Now, rather than feeling like a phantom limb, the black story line-with its unsubtle but useful parallels in the Gere plot-has a life of its own. In line with the director’s turn, in the 2000s, to funding his own projects, Coppola spent roughly half a million dollars of his own money on Encore, which restores 24 minutes of material and cuts 13 minutes from the original theatrical release to balance out its parallel plots. (The first was the release of his Apocalypse Now: Final Cut.) This was a labor of love, no doubt funnily, it’s Coppola’s second recut film event of the year. Among other things, the great-looking new cut restores the Hines brothers storyline and the stories of the movie’s black characters generally, as well as a good chunk of its show-stopping Cotton Club performances. But the audience was all-white by design: black performers were the attraction, but until 1935, they couldn’t even walk through the front door, let alone properly patronize the place.Ĭoppola, who opposed the changes to his original film but ultimately bowed under pressure, is back with a newly restored cut, The Cotton Club Encore, which premiered on October 5th at the New York Film Festival and will get a fuller theatrical run in New York and Los Angeles later this week.
#TRUE STRETCH CAGE FOR SALE MOVIE#
This is a story that makes a point of spending most of its time in and around the milieu of Harlem’s Cotton Club, on which the movie is based, famous for its stunning musical revues that featured the likes of Duke Ellington and Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, the Nicholas Brothers, and Lena Horne, among many illustrious others. What’s memorable is the near-mythical place of its title.
Yet the scope of the movie, which was co-written by Pulitzer-winning author William Kennedy, isn’t what’s memorable about it. It’s a story that takes us through the 1929 crash, to Hollywood and back, and all around Harlem, with a special emphasis on the Jewish and Irish gang conflicts rattling the city. Coppola’s lively tale of two upstart entertainers-Dixie Dwyer (Gere) and Sandman Williams (Gregory Hines)-was whittled down to focus more on the Dwyer plot, which involves the young trumpet player taking up a job with a gangster and falling for the gangster’s girl (Lane) as his brother (Cage) dives headfirst into a life of violent crime. 35 years ago, The Cotton Club was released in mutilated form. They were said to be upstaging the movie’s white storyline, which was headed up by an even bigger crew of notable names: Richard Gere and Nicolas Cage, Diane Lane, Gwen Verdon, Bob Hoskins, James Remar, Fred Gwynne, Tom Waits-even Warhol hunk Joe Dallesandro.Īnd the director relented.
#TRUE STRETCH CAGE FOR SALE FULL#
The story goes that when Francis Ford Coppola’s maligned and misbegotten 1984 film The Cotton Club was still being made, there were concerns from higher-ups that the film’s black cast-chock full of luminaries, among them the real-life, fraternal dance pair Gregory and Maurice Hines-was too much of the focus.
0 kommentar(er)
