01-05-2021, 04:26 PM
In 1973, Peter Medak (hot off directing The Ruling Class (1972)) began shooting Ghost in the Noonday Sun, starring Peter Sellers. Despite generous upfront financing, it never got completed.
This is a documentary about that trainwreck, for which Medak took most of the blame. But as comes out in this documentary, almost everyone involved contributed to the derailment, and Peter Sellers most of all.
This takes a while to get going, and Peter Medak's tortured musings do get overly maudlin at times, but it delivers with a ghastly scrapnel of disastrous happenings ranging from simple filmmaking 101 mistakes to incredibly bad luck, to cultural clashes with extras, and most of all to acts of sabotage by Peter Sellers as he almost immediately soured on the project.
Sometimes it struck me as unfair to point so many fingers at Sellers when he's not around to tell his side. But as is made clear by everyone interviewed, and for all his acting genius, Peter Sellers had a reputation as very very very very very difficult to work with.
Worth watching for the moviemaking mayhem. But I wouldn't want to watch Ghost in the Noonday Sun (there seems to be a print, though the studio refused to accept it as finished).
This is a documentary about that trainwreck, for which Medak took most of the blame. But as comes out in this documentary, almost everyone involved contributed to the derailment, and Peter Sellers most of all.
This takes a while to get going, and Peter Medak's tortured musings do get overly maudlin at times, but it delivers with a ghastly scrapnel of disastrous happenings ranging from simple filmmaking 101 mistakes to incredibly bad luck, to cultural clashes with extras, and most of all to acts of sabotage by Peter Sellers as he almost immediately soured on the project.
Sometimes it struck me as unfair to point so many fingers at Sellers when he's not around to tell his side. But as is made clear by everyone interviewed, and for all his acting genius, Peter Sellers had a reputation as very very very very very difficult to work with.
Worth watching for the moviemaking mayhem. But I wouldn't want to watch Ghost in the Noonday Sun (there seems to be a print, though the studio refused to accept it as finished).