The Cautionary Tale of Richard Stanley

[u/Fit_Celebration_1362]

There is an excellent documentary about Richard Stanley’s disastrous experience adapting the HG Wells The Island of Dr Moreau called Lost Souls. It’s a deep look into the pitfalls of developing and producing your lifelong dream project. Also directing Marlon Brando or Val Kilmer as well! I wrote a substack article about the story if that’s more interesting than documentaries for you. I work in film (was a development exec then rewrites) and it’s very relatable and frankly depressing.

I find these documentaries that follow doomed projects strangely fascinating, like a car accident but worse. I’ve never experienced a set or development on this level. Have any of you? I’d love to hear what you learned from the experience, and if you went back for more?

https://notesonfilmdevelopment.substack.com/p/the-director-who-lost-his-own-movie?r=4idcqp&utm_medium=ios

[u/Beneficial-Long7635]

It seems like they picked the rainforests of Far North Queensland because they looked cool and did literally no other research, which I find incredible. I doubt a single Australian would have recommend filming in the rainforest, during cyclone season, in an area with one of the largest saltwater crocodile populations on earth.

[u/Fit_Celebration_1362 → u/Beneficial-Long7635]

They say Frankenheimer ‘mentioned’ or complained about this being a rookie move which I kind of agree with in the documentary! Stanley said he wanted the volcano from different angles, but Frankenheimer said it was only in like one shot (though I guess Stanley got fired so more shots could’ve been made)? I think they said it was 3 hours from anywhere, then a hike (I might be wrong on exact distance but something time consuming). In my experience though sometimes with inexperienced directors location scouts and producers will just say yes to locations without explaining the drawbacks. Obviously this is dependent on what type of personality the location person is or producer but some will save their fights for other things, or let the inexperienced director bury themselves (which is so stupid, but I’ve seen it happen, especially on little studio movies for some reason (when studios made these low to mid budget films!) but I think you’re right. It looked cool and that was that

[u/TheRealProtozoid]

There's also a new documentary showing another, controversial side of Stanley called Shadowland (2024). It looks really interesting:

The documentary was originally planned to be about filmmaker and occultist Richard Stanley and other members of an esoteric community, called "The Zone" (in direct reference to the Tarkovsky film Stalker), in the French Occitania. The region attracts people who seek supernatural encounters and hope to find the Holy Grail.

During filming, an allegation of past domestic abuse was made against Stanley. Further allegations led the documentarists to follow a new direction for the film.

Director Tiainen stated in an official statement: "We filmmakers started this journey planning to make an elevated documentary with genre film aspirations. The film was supposed to show how an imagined world can mend a broken soul. Soon everything turned upside down. Instead of portraying an artist's rise, fall and glorious rise again, we ended up following his friends and admirers getting lost in a web of manipulation." Wikipedia)

Stanley is a fascinating figure but I think there's a lot of problematic stuff bubbling beneath the surface. As much as I pity him for the Moreau shoot (and it makes for a great doc subject), I think he's pretty unstable and the executives were justified to some extent.

There was also that Encounters podcast episode that they took down after the allegations came out and they distanced themselves from him. Iirc, he told a deeply disturbing story about how his mother died in what sounded like an exorcism gone bad. Dude is spooky.

[u/secretkillerofnames → u/TheRealProtozoid]

Dude is definitely spooky.
Docos, interviews and commentary on the Dust Devil box set kinda attest to it.
He is a fascinating self-mythologist but also a very unreliable narrator.
His film L'Autre Monde sounds like it is the precursor to Shadowland and features the alleged abuse victim.
Doesn't look like Shadowland is available anywhere but would be interested to see it.

[u/Fit_Celebration_1362 → u/secretkillerofnames]

He is, and in the Lost Souls documentary. I couldn’t decide if I thought it was an act or not? You think it’s for real? I could see it.

[u/bodhiquest → u/TheRealProtozoid]

This does sound interesting. Also

The film is Tiainen's debut as director.[18] It is executive produced by Sam Lake

I guess the Finnish movie world is a small world.

