Just about anything can inspire a movie, but we don't often hear that another movie, and much less events behind-the-scenes, as being the muse for a film.
Our friends at mental_floss have rounded up seven films that were inspired by backstage events from other films.
"Plan 9 From Outer Space" (1957) / "Ed Wood" (1994)
By any standard, Edward Wood, Jr. was not a particularly good filmmaker. His films had highly noticeable continuity errors, backgrounds that wouldn’t stay still, and flying saucers that were clearly made of cardboard. He would have died in obscurity had it not been for the irony that his movies achieved cult status thanks to their sheer awfulness. Film critic siblings Harry and Michael Medved pronounced Plan 9 from Outer Space the worst film of all time, and David Letterman got laughs from his audiences simply by running clips from the film during the early days of his show.
Made with the last remaining footage of his late friend Bela Lugosi, Ed Wood’s dogged pursuit to make Plan 9 From Outer Space is the subject of Tim Burton’s 1994 movie Ed Wood. Johnny Depp plays the title character and Martin Landau plays Lugosi (he received the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role). Burton paints Wood as not just a sympathetic figure but as the embodiment of a true auteur. Wood’s complete obliviousness to his lack of talent, and his unwavering optimism in the face of it, is seen as his biggest strength; it’s what wins the hearts of those around him and the audience. In fact, the film never allows Ed Wood to learn the reaction to his film: As Wood is walking out of the premiere of his film, he asks his girlfriend to elope with him instead of sticking around to hear critical opinion (which likely would have been negative). Both Tim Burton and Johnny Depp count Ed Wood among their greatest films.
"Nosferatu" (1922) / "Shadow of the Vampire" (2000)
F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, one of the landmark films of the silent era, is the first of a great many films to be based on Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula. Without Nosferatu demonstrating the popularity of the vampire genre, we wouldn’t have Twilight, True Blood, or The Vampire Diaries. The film almost got shut down, however, because Stoker’s widow sued the studio over the unauthorized use of her husband’s novel (written in 1897). Murnau persisted with different names for his characters.
The most chilling aspect of the film is Max Schreck’s portrayal of the Dracula stand-in (dubbed “Count Orlock”). Because audiences in 1922 were so new to the horror genre, Schreck’s striking facial features made quite an impression on audiences, and rumors fueled among audiences at the time that Schreck was an actual vampire. It also helped that Schreck didn’t do a lot of acting afterwards (although a closer look at his filmography shows he did do a number of less notable films).
In the 2000 film Shadow of a Vampire, director E. Elias Merhige and writer Steven Katz do a backstage film about Nosterafu with a twist: In this fictionalized account, director F.W. Murnau’s (John Malkovich) film is such a success because he finds an actual vampire to play the role of the Count.
"African Queen" (1951) / "White Hunter Black Heart" (1990)
Many of acclaimed director John Huston’s films were adventure stories that were shot on location, which was something few studios allowed directors to do at that time. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was shot in Mexico, Beat the Devil was shot in East Africa, and The Man Who Would Be King was shot in Morocco—but his most extreme location shoot was for the African Queen. The film, about a missionary (Katharine Hepburn) and a disheveled riverboat captain (Humphrey Bogart) travelling down Africa’s Zambezi River in World War I, was shot in a previously unmapped location in the Belgian Congo.
Pretty much the entire cast and crew got sick from dysentery, malaria, and snake bites. It didn’t help that Huston was a stubborn and strong-willed man who had a penchant for indulging in adventures. “He had a habit of losing interest in a project halfway through, and he indulged his passions for horses, drink, gambling and women as if he had the divine right to be supplied endlessly with same,” wrote Roger Ebert. In this particular case, Huston’s adventure of choice was shooting an elephant. When Huston first arrived in the Congo, he delayed production so he could go on a safari. When he failed to shoot an elephant on that outing, he refused to continue production until he succeeded in shooting one. Hepburn wrote in her autobiography that Huston convinced her to go hunting and inadvertently led her to a herd of wild animals from which the two were lucky to escape alive. She was among a number of people who theorized that Huston signed on to the movie just so he could go on safari.
Among those who got sick was screenwriter James Agee. A German-born screenwriter named Peter Viertel was sent to Africa as Agee’s replacement. Upon witnessing first-hand Huston’s mad quest to shoot an elephant, Viertel was inspired to write a semi-biographical novel about Huston centered around that experience. The novel was made into a movie by Clint Eastwood, who directed and starred as stubborn director John Wilson. Despite the name changes, the film sticks pretty close to the novel.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
Please follow The Wire on Twitter and Facebook.
