Year: 2014
Director: David Gregory
Starring: Richard Stanley, Fairuza Balk, Hugh Dickson, Oli
Dickson, Robert Shaye, Marco Hofschneider
Comparisons to Lost Soul, which details the making of The
Island of Dr. Moreau, could easily be made to like football club Fulham FC’s
recent history. What looks to be a decent project on paper slides descends too
rapidly into relative obscurity after being abused with a multitude of poor decisions.
At one point, both film and football team as a maniacal but proven manager take
over, yet his old school ways do little to stop what is now a situation in free
fall. Suddenly oblivion.
From a technical standpoint, Lost Soul says very little. It’s
a standard T.V budget documentary with the usual set up of talking heads and archival
footage. Nothing is too out of the ordinary. But the story. Oh, how the
narrative unravels. The most fascinating things about documentaries about films
that fall apart, is how they fall apart. Despite being made, The Island of Dr
Moreau is almost like a group of people looking to purposely build a dilapidated
household to live in. The worse thing is, we see the cracks appearing from the
off.
The film sells Richard Stanley (Hardware, Dust Devil) as a
once up and coming genre director, whose brush with Hollywood left him burnt.
The film sets up a lot of time in displaying Stanley’s intelligence and eccentricities.
It’s quick to make Stanley out as an unfortunate, yet likable soul who is nastily
shoved out of his own mind bending creation. Despite this, the films set up
belies not only the frustrations and anxieties of a studio, but also the
difficult balance between art and commerce.
For sure New Line President Robert Shaye is a tad wrong to
lump assumptions of Stanley’s love for sugary coffee as a warning sign for
trouble ahead (has he not considered Hollywood’s illegal drug problems?). But
it’s clear for all to see that Stanley’s outrageously creative ambitions would
pose a difficult issue, once New Line actually saw an avenue for decent
business . Seriously, the concept art features a human-dog hybrid
licking afterbirth from a genetically mutated human/animal baby. We’ve only now
just got around to the idea of a Human Centipede and that’s clearly pretty
niche .
Such documentaries become illuminating in the same way as
soaps and reality TV. It’s easy to become engrossed in the gossip. And why not.
Val Kilmar (at the peak of his stardom) is likened to a preppy high school
bully. Fairuza Balk sets upon cross country trip away from production once she
finds out about how Stanley is being treated. The reasoning for the trip being cross
country? Her lack of geographical knowledge of Australia. We have Brando taking
the art of trolling a production to Jupitar sized proportions. The piece de
resistance? Well, just because Stanley was fired from production , doesn’t mean
he left.
In watching Lost Soul, you realise just how plain some of
our filmmakers come across now. The PR stranglehold over productions makes
films like this a certain succulence. It’s clear to see that mavericks like
Stanley (interest in witchcraft aside) are often considered best avoided by
Hollywood. A quick look at the Marvel production line right now, highlights
just how much a studio wants their creatives to toe the line (I write this on
Ant-man’s opening weekend).
But when an eccentric slips through the ropes, and an inmate
gets a chance to take over the asylum, it’s easy to see how they can become
lost in a world where power plays and bottom lines become everything and your
enemies may be the guys smiling for the camera. Stanley shows throughout that
his creativity is in abundance, but his personality is one that simply doesn’t
meld with the playboys of LA. Unlike Terry Gilliam, Stanley doesn’t show
himself to be a director who wishes to defeat extreme weather.
What Stanley does give us, though, is an unbelievably rich
texture to a deeply unfortunate hot mess. Unlike Troy Duffy’s aggressive bluster in
Overnight (2003), Richard Stanley’s offbeat wit and creative prowess only makes
one wish that he was able to stay in the game longer to see what he could have
come up with. Sweet tooth or no.
