dead Can Dance. Are you kidding me?! That’s why I’m just not generally all for those big pop festivals. I would miss a lot of the camaraderie. If you go to Graspop or Download, you go in there you know everyone, so many people. Whereas if you go to a big pop festival or mixed festival, everyone is in their own little universe.”
Hammer: There are rumours you’re playing Glasto this year - is there
anything in those rumours?
“No. Not now at least. That’s more than I know. I might live to regret what I just said!”
How much does writing new music go hand in hand with curating the new designs/'look’ for new eras? @haxbourne, Twitter
“They go partly together. It’s always in the front of my head how a song will fit into the show or if there’s anything we can do to turn it into what we call a ‘gag’. Gag songs tend to work better in the sets, so I always have a monocle on for that. For some people who are wondering why we’re not doing songs off the new album already, it’s because there might be a planned gag for them that we haven’t been able to present yet.”
How do you feel knowing that many of your LGBT fans like to personally interpret/depict your characters as gay and/or trans? @sanguinevampyr, Twitter
“Good. Great. If they find solace or inspiration in what we’re doing, I’m really happy about that."
Have you ever done a sick in one of your masks onstage, either from a hangover or the smell? Erin Smith, email
“Once on a South American tour, we had a really bad flu going on with the band and crew. It was absolutely fucking horrible. Day after day, someone new fell apart and people were lying backstage in the foetal position with a cork in the front and a cork in the back, purging. That was not cool.”
What’s your favourite Abba song? @Dorkus666, Twitter
“Right now, I Have A Dream. It involves three chords, and the third chord comes in at such a brilliant moment at the third section of the song. The first two sections are the same two chords, back and forth. Then all of a sudden, the third chord comes in and… they should be getting a Nobel Music prize for that one because it’s so fucking brilliant.”
Back when nobody knew who was behind the mask, what was your favourite rumour that you heard about yourself? Trent Carvalho, email
“That I was tall! Especially in the Papa Emeritus attire. In the beginning in underground circles it was a fairly known fact that I was in the band, so I never felt 100% anonymous in the early days.”
Who is your favourite Ghost - fictional or otherwise? Bradley Stratton, Facebook
“I’ve always been fascinated with the concept of ghosts in Star Wars. They appear as apparitions that can converse with you. If the Star Wars saga had been written a few hundred years ago, it would have been a religion, it has all the cornerstones of a religion and the idea of the elders and your teachers coming back to teach you from behind the grave is presented really well.”
If you had to wipe one of the following bands from history, which would it be: Iron Maiden, Kiss, Misfits? William Hawks, email
“If I had to wipe them out? Oh, that’s a hard one. It’s an easy question, but the answer is hard; I have to be pragmatic. I’m a humongous fan of all three bands. The one band I’d choose to wipe out, and that’s not a diss, what they did was so great, is Misfits. My control freakishness and my managerial inclinations would love to go back in time and correct a few things they did wrong. Not aesthetically, but business-wise. I would have wished for them to have a better career. I’d love to go back and curate their career because the career of Misfits, Samhain and Danzig put together would have been marvellous.”
What is metal missing in 2022? Danielle Bull, email
“It would be cool if there were newer, young bands regarded as more than a novelty, or an underground treasure. More organic rock bands of 20-year- olds recognised on a little bit more of a… I hate to say mainstream, but above the pub level. I’m all about underground, I come from the underground, and I worship the underground music, but for the resurgence of rock, we need that. I’d love if there were more bands that went through a similar recognition [channel] to Maneskin, actually. I think they’re really cool. They won Eurovision because they’re great, but they’re one of the few exceptions of it not being the end of their career. That’s usually what happens if you’re a band.”
Hammer: Have you ever considered Eurovision or been asked to do it?
“No, not really, but I wouldn’t want to do it because as I said, it’s usually the end of your career. If you already have an established career, then don’t do it. Although Maneskin proved it could be done. I hope there’s a lot of 14-year-olds out there in Europe and the world who see that as an inspiration and start playing drums, bass and guitar.”
