DONALD
CAMMELL'S WILD SIDE
the Director's
Cut
"The
restored version of Donald Cammell's swansong is so imaginative,
so vibrant, so impossibly daring...The movie's energy
transforms film noir into an adrenaline rush...It is what cinema
is meant to do -
disturb, stimulate and excite."
Angus Wolfe Murray
Producer of The Director's Cut: Hamish
McAlpine, Nick Jones, Frank Mazzola
Director: Donald Cammell
Screenplay: Donald Cammell, China Kong
Director of Photography: Saed Mutarevic
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor/Post Production Supervisor: Frank Mazzola
Cast: Christopher Walken, Joan Chen, Steven
Bauer & Anne Heche as 'Alex'
Alan Garfield,
Adam Novak
Distributor UK: Metro Tartan Distribution
Screenplay available through screenpress.co.uk
REVIEWS "A
CUT ABOVE"
"I cannot think of two such radically different films being
produced from the same raw footage..."
Brian
Pendreigh/THE GUARDIAN Jan.14, 2000
"Scottish-born
filmmaker, Donald Cammell (Performance, Demon Seed, White Of The
Eye) committed suicide in 1996, after completing his last film
WILD SIDE. Except, he never really completed that last
movie. Denied final cut by Wild Side's producers, NU
Image, Cammell...(was fired along with his editor)...and
had his name removed from the film, which was subsequently rough
cut into a trashy exploitation flick and released straight to
video."
Miles
Fielder/THE LIST Aug. 1999
"The battle over
Wild Side might have ended there were it not for Hamish McAlpine,
head of Metro Tartan Distributors in London. McAlpine
successfully negotiated with NU Image for the UK rights to Wild
Side, and gave Frank Mazzola an opportunity to reconstruct the
film...the editor set about what must rank as one of the most
intricate and thorough restoration jobs in cinema history"
Steven
Applebaum/THE STANDARD June, 2000
"Perhaps the most
remarkable event of the festival has been WILD SIDE...presented
in a radically new director's cut...by editor and long-time
Cammell associate Frank Mazzola...Under Mazzola's microsurgery
it emerges as classic cinema, an entirely different film, richer
and more complex with a superb, eccentric performance by
Christopher Walken..."
Peter
Bradshaw/ THE GUARDIAN/ Aug. 1999
"The director's cut
(pieced together by the Editor after the director's suicide) is
an outstanding piece of cinema. Not a frame wasted.
The opening sequence shocks you into an awareness that this
movie will be very different from anything you've seen before.
Chris Walken gives the best performance of his career.
This is exciting, original cinema that riveted my attention in
every moment of its two hour authorized version...The tenacity
and integrity of the Editor and scriptwriter that saw it through
to completion is a monument to the industry."
Chris
Docker/Edinburgh/imdb comments
WILD SIDE - The Director's
Cut premiered in London on June 30th, 2000 with a beautiful new
score by Ryuichi Sakamoto. The reception was outstanding.
"DONALD CAMMELL'S
WILD SIDE...one of the most extraordinary, bizarre and
uproarious films that you can see this year...I can only say
that with WILD SIDE a cult classic has been reborn"
THE GUARDIAN/Film Of The Week/Peter Bradshaw/"MENACE A
TROIS"/June 30, 2000
"After Cammell shot
himself in 1996, Mazzola (started) a restoration job on WILD
SIDE to bring it closer in line with its Director's vision, with
the help of British Producers Hamish McAlpine and Nick Jones...
Using his rough cut, his memory and Cammell's extensive notes,
Mazzola turned WILD SIDE into the sensual, cerebral, challenging
work that it was meant to be."
DAILY
EXPRESS/Ryan Gilbey/"THE DIRECTOR'S FINAL CUT"/July 1,
2000
"...Metro Tartan
combined forces with Cammell's longtime editor Frank Mazzola and
England's Channel 4, raising funds to go back and see that
justice is finally served. Using Cammell's notes, storyboards, a
rough video cut and his memory of the film's production, Mazzola
recut the film back into its original, complex glory...the final
version of WILD SIDE is a tense, introspective and strangely
hilarious. It is an intricate revelation of a raging talent
whose day had tragically never been fully granted."
FANTASIA
FILM FESTIVAL/Mitch Davis/July, 2000
This version is only available (to date)
on DVD/region 2
encoding or
VHS/PAL only
(Europe
,Middle East, Japan)
OTHER ARTICLES ON DONALD
CAMMELL'S WILD SIDE
SIGHT AND SOUND/Mark
Kermode/"WILD SIDE"/movie reviews pg.59/Aug.
2000
LIBERATION (Paris)/Philippe
Garnier/"La Redemption De Wild Side"/Aug. 18,
2000
THE
INDEPENDENT/Tom Dewe Mathews/"Epitaph for the wild at
heart"/June 30, 2000
SIGHT AND SOUND/Geoffrey
Macnab/"HOOKER"S MAGIC"/pg.26/Aug. 1999
