Personally, I think Grace of Monaco was always going to be a disaster. It might have had potential at the very beginning, but as soon as Nicole Kidman was hired to play a 33-year-old version of Grace Kelly, the die was cast and there was no turning back. The first trailer from Grace of Monaco proved my suspicions (I’m including the trailer again at the end of the post), not to mention the fact that GoM’s producer Harvey Weinstein pulled the film out of this year’s awards season, pushing the release date until next year. But now the director of Grace of Monaco, Oliver Dahan, is complaining that Harvey Weinstein is the reason the movie is bad. Um. Sure.
French director Olivier Dahan is feuding with Harvey Weinstein over his Grace Kelly biopic starring Nicole Kidman. The Weinstein Co. bought US rights to Dahan’s “Grace of Monaco,” and Dahan claims Weinstein cut his artistic scenes.
“There are two versions of the film at present, mine and his, which I find catastrophic,” Dahan told newspaper Liberation.
He said Weinstein wanted a “commercial film . . . removing anything that is too abrupt, removing everything that has to do with cinema, everything that has to do with life.”
He added: “Decisions are only taken with regards to the marketing. It is a problem of misplaced egos, a story of manipulation and power.”
Weinstein is postponing the release until next year.
Dahan said the delay was “only a question of money.”
He added, “They made a trailer that did not correspond to the film, and then tried to make the film resemble the trailer. It’s absurd.”
Weinstein did not comment, but a movie source noted, “This happens all the time. They test movies for the market and edit parts that don’t work.”
I actually think it’s possible that they could both be right. It’s possible that Harvey watched the director’s cut and thought, “OMG, this is horrible, it needs to be re-edited if we even hope to salvage this mess.” And it’s possible that Dahan is right, that his version of the film is a lot better than whatever Harvey pulled together. But at some point we all have to acknowledge that the film was never going to be good, right? That Nicole was not the right choice for Grace, and that making your film look like a perfume commercial was always going to be the wrong idea?
Photos courtesy of WENN, promotional images from ‘Grace of Monaco’.
*die was cast. Sorry, Latin major. 🙂
Botoxed, middle aged Nicole playing the magnificent Grace? Casting choice doomed the film.
Yeah, I like NC but they should have casted some “fresh face”.
GK was like 20 something when she got married.
No matter the movie, Nicole is always the wrong choice.
26, actually.
Yeah this was going to be terrible anyway.
Every time I look at Harvey Weistein I can’t help thinking about all the women who, at one point, had sex with him for an opportunity.
Because I wouldn’t have sex with this man even if my life depended on that.
Me neither, I am also skeptical whether it will actually get them anywhere because he is in on the game. He won´t cast his piece of the week who can´t act for shit in his new Oscar vehicle, look how it worked out for Gretchen Mol.
There is a German model who is f’kinng him right now, he took her to Cannes and Venice, she was married to a retired German soccer player for a short time and is always looking for a sugar daddy, she somehow managed to go to Leo di Caprio´s bday party too.
Omg Im german,who is that model?
Really?! What is georgina chapman doing during all this, she knows the deal, is she allowed her own affairs? You can’t be that devoid of feeling and just money hungry to put yourself through being married to harvey, surely she could’ve gone to someone else better looking and attractive than harvey to get ahead?
You made me curious. Who is this model?
I maybe know! Did you mean Lilliane M.?
Mrs K: Yep, there´s a reason she is randomly showing up at all these prestigous film festivals walking the red carpet with him.
She was with some really old millionar before that too. I am torn between pitying her desperation and admiring her game.
https://twitter.com/TheLiliana/status/280168337911197696
http://www.gala.de/stars/story/liliana-matthaeus-mein-freund-harvey_944008.html
http://autoimg.vip.de/autoimg/727964/1500×1500/bild.jpg
@ Sam: Considering it´s Harvey Weinstein she is prob relieved that she doesn´t have to put out and he´s distracted.
I’m just amazed at her gag reflex…
@ stellalovejoydiver: thank you for the confirmation!
I read about her and I simply knew that her “modelling career” cannot pay for the luxury items and lifestyle she has. Now It’s clear, she is a kept woman…
Tell me more about Gretchen Moll. I actually liked her in The Notorious Bettie Page.