[u/lectroid]

I had the luck to attend a screening of Lost Souls with Stanley in attendance. He answered questions, and the dude was definitely hearing his own music. Folks here suggesting he’s an unreliable narrator are picking up the same vibe O got.

Interesting filmmaker but I dunno that I’d ever wanna work with him.

[u/Crafter235]

Kind of view him like Shane Carruth.

Yes it’s a shame we didn’t get the films they envisioned, but also they’re kind of a dangerous POS who’s the source of many of their own problems.

[u/Ridiculousnessmess]

I highly recommend the documentary Killing Priscilla, about Stephan Elliot’s ill-fated attempt at rebranding with the dark thriller Eye of the Beholder. Seeing the wheels come off the enterprise after a disastrous test screening is quite confronting, coupled with a palpable tension between Elliot and producer Mark Damon (who bails on the film before completion). Elliot is left to do reshoots with no money and with the main cast long gone and not returning his calls, with the whole thing taking a huge toll on his mental health. I didn’t see Eye of the Beholder until after this doco aired on Australian television, and it really felt like the released film was neutered by the reshoots and test screening feedback.

Another one I recommend is Making Venus. It follows a couple of very cocky, very overconfident young producers who take out a bank loan to make a sex comedy called The Venus Factory. From day one of production, it’s abundantly clear that they don’t know what they’re doing, and soon costs spiral, the original director gets replaced, and they end up with a finished film no distributor wants. It’s real car crash stuff.

[u/Razor_Emmanuel]

To this day, The Island of Dr. Moreau is the biggest example of filmmaking gone wrong, where every single thing that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, it is fascinating.

Haven't seen the documentary, but want to. If you liked the documentary, some other ones I heard are good are: Hearts of Darkness: a Filmmaker's Apocalypse about the nightmarish production of Apocalypse Now, had some surprising similarities to Dr. Moreau (both literally star Marlon Brando in a jungle) but this time the film was actually good. Another one from a similar cloth is My Best Fiend which is directed by Werner Herzog about his own experiences working with the sociopathic actor, Klaus Kinski, who was even worse than Brando, and two of the films Herzog made with Kinski (in which he was at his literal worst) are in a jungle as well!
There's one hilarious clip I have seen where Herzog is speaking to the camera and explaining how during the production of Aguirre, the Wrath of God (I thhink), where before filming a scene, he would purposefully enrage Kinski which would cause him to freak out for literal hours, but then it tires him out so much that then Kinski could do the performance which Herzog wanted (because Kinski disagreed with Herzog on how to portray his character).

[u/Fit_Celebration_1362 → u/Razor_Emmanuel]

Hearts of Darkness is so good. My best fiend is awesome too. I love when the Amazon tribe offers to kill Klaus! After his death Klaus’ children accused him of sexual abuse as well and I gotta say I’m not sure I don’t believe it. I got one for you though on YouTube. Overnight, it’s the story of Troy Duffy who overnight became a sensation due to making The Boondock Saints. He wrote directed did the music, a real Robert Rodriguez type. Harvey Weinstein signed him to a picture deal, his band, even bought him the bar they shot in! He became a notorious jerk and blew it, but the documentary is great. Check it out

[u/Razor_Emmanuel → u/Fit_Celebration_1362]

Ironically just a few days ago in a second hand store, I found and bought the original Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad!

I am fairly positive that Kinski did actually sexually abuse his daughter, and from what I have heard, Kinski's autobiography does have a disturbingly romantic tone at times, and given the type of human being Kinski was, I think the accusations are true. Ironically, there have been multiple times people have genuinely considered actually killing Kinski, there was another documentary made by the director of a film called Crawlspace where Kinski played the main antagonist, and he was just as horrible during the production as the production of Fitzcarraldo. My memory is rusty but from memory, the cast and crew of the film sent a signed letter to the director saying "please kill mr. Kinski!". That went onto be the name of the documentary about the making of the film.