Adrien Brody Forum

When I wrote up this morning's DVD post, I was a little curious about a little movie called Giallo, directed by Dario Argento and starring Adrien Brody. Despite winning an Oscar for 2002's The Pianist, Brody's no stranger to direct-to-DVD roles, as recent turns in High School and The Experiment should indicate. His experience with Argento was apparently less pleasant than usual, though, if the fact that he's suing to prevent the DVD release of the film is any indication. 
 
Brody's grievance? Brother was never paid for his role, apparently; he negotiated a $640,000 salary to appear in the film, but the producers apparently managed to talk him into taking a deferred payment, in exchange for him being able to refuse the rights for his image to be used in the film until he was paid, effectively rendering the film unreleasable without his say-so. Cut to a couple of years later, Brody says he still hasn't been paid, and the Italian producers are apparently putting it out anyway. Brody's lawsuit hopes to stop the U.S. DVD sales, but that seems unlikely to happen. Hopefully he can get some money for his work, though.  
 
So is Adrien Brody a huge sucker, or are these Italian guys master con-men, or what? 

BrodyQuest: Serious Business  (i wanna be first)

I kinda liked The Experiment...anyone else, or is this just me?

 Maybe Brody needs to look for better representation.

Has the man learned nothing from Rian Johnson?

Brody is probably a sucker and the producers are doing a little con-work.  Life's usually a little of both.

@crevisjr said:

" I kinda liked The Experiment...anyone else, or is this just me? "

It wasn't the worst movie in the world, but it was extremely predictable and dumb and had no real message, other than "people who are extremely unstable should not be put in positions of power."
 
Adrien Brody was pretty good in it, though. As was Forrest Whitaker, who's taken more jobs in movies that are beneath him over the last ten years than even Nicolas Cage.

Anything that stops people from seeing this laughable excuse for a film is a good thing.
 
Dario's lost it. The last good movie he made was STENDHAL SYNDROME

@Olivaw: I felt the acting was fairly solid, but you are right that the movie lacked substance.

@Olivaw said:

" @crevisjr said:

" I kinda liked The Experiment...anyone else, or is this just me? "

 Adrien Brody was pretty good in it, though. As was Forrest Whitaker, who's taken more jobs in movies that are beneath him over the last ten years than even Nicolas Cage. "

Yeah, what the fuck ever happened to Forrest Whitaker? I figured his career might have rebounded after he got all that praise for Last King of Scotland, but that movie came out years ago. It's a pity, really, because that guy has a lot of talent.

Master con men? No. Jerks who are screwing some guy over? Seemingly so. 
You don't really need to be that smart to figure out you can just ignore contracts and roll the dice in the courts when you want to get your own way. They suck for doing so though. 
Brody might want a better agent as well. That might help.

@CashBailey said:

" Anything that stops people from seeing this laughable excuse for a film is a good thing.
 
Dario's lost it. The last good movie he made was STENDHAL SYNDROME "

I really liked Sleepless, but either way, this movie was pretty horrible.  No big loss if it's never released.

Yeah you're kind of supposed to pay people if you hire them.

@Everyones_A_Critic said:

" @Olivaw said:

" @crevisjr said:

" I kinda liked The Experiment...anyone else, or is this just me? "

 Adrien Brody was pretty good in it, though. As was Forrest Whitaker, who's taken more jobs in movies that are beneath him over the last ten years than even Nicolas Cage. "

Yeah, what the fuck ever happened to Forrest Whitaker? I figured his career might have rebounded after he got all that praise for Last King of Scotland, but that movie came out years ago. It's a pity, really, because that guy has a lot of talent. "

His career is still going strong. He won Best Actor for fuck's sake.
 
He just takes any job that comes his way. Either for the Nic Cage reasons (money, because he thinks it's fun) or because he genuinely wants to challenge himself as an actor to do as many and as different roles as possible.
 
He's still a great actor. He just can't say "no."
 
Hell, Samuel L. will be in anything if you pay him somethin' for it.

Personally i think there's more to this than Brody lets on. Maybe he just don't want the movie out since most people have similar opinion about this movie, that it's crap.

It seems a lot of Italian filmmakers are kind of insane. Also, borderline incompetent in a really amusing way. And yeah, Argento qualifies, sorry.

I have never watched a movie by Dario Argento...no idea where to start either.

 

"Pimps Hookers Drug Dealers They All Need To Eat." So does Adrian Broody, pay the man!

 

@ZombiePie: Do yourself a HUGE favor and do an Argento double feature: Suspiria and Phenomena (in that order). 
 
He has some other great ones, but they're slower burns.  But it looks like your a fan of German expressionism, so you should really dig him.  Enjoy!

@ZombiePie said:

" I have never watched a movie by Dario Argento...no idea where to start either. "

Maybe DEEP RED is a good place to start. It's fairly accessible and not too crazy.
 
But his masterpiece will always be SUSPIRIA.