That dancing pile of dung can ruin many things, like my breakfast, he is so disgusting.
Whomever put the promo together didn’t realize that what is most interesting about Grace isn’t the fairy-tale aspects of her story – the film career, the prince.
It’s how badly the fairy tale went wrong. The uncaring, philandering husband, the boredom of royal duties, the alcoholism.
That’s what’s fascinating, and something a lot more people can identify with.
Yeah….the gist of the trailer is basically, “Isn’t Grace Kelly pretty? She is just so pretty!”. Which is fine for a photo spread but can’t hold up a whole movie.
Also, Nicole Kidman, while beautiful, is not so good an actress that you can ever forget she is Nicole Kidman. You can’t get lost in her characters.
I´m just sad because Tim Roth is in it, I love him, he plays Rainier.
Oh, noes…
I, too, love Tim Roth. He’s a criminally underrated actor.
He is, but he is not really consistent when choosing his projects, he either does interesting artsy movies or stinkers.
He booked an interesting sounding film with Vincent D`Onofrio, another of my fav actors directed by David Lynch´s daugher.
It’s a dilemma: I love that he doesn’t think he’s above certain movies — he’ll pretty much sign up for anything that helps pay his mortgage.
But I’d also love him to get parts in better, higher profiled projects (which means he’d have to be a little more carefull about his choices).
He just needs to books a big film like Transformers or something and then stick to interesting films.
I kind of hoped that the Grace film would help boost his profile again, oops.
I LOVE Tim Roth! Lie to me was one amazing show. Tim Roth’s Cal Lightman was my husband and my favorite character of all time. We watch all 3 seasons on NetFlix regularly.
It’s sad
Nicole was wrong for the part. You can’t fix that with editing.
Kidman looks like a middle-aged first lady of something or other on that cover. Kelly wasn’t a particularly intersting person or a good actress, but she certainly was beautiful in her thirties.
I agree with your assessment of Grace Kelly as an actress–she was not that great. But I think Kelly knew this about herself and she seemed intelligent and realistic. I don’t know much about her life, but to leave a pretty successful 6-year run in Hollywood to marry a prince at 26 proves to me that she had a conservative streak and knew Hollywood would not miss her when she rode off into the Monaco sunset. Maybe she could have grown into a better actress later in life, but we will never know.
Her beauty and classic style makes her iconic to me, and I love looking at her, but she was never compelling to me, if I compare her other regal beauties like Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons, and Audrey Hepburn, had better acting chops and equal beauty.
There were a few test screenings of the unfinished film and the reactions from people who saw it gave the impression it would not be a awards player.
I imagine it’s going to be cut to be more commercial and populist to increase the box office at this point.
Don’t a lot of film makers love-hate Weinstein? He has the money to make films, but he also has the power to kill the artistic vision? I don’t know if that is true in this case. Casting Kidman seems like a misstep. But didn’t Robert Redford voice his disenchantment with Weinstein as well?
Yeah, over Sundance and how mainstream it became once Hollywood came knocking. Redford blamed him and Paris Hilton.
The Paris Hilton disdain is understandable. Someone like her turns the event into an ugly sideshow of fame-whoring freaks.
I think especially foreign film makers whose films he didn´t produce, but only distributes are wary of him, he likes to dumb films down to market them to a bigger audience.
Most recently the film Snowpiercer was supposed to be cut 20 min, “TWC people have told Bong that their aim is to make sure the film ‘will be understood by audiences in Iowa … and Oklahoma.'”
The director of Princess Monoke sent him a Samurai sword with a note saying “no cuts”.
His nick name is Harvey Scissorhands.
Gotcha. I figured as much.
Yes. He loves re-editing for “marketing purposes.” He’s currently the one bastardizing Snowpiercer. I believe he’s the one that also cut up Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster for American audiences. It totally destroyed the movie, and it didn’t look like one of Wong Kar Wai’s films at all. As much as I think this movie looked silly from the trailer, I’m inclined to believe the director.
To be fair, everybody does it, studio and independents. Very, very few films survive the ‘artist’s vision’ as envisioned by said artist.
Harvey is visible because his niche is independent film where it’s easier to point the finger of blame at one person as opposed to a faceless studio committee.