What weird shit do you collect? Robbie Gregg, email
“I collect demo tapes. Old death metal demo tapes from the mid-8os to 1992. Black metal. Death metal. Thrash metal. Underground music. If anyone reading this who sits on shit like that… and if you are owners of original stuff that you got directly from the band… please call me!”
Would you ever have a female lead singer? @elyssami8, Twitter
“Why not? That could happen. Sister Emeritus!”
If you could pick one metal song that changed your life, what would it be? James Persens, email
“I Wanna Rock by Twisted Sister. That is probably the earliest song that I remember being able to sing and rock out to. That came out in 1984 and I was three years old at the time. I was lucky enough to have an older brother and in 1984 he was 16. A lot of who I am, why I am who I am, and my interests, is because of him. That’s my first memory of me thinking, ‘This is who I am.’”
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Right, so I had seen Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula before reading the novel (edit: added context, this was about 10-12 years ago) and due to the title “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, I assumed it was indeed a faithful adaptation... cut to a few months later when I decided to read the novel, and I got up to Dr. Seward’s entry on October 3. It was then that I found out that this extremely romantic scene between Mina and Dracula, this declaration of eternal love and all that shit
was blatant rape in the novel.
So... yeah, that was pretty horrifying to read, both in the regular reading context and with the context of previously seeing it romanticised and sexualised.
Tbh, none of the Mina/Drac romantic portrayals have really done it for me due to the whole “wait, you’re banging the guy who traumatised your fiance and killed your best friend?” element but knowing this certainly adds another layer of "...are you fucking kidding me?”
In conclusion - book!Mina Harker deserves better than to be continuously shoved into romantic relationships with her rapist. But it does seem like Hollywood/TV is learning to shove a stake through that trend, so *fingers crossed*
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tonight we’re thinking about harrison ford waking up one day and approaching francis ford coppola only to tell him fuck it my character is gay and there’s nothing u can do about it
and i think that’s beautiful
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After watching the wonderfully insightful documentary about the making of Goncharov that was included with the 4K Blu-Ray restoration called “Time’s Running Out for Winter”, I wanted to include some of my favorite behind-the-scenes trivia which had either been obscure or never discussed before until now:
Brad Dourif originally had a small part as Misha, Katya’s orphaned nephew who was dying of tuberculosis, in what would have been his first movie role. However, during the film’s editing process, it was determined that the subplot didn’t contribute enough to the story overall, so it was cut, and even now the footage remains lost. It’s a shame, because from how the actors described it, I bet it would’ve deepened Katya’s character even more and give her even more motivation for why she does what she does. Plus, I’m sure Brad would’ve been so cute in the role!
During the scene where Ice Pick Joe loses his temper and stabs Giorgio the Fruit Vendor (whose actor was a real fruit vendor that Scorsese decided to cast because of his striking appearance), John Cazale was supposed to stab the actor on a pad hidden beneath his apron. Unfortunately, Cazale slipped and accidentally stabbed him in the right shoulder, which they ended up using in the final movie because it looked much better than the fake blood they planned on using. Cazale almost immediately broke character to apologize (which is why there’s that quick cut after the stabbing) and paid for the actor’s medical expenses. Giorgio’s actor understandably did not return to the set, choosing to go uncredited, and so a body double was used in the shot where Ice Pick Joe runs away.
Harvey Keitel was supposed to use an Italian accent, but it was quickly determined that it “was fucking terrible” (De Niro’s words, not mine), so he just used his normal New York accent.
Gene Hackman complained to Scorsese that he felt Valery’s character was too boring, and he wanted to include a backstory about Valery killing Nazis with his bare hands during WWII. Scorsese threatened to fire him if he didn’t stop whining, but Hackman was appeased by Francis Ford Coppola, who visited the set for a few days and promised to cast him as the lead in his upcoming film, The Conversation.
Al Pacino ate so much chicken between takes that he was given the nickname “Al Pa-chicken” by the crew, which he was so embarrassed by that he donated his fee to a chicken sanctuary.
