Cool Stuff: The ‘Ones That Got Away’ Posters
Most filmmakers have projects they want to make but never get around to. Maybe they can’t get the funding together, maybe they lose the rights or maybe they pass away. There are famous examples of this all the way through history from Stanley Kubrick’sNapoleonand Orson Welles’sDon Quixoteto newer projects like James Cameron’sSpider-Man, Tim Burton’sSupermanand Peter Jackson’sHalo. The list goes on and on.
ArtistFernando Reza, who also did thesecool TV Band posters, asked the question, “What If?” What ifStanley KubrickfinishedNapoleon? What isOrson WellesfinishedDon Quixote? And he answered those questions with his new set of film posters calledThe Ones That Got Away; Four posters including those two aforementioned films as well asAlfred Hitchcock’sKaleidoscopeandDavid Lean’sNostromo.
Read what Reza had to say about the project, see all the posters and learn how to buy them after the jump.
“I think everyone has a ‘dream project,’ said Reza in an exclusive e-mail interview.” Especially in film which is such a communicative art form it’s really special when a filmmaker finds a film that says exactly what he wants to say. The sad thing is not every dream project gets finished, and I think that’s something a lot of people can relate to. The idea of compromising a dream, or deferring a dream until it’s too late."
Each one of these posters is a manageable 11 x 17 and with a limited run of 50. They’re $25 each or $80 for the full set. And you can purchase themby heading to Reza’s site. Below are all the posters with a little background blurb from Reza.
Stanley Kubrick spent years studying dirt samples of old battle sites, reading old almanacs to ensure the weather in certain scenes would be historically accurate. A few weeks before principal photography another Napoleon centric film “Waterloo” bombed at the box office and the studio scrapped the production.
Reza knew there were a million unfinished films out there but decided to stick to these four in hopes that some of the others might, one day, get made.
There are a lot of projects out there currently that are in limbo, like Coppola’s Megalopolis or Lynch’s Ronnie Rocket, but I didn’t want to include those in the hopes that they’ll be released one day. So I stuck to older projects and to directors who’s films reflect a clear and personal creative vision. Everything about a Kubrick movie (the music, the composition) is completely Kubrick. You can see a progression through the films of Kubrick or Welles and the omission of these films really leaves a crater not just in their careers but in cinema as a whole.
As for which of these four projects he wishes would have gotten made, Reza had a very clear answer.
I think I’d most like to see Don Quixote, the concept behind it and the clips that I’ve seen look amazing. A few of the other films eventually found their way into later films in some way or other (Kubrick made Barry Lyndon, Hitchcock made Frenzy) but Don Quixote seemed like a real departure from Welles other films.
You can see some of that footage below.
A great idea and an awesome series of prints. Are there any films you wish Reza would have made? And which of these are your favorites? Don’t forget to check out more ofReza’s work on his site– he’s gotLostprints and much more. Very cool stuff.
