The Puzzle Within the Castro Theater's May 2014 Calendar

The May calendar at the Castro Theater was the quickest one for me to solve.

First there were two instantly recognizable faces.

May 12 - Katharine Hepburn

May 19 - Grace Jones

May 5 - Although I immediately recognized the face, I couldn't place the name of the actor shown on May 5.  After searching this blog, I eventually realized it was Tyrone Power.

May 27 - I drew a blank.

I looked up Hepburn on IMDB.  I wondered if she and Jones had ever made a film together.  They had not.  However, I noticed on IMDB that Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907.  I quickly confirmed that Jones was born on May 19 and Power on May 5.

Searching for actors born on May 27, the second one listed was Christopher Lee...who turns 92 years old on the 27th.  I still can't quite square that image on the calendar with The Wicker Man or Count Dooku but it does approach his appearance in The Man with the Golden Gun.  I think the photo is from around the time Lee was playing Dracula in Hammer Horror films.

Each actor was pictured on his or her birthday.  On May 21, the Castro is screening Milk (2008).  The Castro screens Milk annually on Harvey Milk Day.  Actually, Harvey Milk Day is May 22 but the theater is closed that day for a private event.  Harvey Milk Day is celebrated on May 22 because was born May 22, 1930. 

The clues in the calendar puzzle are pointing to the screening of Milk on May 21 or Harvey Milk Day on May 22.

I solved this puzzle in less than 10 minutes and with much less "internet cheating" than usual.

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As for the films screening in May, my attention was immediately drawn to May 15.  On that day, the theater is screening Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy and Danny Boyle's Trainspotting.  I have not seen either film.

Alejandro Jodorosky's The Holy Mountain is screening May 7 and I'm mildly interested but I think I have tickets to a 2014 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) screening that night.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks (who I have at many screenings lately) is showing the original Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) on May 9 as part of Midnites for Maniacs.  I didn't know the Cage/Jolie film was a sequel.  Interestingly, the 2000 film is titled Gone in Sixty Seconds.  Why change 60 to Sixty?  The first half of the double feature is Speed.  Has Jesse given up midnight screenings?  I can't recall the last time, he advertised the theater crawl from the Castro to the Roxie for the final screening of a triple bill.  Can you have Midnites for Maniacs without a midnight film?

I have some interest in seeing Fellini Satyricon on May 28.  It screens with Barbarella.

The month ends with the 2014 San Francisco Silent Film Festival from May 29 to June 1. 

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Castro Theater Calendar - May 2014

Jodorosky's Dune

I saw Jodorosky's Dune at the Landmark Embarcadero Center Cinemas earlier this week.

Jodorosky's Dune; documentary; directed by Frank Pavich; Spanish, French, German & English with subtitles; (2013) - Official Website

Jodorosky's Dune is an entertaining documentary about "The Greatest Movie Never Made."  Actually, that sobriquet was used to describe Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno which was the subject of an entertaining documentary by Serge Bromberg called Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno.

Of course, Dune was eventually made. David Lynch directed the 1984 film which Jodorosky admits on camera, in a moment of schadenfreude, was terrible.  An admirer of Lynch, Jodorosky blames the poor quality of the film on the producers.  For his part, Lynch has distanced himself from Dune.  He refuses to discuss the film in interviews and his name has been removed from the credits in some versions.

Back to Jodorosky:  after the cult success of El Topo (1970) and financial success of The Holy Mountain (1973), Jodorosky was contacted by French film producer Michael Seydoux, granduncle of Léa Seydoux (Inglourious Basterds, Blues is the Warmest Color and The Grand Hotel Budapest).

Seydoux gave Jodorosky carte blanche for his next film project and Jodorosky chose Dune, a 1965 novel by Frank Herbert.  After writing the script, Jodorosky assembled his team or warriors as he calls them.  He recruited artists Jean Giraud (aka Moebius), Chris Foss and H.R. Giger.  For special effects, he got Dan O'Bannon based on his work on John Carpenter's Dark Star.  Then he set out to cast the film.  Jodorosky claims to have got agreements (presumably verbal) from the likes of Sallvador Dalí, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger and David Carradine. Jodorosky's son Brontis was to have the lead role of Paul.

Jodorosky is quite the raconteur and some of the coincidences in his stories seem a little contrived but I won't quibble.  What is undeniable is some of the eye-popping artwork.  Seydoux packaged the storyboards and sketches into a tome for marketing purposes.  Although the Hollywood studios passed on the project, much of the designs seemed to have made their way into later films.  Jodorosky suspects the pitch books were used by studios for inspiration.

Jodorosky's "warriors" also had later success in Hollywood particularly with James Cameron's Alien.  O'Bannon went on to write the screenplay for Alien on which Chris Foss and Jean Giraud did artwork.  Giraud later went on to do artwork on TRON and The Abyss.  H.R. Giger won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for his work on Alien.

Jodorosky was trying to get Dune greenlit in the mid-1970s; before Star Wars.  Studios were leery of funding the $15 million budget Seydoux was estimating.  Given the outlandish enticements Jodorosky gave to Dalí and Welles, I think Jodorosky's Dune may have become Jodorosky's Heaven's Gate.  It's enticing imagine what could have been.  Jodorosky still has his copy of the storyboard book so his Dune lives on in that format.  As he mentions near the end of the film, his Dune would make a great animated film and the technology exists today to do his vision justice.

 

The Emperor’s Castle by H.R. Giger