#unreality#goncharov#okay that’s all for today here about goncharov I swear#this will be my contribution#that last one might have actually happened during one of pacino’s movies
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Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
Watched: 10/21/2023
Format: Amazon
Viewing: Second, I think
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Firstly, this isn't Bram Stoker's actual Dracula. This is Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).
I very much remember Coppola, with whose work I'd just become acquainted at age 15 or so, announcing he was going to remake the Universal Monster stuff using the source material. And as a teen, I was jazzed. Let's kick the dust off, ditch the stuffy 1930's stylings (I'd never seen the movies at this point) and lets make a Dracula for the 90's!
All I can really remember from that first movie is that it was... a lot. The reviews were mixed, but everyone was going to see it, and I was in a packed theatre when I watched it myself.
Honestly, I remember thinking "well... that was a lot. And I get why the reviews were mixed." Halloween night of '93, I went to see the original, and was like "oh, wow. This is rad. I get why people love this." and, in fact, my interest in horror movie monsters I'd had as a kid was reignited (along with a VHS copy of Phantom of the Opera) to the point where I'm annoying about it to this day!
Over the years, I've not returned to the Coppola movie because (a) I didn't like it all that much to begin with, and (b) there's so many Draculas. And one gotta catch 'em all.
Since seeing this back in '92, I've since read the novel, watched the 1930's original many, many times, seen some sequels to that, watched the Hammer films, watched a clutch of other vampire films and Dracula adaptations - including stage plays, read Carmilla, and basically laid down what I think is a solid foundation.
This movie is super strange.
Like, look. It's got some amazing ideas, and beautiful visuals. My exposure to the movie in the internet age has been largely through stills and gifs, and given the dedication to the visual that this movie embraces, its a reminder that the film has some stunning photography, FX, design, costuming, etc.... It's an absolute "spared no expense" endeavor.
I actually love the fact that the movie uses weird edits and dissolves - the peacock feather to the sun, etc...
You can't ask for a better cast in 1992. This is a post Silence of the Lambs Anthony Hopkins getting to play all the cool roles, a height of her fame Winona Ryder, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Keanu Reeves, and fucking Tom Waits as Renfield. And, of course, a young Gary Oldman showing everyone what Gary Oldman can do.
Look, the movie isn't the book, full stop. Since Lugosi made women swoon in the stage show of Dracula and then in theaters (no, really), the story of Dracula has become weirdly morphed from "agent of Satan slowly murders virgins" to "eternal love story".
The book provides nothing like the pre-credits sequence to explain why the Count became an agent of the devil other than it sounded like a fun sort of thing to do. There's no suicide of a wife, no war with the Turks. There's no attempt to humanize Dracula by giving him a reason he might turn to the forces of darkness with which the audience might sympathize.
There's just no love story between Dracula and anyone else in the book. There's Mina having a mix of shocking sympathy for her tormentor (because she's a good person) and a bit of Stockholm Syndrome in the final chapters. I have read that a lot of the past lives stuff is borrowed from a different Stoker novel about mummies, but it feels straight taken from the Boris Karloff movie The Mummy. Which makes me wonder what Coppola planned to do for his remake there, had they proceeded as planned.
There's nothing wrong with making the story a romance - that's what vampire stuff does, I guess. But Bram Stoker's Dracula essentially turns the story of Dracula into Mina cheating on her boyfriend while he's at work with a dude with no job and a soul patch. She'll insist they made such a connection (and, ironically, he's also juggling three other ladies she doesn't know about) and she's going to act nuts about it because she's invested so much into her secret little fling when she should write her dude and admit she's banging someone else.
The end result is that no one in the movie is anyone you care about except for maybe Van Helsing. Mina seems like a dupe, Jonathan is wishy-washy, Lucy is narrative cannon fodder as the horny girl in a horror movie, and the three suitors are stripped of any qualities other than they sure are in the movie, and one has a hat.
