MILOS FORMAN

[chainsmoking insomniac]

Just watched Loves of a Blonde yesterday, and it far surpassed anything else I've ever seen of Forman's, and I include Cuckoo's Nest in that statement. It was beautiful. It reminded of in some sections of Truffaut, especially Antoine and Colette. Really remarkable.

I plan to watch The Firemen's Ball later this week, too.

Anyone else a fan or Forman's early films, or interested in comparing/contrasting the merits/deficiencies of early work compared to later work?

Ah, you're my new best friend!  It's quite refreshing to talk to someone who has seen his early work, because they're really great.  
I thought Loves of a Blonde and Fireman's Ball were equally great, and I just love how he paints these pictures of the people he grew up with.....because one aspect of his work that I've noticed (early work anyway) is that it has a slightly autobiographical feel to it.  I get the sense that he knew these people....

[chainsmoking insomniac]

I enjoyed all films I saw by Milos Forman. That were "One Flew over the cukoo's nest", "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and "Man on the moon". I haven't seen "Amadeus" yet and I would really like to see his early work. "Black Peter" and "Loves of a Blonde" was in Germany a couple of months ago on TV but I missed it.  
Where did you see Formans early films?

I watched them on Sundance.....but now I'll have to get them on DVD  

[godardian]

Watched The Firemen's Ball over the weekend.  It wasn't quite as good as Loves of a Blonde, but it was still very good. It was damny funny at times, too; apparently, it was made just before the Soviet invasion, so humor and a little satire of the powers that be was still allowed.

Beyond being a sad, funny political fable, though, it was pretty insightful about the way a small, isolated community can behave, and the hierarchies there. Both good and bad.

[MacGuffin]

Connery, Ryder & Brandauer Starring in Forman's Embers
Source: Variety, The Hollywood Reporter

Sean Connery, Winona Ryder and Klaus Maria Brandauer are in talks to topline helmer Milos Forman's upcoming adaptation of Sandor Marai's Hungarian novel Embers. Screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere is adapting the book with production scheduled to being October 8 in Prague.

The story concerns two old men, once best friends, who meet again after a 41-year break in their relationship. The friends grew up together in military school; one came from a rich landowning family and subsequently became a colonel (Connery), the other is from a more humble background (Brandauer). The pair are separated after the colonel, as a young man, marries the woman they both secretly love (Ryder).

At the same time, Ryder is also attached to star in the title role of director Robert Altman's The Widow Claire, for which discussions with financiers are taking place.

Written by Horton Foote, "Claire" is set against the backdrop of World War II. Ryder stars as a young widow with two children who is caught between the affections of two men -- a sweet young soldier about to go to war and the town's most sought-after playboy.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Matthew McConaughey have met with Altman about possibly starring opposite Ryder in "Claire."

[modage]

thank god.  winona better get back in the game.  i hope working with forman and altman will result in some good work.  cause its been too damn long.

[MacGuffin]

Milos Forman Wanted for Baudolino Adaptation
Source: The Hollywood Reporter

German producer Thomas Schuhly, who is currently making The Untitled Alexander the Great Project with director Oliver Stone, plans to adapt Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino for the big screen.

The novel is set in the 12th century and explores the intriguing relationship between the Oriental world under the sultan Saladin and the popes, politicians and monarchs of the Christian world.

"I'm trying to get Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) to direct," he says. "We're working on a script with the English writer Glenn Wilhide." Schuhly plans to shoot the film in 2005, probably in Morocco where the action sequences of Stone's picture are being filmed.

[Gold Trumpet]

Well, I'm the local Umberto Eco fan and as Baudolino would be the easiest to adapt from his 4 novels, the movie still will likely be forced to make all his sentences in the complexity of one vowel. Look for general movie that will dissapoint fans of the book. And I'm not saying that doesn't already happen with every book adaptation, its just with Umberto Eco the difference is so much greater because he writes stories of worlds that can really only fit in a book.

The Name of the Rose (one of his two most complex) was generalized in the late 80s to unsincere proportions. Foucault's Pendulum (the most complex) hopefully never gets touched. The Island of the Day Before on the other hand (less complex) would be my pick for personal adaptation if I had the chance to touch. Its the one that provides the story capable most of being represented on the screen with sincerity.

~rougerum

[A Matter Of Chance]

Connery, Ryder & Brandauer Starring in Forman's Embers
Source: Variety, The Hollywood Reporter

Sean Connery, Winona Ryder and Klaus Maria Brandauer are in talks to topline helmer Milos Forman's upcoming adaptation of Sandor Marai's Hungarian novel Embers. Screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere is adapting the book with production scheduled to being October 8 in Prague.

The story concerns two old men, once best friends, who meet again after a 41-year break in their relationship. The friends grew up together in military school; one came from a rich landowning family and subsequently became a colonel (Connery), the other is from a more humble background (Brandauer). The pair are separated after the colonel, as a young man, marries the woman they both secretly love (Ryder).

At the same time, Ryder is also attached to star in the title role of director Robert Altman's The Widow Claire, for which discussions with financiers are taking place.

Written by Horton Foote, "Claire" is set against the backdrop of World War II. Ryder stars as a young widow with two children who is caught between the affections of two men -- a sweet young soldier about to go to war and the town's most sought-after playboy.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Matthew McConaughey have met with Altman about possibly starring opposite Ryder in "Claire."

Mac, is this still happening?

[MacGuffin]

Mac, is this still happening?

