ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Seventeen years ago in 1983, German director Wim Wenders and US playwright Sam Shepard (who is as well known for his acting as for his writing these days) teamed up on a film which was the most obvious winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes that I can remember: Paris, Texas.

The film was (among other things) a kind of love song on Wenders’ part to the landscapes of the American southwest, where much of it was shot. And it had an unforgettable score by Ry Cooder - a slide-guitar theme which has become as firmly associated with the southwestern deserts as anything Dimitri Tiomkin or Ennio Morricone ever wrote.

Wenders worked with Cooder again a couple of years ago on that wonderful documentary, Buena Vista Social Club. The idea was Cooder’s: he had come across the Cuban musicians who are the film’s focus, brought them to the US for a concert, and told Wenders, who decided to make a documentary about them.

Now, however, Wenders is to reteam with Shepard on a feature film which doesn’t yet have a title, a cast or even a start date or a location - just a claim that it will be made “in the US at the beginning of 2001”. The film does, however, have a theme, and one which will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Wenders’ career. It will, he says, be “a road movie right across the United States - a family saga and, at the same time, a story which takes place in the age of the Internet and global communication”.

It also seems a fair bet that it will make use of the various new digital technologies which currently fascinate Wenders, and which are the bread-and-butter of Das Werk, the digital effects and production company with which his and Ulrich Felsberg’s company, Road Movies (launched long before Paris, Texas), merged a couple of years ago.

IT'S ALL IN THE PITCH

Not to so long ago, I was talking to some European producers about ‘pitching’, and specifically that technique - beloved of Hollywood raconteurs but used less and less these days - whereby any film can be summed up in 30 words or less. I’ve always hated it, because anything more complex than Under Siege 2 generally can’t be summed up in that way. Even when it can, the summary is rarely much use.

One of the producers, however, disagreed. “OK,” I said. “Do one for The English Patient,” and sat back smugly. After 30 seconds or so of careful thought, he came up with a perfectly respectable 30-word summary of that esteemed Oscar-winner. And, even though I’ve forgotten what the exact wording was, I do recall that someone who had overheard rubbed salt in my wound by looking interested and saying, “I’d see that!”

That phrase, “I’d see that”, came to mind recently when I read about Airplane director Jerry Zucker’s new movie, Rat Race. It came back to me because Rat Race recalls that brief golden (well, gold-plated) age of big-cast comedies in which a lot of familiar faces became involved in some improbable event - films like The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (it seemed a prerequisite that there be repetition in the title).

This isn’t true of Rat Race, of course, which has one of the most succinct titles you could imagine. But the rest sounds familiar. In fact, my pitching producer friend would probably describe it as ‘Mad, Mad World meets Airplane’.

The plot line is simple: a Vegas casino owner pits six ordinary people against one another in a race to get their hands on $2 million which has been placed in a locker several hundred miles away. Zucker directs. Andy Breckman (Sgt. Bilko) wrote. And the cast includes Rowan Atkinson, Dean Cain (TV’s Superman), John Cleese, Whoopi Goldberg and Cuba Gooding Jr, plus Breckin Meyer and Amy Smart from last summer’s Road Trip. Production began in mid-September in and around Calgary, and Paramount will release some time next year.