STACK #194 Dec 2020

FILM FACTS

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To celebrate the return of the long unavailable Goth classic The Crow to DVD & Blu-ray this month, as well as an all-new retitled director’s cut of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part III , we’ve dug up some interesting trivia about these two must-have titles.

THE CROW (1994) • Right after Gideon’s Pawn Shop blows up and the police officer and Eric are talking, the officer yells at the people looting the shop; one looter is running away with a TV set. This is actually James O’Barr, creator of The Crow comic series! He was on the set one day and the filmmakers asked if he wanted to be in the movie. • Brandon Lee, who plays Eric, suffered a fatal wound, while shooting the death scene for his character. An improperly cleaned prop gun shot a dummy tip into his stomach, which resulted in his death. • When Lee died there were still eight days of filming left. To complete the film a body double was used, along with some digital composing. Dream Quest provided the visual effect for breaking the mirror, and stunt/body doubles were used when the character enters the loft. • In his DVD audio commentary, director Alex Proyas says that Brandon Lee was unhappy with the way his face paint looked when the makeup department applied it to him before shooting. Lee and Proyas subsequently agreed that it would look best if Lee applied his own makeup every night before going to bed, so that when he woke up his face paint would naturally look more worn out. • Crow creator James O’Barr stated on the DVD that when he met the movie’s executives, they originally wanted to make the film a musical starring Michael Jackson! He immediately laughed uncontrollably thinking it was a joke, only to discover that they were quite serious. It was not until Brandon Lee and Alex Proyas came onboard that the movie took a more serious tone.

MARIO PUZO’S THE GODFATHER, CODA: THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CORLEONE – formerly The Godfather: Part III (1990) • Director Francis Ford Coppola was uncomfortable with the title The Godfather: Part III as he had never intended the film to be part of a trilogy, but rather an epilogue to the first two films. • Al Pacino was offered $5 million, but wanted $7 million plus a percentage of the gross to reprise his role as Michael. Francis Ford Coppola refused, and threatened to rewrite the script by starting off with Michael’s funeral sequence instead of the film’s introduction. Pacino agreed to the $5 million offer. • Francis Ford Coppola once admitted he was still unhappy over the final result, because of lack of time working on the script in order to meet the Christmas 1990 release date. He also regretted that the character of Tom Hagen had to be written out of the script because the studio refused to meet Robert Duvall’s financial demands. According to Coppola, with Hagen gone, an essential character and counterpart for Michael Corleone was missing from the movie. • Winona Ryder was originally cast as Michael Corleone’s daughter, but had to withdraw on doctor’s orders after suffering a severe upper respiratory infection upon arriving in Rome. The role was recast with Coppola’s daughter, Sofia, playing Mary Corleone, despite having appeared as his infant niece in The Godfather , and an unnamed child on the ship in The Godfather: Part II . Madonna also screen-tested for the part. • During Andy Garcia’s fight scene in Vincent’s apartment, the actor insisted on using a real gun instead of a prop pistol to beat the stuntman, who ultimately sustained a large cut that required stitches.

The Crow is out on Blu-ray & DVD Dec 16

The Godfather, Coda is out on Blu-ray Dec 9

28 DECEMBER 2020

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