Hmmmm...haven't heard or found any recent updates about the project. I only know that Connery dropped out of the project, but there was no news of his replacement.

[A Matter Of Chance]

Thanks

[SHAFTR]

One of my classes, we took a look at the Czech New Wave, which Forman was part of.  I haven't seen Forman's early stuff, but I did see "Closely Watched Trains" by Jiri Menzel.  It's a quirky, touching film.

[MacGuffin]

Director Forman Credits Exile for His Success

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Looking back on a filmmaking career filled with critical acclaim and Academy awards, Czech-born director Milos Forman has a simple explanation for his Hollywood success: He had no choice.

Unlike other foreign directors who returned home when Hollywood didn't pan out, Forman had to stay in the United States after the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 and a hard-line Communist government took control.

Authorities had already banned the release of his 1967 film "The Fireman's Ball," which poked fun at Communist bureaucracy, and his studio fired him after Russian tanks rolled into Prague when Forman was out of the country.

So the only way for him to continue his career was to forge a new one in the United States, Forman told Reuters at the recent 47th San Francisco International Film Festival where he received a lifetime achievement award for directing.

"There were some wonderful directors who came here and there was nothing happening their way so they went back to their countries," Forman said. "But for people like (Poland's) Roman Polanski and me, we couldn't go back. We had to adapt and swim."

And this meant changing his approach to filmmaking, said the 72-year-old director, who began his career studying screenwriting at film school in Prague and became part of a remarkable group of "New Wave" filmmakers who revolutionized Czech filmmaking in the 1960s -- a period when Czech Communist leader Alexander Dubcek was trying to bring 'communism with a human face" to the country.

But the "Prague Spring" ended with Soviet tanks rolling through the country in 1968. Forman knew he would have to leave Czechoslovakia to continue his career.

No longer could he draw on his native language and intimate knowledge of his small country as he had done in making personal films like 1965's "Loves of a Blonde." Instead, the filmmaker turned to scripts written in English.

A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

This became clear after his first American film "Taking Off" failed to connect with an audience. Forman said this stemmed from the fact he made the movie the way he had always done.

"The films I made in Czechoslovakia were the kinds you could only make in your mother tongue," said Forman, who peppers his answers with humorous anecdotes from his career. "So I consciously turned to material which was originally written in the English language."    

His next film, however, catapulted him to the top of the Hollywood heap when 1975's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" won five Academy Awards, including Oscars for best director and best picture.

Forman explained that the story of a group of mental patients struggling under a repressive system and the harsh care of Big Nurse Ratched rang familiar to him.

In fact, he sounds incredulous when describing his reaction to people who at the time wondered whether he could relate to such an "American" story.

"What do you mean an American story, I thought," said Forman, who lives in New York. "This is a Czech story. The Communist party was my Big Nurse."

Forman, who also directed other acclaimed films such as "Amadeus" and "The People Vs. Larry Flynt," also said good writing and whether the story is worth talking about are what attracts him to a script.

These days Forman, whose parents were killed in Nazi death camps, is working on a project about the Spanish Inquisition during the time of the painter Goya and another based on a Hungarian novel.

Yet when asked if he would ever consider making another film in his native Czech language, Forman said he was too far removed from his roots to make that kind of a return.

"The kind of Czech films I was making you have to be so intimate with the life in that country and all spheres of all society, which I now would be missing," Forman said. "I wouldn't be comfortable shooting the same kind of film."

[Just Withnail]

The Firemen's Ball

Spoilers
Just watched it this morning, and though quite amusing at times, in the end I felt underwhelmed. It seemed to have three points of focus, the food and prize thefts, the beauty contest, the burning house. The first two were basically the same jokes over and over, whilst the last one was actually quite beautiful, at least towards the end of the sequence: house on fire, music starts, crowd reactions, old man praying, etc. As a comedy, it says quite a lot that my favorite part of it is a serious one. The actors portraying the firemen, I feel, must get a mention. I fell in love with them in a second. They were all amateurs, right? Most of my laughs came from their facial expressions. I also agree with GT in that it's a helluva daring film for its time and place, simultaneously making me think "funny way of fucking with their government" and "Jesus, they actually dared to do it".

Basically I liked parts of it, but most of what I found funny just kept going for too long. It isn't too good for a 75 min film to be repetitive. Like I said, I feel like three things happened during the whole film.

[foray]

Tom Hulce is superb as Mozart, which goes without saying if you've seen the film.

Yeah, shit, how'd he get from that to The O.C.  

[MacGuffin]

Just watched Loves of a Blonde yesterday, and it far surpassed anything else I've ever seen of Forman's, and I include Cuckoo's Nest in that statement. It was beautiful. It reminded of in some sections of Truffaut, especially Antoine and Colette. Really remarkable.

i really liked THE LOVES OF A BLONDE too.  it was a really small picture, but good.  some nice human moments.  it did remind me of some of truffauts movies for sure.  i liked the whole part with the boys family.  pretty funny.  seemed pretty truthful, sad.  i liked the shot of them laying naked together with their hands covering up the good bits.  that was nice.

Provoked by Lisa Cholodenko's comments about it on her "High Art" commentary track, I watched "Loves Of A Blonde" today, and while I wouldn't go as far as godardian, I did really like the film and it's "New Wave" feel; like mod-age said, truthful. The scenes in the bed had a very natural 'pillow talk' to them, and the parents were hilarious with the mother being overly melodramatic and jumping to conclusions.