Because the movie leans into Mina and Vlad's secret affair, it chews through a lot of plot time and also sets the pacing of the movie somewhat different from the novel. By necessity, this means - so the movie isn't even longer than what feels like a very, very long two hours - the other characters get some short shrift and plotlines get condensed. And that's... fine?
Surely this movie's love affair works for someone out there, just as the Bella/ Edward romance works for a lot of people. And I'm not opposed to it on its face, I just don't think this movie pulls it off in a way that makes you (a) cheer for the romance or (b) be horrified by Mina's seduction. It just sorta rolls out, and the dramatic irony of Mina having no idea what's really happening becomes tedious. And tedious is not good for movies.
I don't blame either actor here (even if sometimes Ryder's Ryderism in her voice gives the game away). Oldman is maybe at an 8 at his lowest and an 11 for good chunks of the film, but that's what's called for. Ryder is playing what she's got, but it's hard to know what that is. We don't get much of who Mina is until she's already in crisis.
What we clearly do get is the idea that this is sexual repression, Victorian style. And Dracula is supposed to prey on the unspoken horniness of the women - with Mina clearly trying to push Jonathan's Victorian sensibilities, and of which Lucy seems keenly aware as she uses the barest hint of a sexual nature to keep three dudes with options on the line.
At the time of the movie's release, between fighting prudishness and lots of blood, this was seen by some as a movie for the AIDS/ HIV era, which... I don't think Coppola probably thought about even once. It's the sort of observation made that is more about how the movie reflects the times, and what the viewer might bring to the film. I don't think (but don't know) it was made for such a comparison - especially when the novel is clearly about science wrangling with unknown diseases, and the movie skips a lot of that element. Except...
Our intro to Van Helsing has him discussing syphilis in a medical classroom, and making clear connections between STDs and the moral nature of man, which was quite the rage in the 90's. I doubt that bit would make the cut in 2023, and it's an odd tie to Van Helsing as mystic scientist and Dracula-chaser.
Flipping the script of the seduction of Mina is the imprisonment and seduction of Jonathan. What is curious is that the movie never deals with what Mina knows about Jonathan's time away, how he delivered that info, etc... as it seems she's fully aware of the situation, and we are robbed of her own reaction. It's a lot, and she just seems like she's taking it all in stride. Which, I guess if you've been shtupping a mysterious Eastern prince, you don't make a lot of fuss when your man tells you three hot women forced him into sex daily for a month.
What the movie does offer is spectacle upon spectacle. And that isn't necessarily wrong. The portion of the novel that's Jonathan's POV gets really weird, really fast. But it can be the difference between Jonathan seeing a glimpse of what seems to be wolves in the woods and us seeing Jonathan's wagon from the shoulder POV of wolves, as the movie does. The suggestion that the count moves unnaturally versus the obvious floating and zipping around the count does on screen that leaves nothing for the viewer to share Jonathan's uncertainty. But this is a matter of taste.
I do enjoy the "this is a soundstage" look and feel to the exterior shots and the swing-for-the-fences design, including some of the stuff that's a bit risky to try as it can *feel* like it's trying. The movie really is gorgeous, and there's a reason the stills that people post every Halloween have made me want to revisit the movie.
Is it scary? I mean - I think it has its moments. And it embraces the weirdness of Renfield and Dracula himself as well as any version. But without really *caring* about Mina or Lucy, the horror of what's happening is more indicated than visceral. The scariest bit is probably, really, the dudes going into Lucy's crypt, with the first fifteen minutes in Dracula's castle a close second. There's a lot of space in-between those scenes and after.
What's odd is that this is really considered the other Dracula film, the primary version still the 1931 Lugosi version or the Spanish version. There have been innumerable versions before and since the 1992 version, but no one really seems interested in just telling the story in the book. That said, this one is certainly closer than most.
With endless streaming services, it seems like *someone* would just give it a go.
By the way, I still think the guy who played the best Dracula in a movie in recent years was Nic Cage in Renfield. I can only imagine if Coppola had cast his nephew for this what we could have had.
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