10-22-2021, 02:03 PM
I saw this by mistake, intending to watch The Last Film Festival directed by Linda Yellen and starring Dennis Hopper.
They are somewhat different films.
The Last Movie was the studio's attempt to cash in on the maverick-filmmaker/low-budget/tight-deadline formula of Easy Rider. Given a sum of money (one million?), Hopper went down to Chincero, Peru, to shoot a movie. Any movie. No restrictions, no oversight.
To quote from the movie's trivia page on IMDB, "Filming took place in Chincero in the Peruvian Andes, one the world's leading producers of cocaine." That alone should tell a lot. It was a chaotic drug-addled shoot (cocaine being just the tip of the iceberg), and seemed to change direction from day to day. Was it a love story? Was it about a local priest lamenting how a film shoot had corrupted the village folk? Was it two buddies prospecting for gold? It was all of these and more, but at its core was one very interesting idea.
The idea: A film crew is finishing shooting a Western in a remote village. Late in the production a stunt goes wrong and the stuntman is killed. A gopher (payed by Hopper) stays behind after the film crew leaves to do some soul-searching. During this, he sees how the villagers are reenacting the making of a movie. They've rigged up skeletal bamboo apparatuses to mimick movie cameras, cranes and other fake equipment. They pretend to be filming a movie, with lots of fight scenes. But the people are really hitting each other. Hopper tells them you don't really hit each other, and he tries to show how to fake punches and fake being hit. But the "director" isn't having none of that. He dismisses Hopper's guidance, saying that their movie will be real.
As this fake filming proceeds, Hopper learns that he has been designated the one who will die at the end of the shoot. He turns paranoid, believing they are really going to kill him.
This idea is in there, and it's intriguing, but it's diluted, mixed in with so much else.
Returning to the real world, when Hopper finishes the shoot, he holes up in Taos NM with 20 hours of footage. He spends the next year editing it down. (He even invites friend Jodorosky to edit a version, which he subsequently rejects, though respectfully.) I have to wonder what he threw out. Because a lot of what remains is really off-the-wall.
Though the movie bombed, it's recently gained a positive reputation. It serves as a time capsule to the '70s, and has ethnographic value for its Peruvian cultural trappings and dress.
Not really recommended, except as a curio.
They are somewhat different films.
The Last Movie was the studio's attempt to cash in on the maverick-filmmaker/low-budget/tight-deadline formula of Easy Rider. Given a sum of money (one million?), Hopper went down to Chincero, Peru, to shoot a movie. Any movie. No restrictions, no oversight.
To quote from the movie's trivia page on IMDB, "Filming took place in Chincero in the Peruvian Andes, one the world's leading producers of cocaine." That alone should tell a lot. It was a chaotic drug-addled shoot (cocaine being just the tip of the iceberg), and seemed to change direction from day to day. Was it a love story? Was it about a local priest lamenting how a film shoot had corrupted the village folk? Was it two buddies prospecting for gold? It was all of these and more, but at its core was one very interesting idea.
The idea: A film crew is finishing shooting a Western in a remote village. Late in the production a stunt goes wrong and the stuntman is killed. A gopher (payed by Hopper) stays behind after the film crew leaves to do some soul-searching. During this, he sees how the villagers are reenacting the making of a movie. They've rigged up skeletal bamboo apparatuses to mimick movie cameras, cranes and other fake equipment. They pretend to be filming a movie, with lots of fight scenes. But the people are really hitting each other. Hopper tells them you don't really hit each other, and he tries to show how to fake punches and fake being hit. But the "director" isn't having none of that. He dismisses Hopper's guidance, saying that their movie will be real.
As this fake filming proceeds, Hopper learns that he has been designated the one who will die at the end of the shoot. He turns paranoid, believing they are really going to kill him.
This idea is in there, and it's intriguing, but it's diluted, mixed in with so much else.
Returning to the real world, when Hopper finishes the shoot, he holes up in Taos NM with 20 hours of footage. He spends the next year editing it down. (He even invites friend Jodorosky to edit a version, which he subsequently rejects, though respectfully.) I have to wonder what he threw out. Because a lot of what remains is really off-the-wall.
Though the movie bombed, it's recently gained a positive reputation. It serves as a time capsule to the '70s, and has ethnographic value for its Peruvian cultural trappings and dress.
Not really recommended, except as a curio.