Also, the artists are in control of their films for the entire process unlike studio films, so it comes as a huge shock to them when Harvey makes editing changes.
Does he ruin the end result? May be, but it makes it a commercially acceptable film because otherwise the artist would be Sally Porter.
I will watch any movie about royals so even with all the bad reviews I probably will see it, on BlueRay anyway.
No matter how ridiculous the movie and casting may be, I am always firmly in the corner of anyone vs Harvey Weinstein. He is a repulsive man who uses his power to buy Oscars, bed starlets and force actresses to wear his wife’s awful designs. He controls Hollywood and I for one applaud anyone who goes up against him and speaks their mind knowing the power he has .
I am no Weinstein fan and look forward to the day when his closet is thrust wide open and all his sketons come tumbling out for the whole world to see.
I can’t stand Weinstein either. He’s a horrible, sweaty and disgusting man who has made a living out of bullying and manipulating people in the industry. Nasty vile creature.
They should have Rosamund Pike play Princess Grace! First time I saw her I thought wow she reminds me of Grace Kelly.
^THIS
Not a huge fan of her acting, but look wise Diane Krüger would have made sense too.
Googley, I was thinking the exact same thing! Rosamund Pike – I was amazed I even remembered her name – she is someone with that fresh skin and a similar kind of beauty as Grace Kelly.
Casting Nicole was a bad move, no matter how they edit it, it was doomed from the start with her. In the RIGHT part NK is good, but this is not it. And lately, she is hard to watch, that face just doesn’t move. Look at the Paris Match cover, it’s like she erased every trace of human feeling from her face and has no emotion, not good for an ACTRESS!!!
Anybody else think it’s funny that an actress so obsessed with youth that she willingly destroyed her own face, yet still can’t pass for 33 despite that LOL!! She looks very much 40+, but now looks like a 40+ with bad cosmestic surgery. Imagine all that money and obession and you still didn’t capture your youthful face back, but it resulted in destroying your believability in any role anymore. No doubt she can act, but she is now unwatchable and that is the problem now. And don’t tell me Hollywood execs don’t know this.
I think most plastic procedures don’t defy age. The wrinkles get smoothed out, but the age is still there, underlying it all, and it just screams unnatural and unearthly.
Nicole seemed very confident in her beauty until Tom Cruise dumped her. I think Tom Cruise leaves a mark on all his wives.
I remember a time when Miramax was a brothers Weinsteins affair.Now we only hear abour Harvey. Isn’t Bob involved anymore in the business? He seemed like some sort of balancing influence in the this tandem.
Bob has always kept a lower profile compared to Harvey. He is still very much part of TWC. He is the financial brains of the twosome. Harvey is the front salesman, handling the talent and art!!
PBS recently ran a documentary on Grace as part of its “Extraordinary Women” series. From the credits, it looked like it was a co-production with the BBC, so if people are interested in Grace’s life, I recommend it. I found it very interesting, and there was no footage of Nicole Kidman (whom I like but is *not* right to play Grace).
Last night’s episode was about Coco Chanel.
Harvey butchering–excuse me, editing–films against a director’s wishes is nothing new.
Nicole may have been miscast, but I feel that people are too precious about icons. We haven’t seen the end result yet, we can only speculate as to the quality… and will we even be able to do that, if the movie deviates from the director’s vision and intention? I hope he and Boon Jong Ho win out over Weinstein .
OMG the cover….her lips and all. Sorry Nicole you lost your beauty. The cover looks s*hit
I want to prick Nicole’s face with a pin and hear it go POP!
Holy chipmunk cheeks batman!
Of course he did, Harvey Weinstein ruins everything. He didn’t earn the nickname Harvey Scissorhands for no reason.
Maybe if Harvey edits Kidman out completely, the film may yet have a chance.
Kidman was a poor choice so was Roth. Both are very competent actors but neither has even a slight resemblance to people so recently deceased that most of us still remember what they actually looked like.
I’ll watch it for the scenery, music & clothes when it gets to HBO, but the overblown narration would be more credible if GK hadn’t publicly expressed her desire to return to acting after she discovered how really dull & constrained her life was as the Princess. The marriage wasn’t that great & her kids haven’t made for an admirable legacy of achievement.