When I first learned of Bob Westal’s Bob Fosse Blogathon, my plan was to write about Star 80, a film I’ve never seen but have long wanted to. I had ample time, in the ensuing month and a half, to track down a copy of Star 80 on DVD, watch it two or three times, and come up with oodles of brilliant ideas in relation to it.
But I didn’t. I lost track of time. I forgot. And I inevitably found myself wandering around the East Village on Saturday, looking everywhere but finding Star 80 nowhere. Even Kim’s on St. Marks, which has a full Fosse section on its DVD sales floor, didn’t have it. “These are supposed to be the spoils of living in New York,” I grumbled internally on the subway back to Queens. “My apartment is too small and my savings are non existant, but at the very least, if I want to buy something, I’m supposed to be able to find it.”
I wasn’t necessarily shit out of luck, re: the blogathon–I have a copy of Cabaret on my DVD shelf, I could have just written about that–but at some point on the way home I decided that my inability to find a copy of Star 80 was significant. It certainly said something about my own laziness, but it also speaks to the film’s lasting legacy. Made by an Oscar-winning director, based on a true story, featuring actors portraying debatably significant real-life figures such as Hugh Hefner and Peter Bogdanovich, Star 80 has nonetheless fallen into the dustbin of cinema history. Even YouTube, the crumb catcher for the toaster of forgotten pop culture, offers no help.
I don’t have any explanations. I haven’t even seen the movie. But I can ramble a bit after the jump.
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About a week after Ingmar Bergman’s death, the filmmaker’s Swedish state-run archive announced that they needed an additional $600,000 over their yearly budget to digitize Bergman’s early papers. At the time, the archive’s rep argued that the Swedish government’s refusal to pony up the funds (roughly three times what it costs to run the archive for an entire year) rendered the state derelict in their duty to preserve the nation’s art history. The next day, the Archive accepted a $10,000 donation from the people who put on the Golden Globes, and we haven’t heard from them since.
Meanwhile, in Northern Italy, a museum housing the personal archives of Michelangelo Antonioni has been closed for renovations for a year, and unless they get an influx of cash and soon, it look like they’re not going to be able to reopen. The mayor of the town of Ferrara says they might be able to save the archive by expanding the museum to include tributes to other filmmakers, but Antonioni’s niece insists her uncle donated his materials under the promise that the museum would be dedicated solely to him. Until the city and the family reach a compromise, Antonioni’s short films, drawings, on-set photographs, and other memorabilia will be stuck in storage.
Say what you will about Hollywood, but the U.S. film industry is extremely good at preserving its own history. What state-funded institutions such as LACMA can’t cover, enthusiastic millionaire movie buffs like Hugh Hefner step in to provide. The sad state of the Bergman and Antonioni archives may owe less to government apathy than to to the current fragmentary nature of the European film industry.
***Brian Grazer has hired Rush Hour auteur Brett Ratner to direct Playboy, a drama about the life and times of Hugh Hefner. It’s the third stab at a Hef biopic, after several drafts by Oliver Stone and a musical version (!) proposed by 8 Mile’s Scott Silver failed to pass muster. According to Variety, Ratner got the job by sending Grazer a Playboy pinball machine.
***Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to sign at least one two bills aimed at luring movie production back to California with tax incentives.
***ReelzChannel, a new movie-centric cable network, has picked up ten episodes of What I Learned About (Blank) From The Movies, a Best Week Ever-esque series in which “comedians comment on those ‘valuable life lessons’ hidden inside” classic films.
***The Weinstein Company’s quest to turn Tarantino’s half of Grindhouse into an overseas hit has failed. The extended cut of Death Proof has earned just $10 million in four weeks across ten European markets. Variety adds insult to injury by noting that “French patrons were much more interested in maintaining support for Shrek the Third in its second frame.”
