Do we all remember Capitol Films and their collective woes?
Long story short, these guys have been fucked for months and many of their films have been sitting in limbo for months — pictures like Tony Kaye’s “Black Water Transit,” very underrated TIFF ’08 film, “$5 A Day” and “Kiss the Dead Goodbye,” though maybe no one’s missing that one.
The last film Capitol released proper was “The Edge Of Love” with Sienna Miller and Keira Knightly, but it received a minuscule, limited release that came and went in March.
These guys are in rough shape. Troubles started showing in early 2008 when their ThinkFilm wing shuttered its Toronto offices and that subsidiary is now all but done and hasn’t released a picture since 2008 (“Good” which limped into theaters at the end of the year). Alex Gibney, the director of the 2008 Oscar-winning documentary feature “Taxi To The Dark Side” and “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” sued them in June 2008. In May of that year, they were sued for fraud by Boston-based Allied Advertising Ltd alleging breach of contract, deceit, and unfair business practices.
Many have said nothing, but foul things about Capitol head David Bergstein and in August 2008 he was the center of many articles, including this L.A. Times piece, counting up all the lawsuits and allegations of unpaid bills.
But buried in a THR article about the companies legal troubles and battles is mention of David O. Russell’s political satire, “Nailed,” starring Jessica Biel, Jake Gyllenhaal, Catherine Keener, Tracy Morgan, James Marsden and easily won the 2008 award for most infamously troubled production that year (actor James Caan quit in the middle of filming). The long and short was that filming was shut down four separate times and the film wrapped unfinished, with key scenes missing . Jessica Biel said earlier this year , “It’s just heartbreaking that so many people put so much work into this particular project only to have it sit there, unfinished. But it’s one of those things where we had no idea it would have happened.”
But is the troubled film going to be stitched together regardless of its unfinished state? According to THR:
Matthew Rhodes, a producer on “Nailed,” said there are funds for postproduction, and “Nailed” will be offered to domestic distributors and international buyers next year at Cannes. He called the movie “fantastic” and “wonderful.”
This is news to us, but perhaps anything is possible and considering the talent, we would love to eventually see it (also note: the film’s score that was to be written by Spike Jonze’s brother, Squeak E. Clean. Whether he completed it or not is unknown, but he was hired at one point).
“Nailed” starred Biel as a socially awkward and uninsured receptionist waitress who accidentally gets shot in the head with a nailgun during her boyfriend’s attempt to propose at dinner. She goes to Washington on a crusade to fight for the rights of the bizarrely injured and meets an immoral congressman played by Gyllenhaal who takes advantage of her sexually and politically. “Nailed” was written with Al Gore’s daughter, Kristin. Marsden played Biel’s small-town boyfriend, and Keener’s was said to be the self-serving congresswoman but the character was male in the original screenplay so obviously changes had been made.
While O.Russell is notorious for deviating off script, improvising and making stuff up on the fly, that might not be a bad thing in the case of “Nailed.” We read the script last year and while it was amusing and absurd, it’s incredibly broad, silly and ridiculous to the point of major incredulity. It largely resembled an episode of “The Simpsons” when Lisa goes to Washington, but obviously what happens with cartoon characters is much easier to swallow then it is with actual people (it also had a tone very similar to “30 Rock” which is fine for episodic TV, but we’re not sure it would in a full-length feature). Whether the actual film is that loony and slapsticky is hard to say — and we did hear reports that O.Russell did veer off-page — but for the sake of suspension of disbelief, we’re hoping they reigned it in quite a bit.
The bad news? Executives behind defunct New York hedge fund D.B. Zwirn, which provided most of the money to David Bergstein and his partner Ron Tutor to make and sell movies, filed suit Monday for reimbursement of about $120 million which could throw a wrench in everything.