Hollywood Dream Projects

Ask anyone in Hollywood, and lurking in their bottom drawer is a "dream project" waiting until they have earned enough success and clout to unleash on the world. The last couple of years saw many of these dreams come to fruition, including Kevin Spacey's Bobby Darin biopic BEYOND THE SEA, Taylor Hackford's Ray Charles movie, and Halle Berry’s long-standing dream of taking a career peaked with an Oscar win and completely whizzing it away.

Yes, these dreams are just as often flops as not. In 1900, inventor Thomas Edison, fresh off of the trifecta of hits MAN FALLS OFF BICYCLE, CAR DRIVES DOWN STREET, and SMALL CHILD EATS TOAST, attempted his most elaborate and complicated work yet, MIDGET WAVES HELLO.

The film took nearly a day of preproduction (tasks included "find a midget," "set up camera," "wave to him"), cost several dollars to shoot, and had more than two special effects shots (the midget did not actually wave, so this had to be added later by bribing another midget and cutting between the two). Edison spent days editing the film, watching test reels, re-editing it, watching it more. By the time the film was ready, the Lumiere brothers had beaten Edison with their inferior but showier LES DEUX PETITES PERSONNES DEPLACENT LEURS MAINS ("TWO SMALL PEOPLE MOVE THEIR HANDS"), leaving the American's version to be mocked as an inferior copycat. Edison was so furious that he trashed his planned follow-up, OLD MAN PETS CAT.

Some years later, hoping to vindicate Edison, D. W. Griffith, fresh from the successes of BIRTH OF A NATION, and its sequel, DOCTOR SLAPS NATION'S BUTT, Griffith wrote, produced, and directed his own D.W. GRIFFITH PRESENTS A D.W. GRIFFITH PRODUCTION OF A MIDGET WAVES HELLO BY DAVID WARK GRIFFITH AND WHAT ARE YOU SNICKERING AT -- "WARK" IS A PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE NAME, DAMMIT, which was 183 minutes long, featured more than 400,000 midgets and the largest set constructed up to that point (a complete recreation of the city of Baltimore), and cost $4 million, which, in today's dollars, would also be $4 million, as dollars are still pretty much the exact same size and shape as back then, and therefore would not have changed much.

However, perhaps the most elaborate dream project still belongs to Orson Welles, who changed his "dream project" as often as he changed underwear, which, to be perfectly honest, was not very often. After the acclaim of CITIZEN KANE and the subsequent butchering of his follow-up, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, Welles shopped around a script he had written called I'M GOING TO HUNT DOWN RKO PRESIDENT GEORGE SCHAEFER AND MURDER HIM WITH A HATCHET IN FRONT OF HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN, but it was rejected by all the major studios, although it would later be filmed as LOOK WHO'S TALKING NOW.

Not long after, Welles wrote another script entitled I SO WANT TO GIVE RITA HAYWORTH THE BONE. In later years, this became I SO GAVE RITA HAYWORTH THE BONE, then GUESS WHO BONED RITA HAYWORTH -- AGAIN! Warner Bros. showed some interest, but wanted Welles to rewrite it for Dean Martin.

The next draft, titled DEAN MARTIN IS A FRUIT, was rejected, and the project went back into Welles' desk drawer, alongside BARBARA STANWYCK IS SUCH A HOT PIECE OF TAIL and GOD, I LOVE HAM.

Welles' story perfectly illustrates the folly of so many dream projects. In the 70s, following the success of STAR WARS, Burt Reynolds tried to get financing for his own science-fiction epic, CAPTAIN SPACE GUY BEATS UP HIPPIES ON PLANET NIPPULON. Everyone knows about BATTLEFIELD: EARTH, but prior to becoming a Scientologist, Travolta’s first dream project was his one-man show based on "Are You There, God? It's Me Margaret." And Michael Bay is desperate to get his musical Scott Baio biopic (CHACHI!) in the can, but Baio stubbornly refuses to die so that Bay can have his third act.

In fact, many a dream project has hinged on retelling (or, usually, reliving) someone else's life story. At this very moment, Milos Foreman is preparing a biopic about Kevin Spacey making the biopic about Bobby Darin.

And yet, so long as stars have egos, there will be bloated dream projects. For every RAY, there are ten HEAVEN’S GATEs, just like how, for every Jack Lemmon, there must be a Chris Lemmon; for every Bill Murray, there are an infinite number of Wayans brothers; for every Oscar winner, there is a CATWOMAN waiting to be made. It’s the way of Hollywood, the way of the...

Hey, look, a waving midget!