Dilettantes and Renaissance: Yari Picks Up Lost Alec Baldwin Project
Thanks to Jeff Wells for the recent note about Alec Baldwin's long-lost directorial debut The Devil and Daniel Webster, which looks like it may finally find a theatrical release in 2007 -- six years after Baldwin shot it in New York with co-stars Anthony Hopkins and Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Baldwin, who plays the title's struggling writer Webster to Hewitt's devil, disowned the film after it was reclaimed and recut; Wells notes that Yari's going with an Alan Smithee credit on the release, though some punch-drunk publicist evidently got loose on the Web, pumping this thing up like it's von Stroheim's Greed: Especially about a film that has sat in a closet since before 9/11. But hey, Baldwin's hot, Yari's cheap and if there were ever a time for a B-list mogul to hop on an A-list bandwagon, Devil would probably be it. Hell, I'll tip my cap. Posted at October 30, 2006 11:39 AM TrackBack URL for this entry:
Jennifer Love Hewitt and director/star Alec Baldwin in the recently quasi-rescued The Devil and Daniel Webster (Photo: MOWE Productions)
An IMDB poster has written there were three versions of this film. He saw the original and says it "left a lot to be desired." But there were two more versions, one after Baldwin abandoned ship and the last one just before it was sold to Yari. The guy says "that the final cut, a half-hour shorter that the previous ones, is by far the best!" So it may be passable, but never trust anyone who uses exclamation points to convey enthusiasm about anything.
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Comments (2)
It takes a devil to know one. No suprise that Yari's partner David Glasser is a serial fraud artist who has defrauded investors coast to coast and was responsible for the failure of this movie in its first iteration...The fact that his partner Bob Yari is now behind it proves that birds of a feather flock together...and odds are that nobody will see a dime from any possible revenue this movie collects
Posted by alison | December 16, 2006 2:19 PM
Look at the billboards for "Dirt" starring Courtney Cox. Odd that a notoriously forgotten film with the now-hot Alec Baldwin six years later to the day of the end of the Bush era has been virtually carbon copied ("Fame has it's price" is the tagline) on television. Coincidence? or political suppression of a then wildly upopular Bush-hating pre 9/11 Alec Baldwin?
Posted by joe blow | January 7, 2007 10:09 PM