Fusion Filmmaking

Scott Hardie | April 16, 2004
In a conversation with Kris Weberg the other day, we agreed that "Artificial Intelligence: AI" (started by Kubrick and finished by Spielberg) had one merit for sure: It was probably the best chance we would ever get to see one of the most humanistic directors working with one of the least. Personally, I found the mix intriguing. There have been other interesting blends between dissimilar directors in recent years ("Clockers" mixed Martin Scorcese and Spike Lee, "Ronin" mixed John Frankenheimer and David Mamet, "The Frighteners" mixed Peter Jackson and Robert Zemeckis), and of course remakes allow for new directors to interpret old ones.

What directors you would like to see collaborating on a project? Off the top of my head: Robert Rodriguez and John Carpenter could make a really cool horror film, any collaboration by Terrence Malick and John Sayles would be worthwhile (if edited down from its original 31-hour length), and I'd give anything to see David Lynch direct a Todd Solondz script.

[cross-posted to Thorough Movie Weblog]

Kris Weberg | April 16, 2004
I'd really like to see Paul Thomas Anderson work with Robert Altman, given that both love complex, multiply-layered plots using ensemble casts. PTA tends more towards story concept, while Altman is a master of dialogue and short-story-like character studies. Together, what terrible beauty might they create?

And weirdly, I've always been curious to see what would happen if a very bizarre teaming occurred between auteur experimenter David Lynch and gross-out kings the Farrelly Brothers. Lynch's unique sensibility fits some of the more outrageous moments in the Farrelly's films, but the Farrellys in turn bring a kind of basic sentimental humanism and accessible (some would say too much so) humor to their movies that would ameliorate Lynch's tendencies to unrooted, unaffecting surrealism. I envision a very strange, arthouse comedy-slash-allegory that would have people wondering whether it was "good" or not, hut acknowledging that the body fluid scene walked the tightrope between low slapstick and psychological horror.

Oh, and another real-life unusual creative team-up that I saw by chance -- Destino. It was a never-finished collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali for a compilation film, only recently redone on order of Roy E. Disney. Though in some ways stock and flat, it's really an exercise in animating Dali's well-known imagery to tell the simplest of all stories, girl-meets-loses-gets-boy-again. I saw it as a short before Triplets of Belleville, which utterly eclipsed it.