Okay,
First you should know. This is for REAL. This movie was released in 2003. It actually exists. How they got these actors and how they still have careers (and in one case won an Oscar) is beyond me.
I promise you won't believe it. My guess is you'll watch it multiple times. Enjoy.
Not to be pedantic, but at least THREE of the actors in this movie went on to win Oscars: Oldman, McConaughey and Arquette.
ReplyDeleteI am gobsmacked.
ReplyDeleteNever released? Not even as a short?
ReplyDeleteThat’s amazing and disgusting.
ReplyDeleteMcConaughey playing Jewish?
Did I see Dinklage??
ReplyDeleteI saw this on cable years ago. Spoiler alert: Beckinsale falls in love with Oldman's 'role of a lifetime' character.
ReplyDeleteAmazing. For the record, this movie was made a few years before the show Little People Big World debuted.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I looked up "Tiptoes" on Wikipedia-that entry (along with the entry on the films writer/director Matthew Bright) reads like a parody of Hollywood.
I'm almost tempted to see it just to find out why they made it a Jewish wedding.
ReplyDeleteIt almost seems weird for me to see Peter Dinklage without a bad British accent.
ReplyDeleteTheir are several good to great actors in this. It makes you wonder what they saw in the script.
Oh good lord, I wanna know the story behind that -- and there's *got to* be a story behind that...
ReplyDeleteI have a question: what?
ReplyDeleteActually, let me rephrase that:
WHAT?!
All those circumstances... and he's JEWISH on top of it? I'm still rollin' on the floor!
ReplyDeleteThe guy they hired to do the trailer voice-over is appalling. It's like they knew they had a stinker, so why not go the full hog and make a shitty trailer with a terrible voice-over.
ReplyDeletede plane, de plane...too soon?
ReplyDeleteAnd Gary Oldmans role of a lifetime
ReplyDeleteThis trailer dwarfs all others. Besides that I have little to say.
ReplyDeleteAnd Hollywood lectures the rest of us!
ReplyDeleteIt just got added to my Netflix DVD Queue!
ReplyDelete@Matt I take it you've never seen ELF, in which he plays Miles Finch? "He's written more classics than Dr. Seuss!"
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, I am reminded of a Frasier episode that aired in 1998 and was directed by some guy named Levine, "Roz and the Schnoz," which is one of my favorite Frasiers.
ReplyDeleteJust goes to show, it always turns out bad when you lose your sense of the ridiculous. Heck, or even the surreal.
ReplyDeleteIt's like watching a fever dream. Thanks for the experience.
Sean
I don't know how you people can enjoy this this this... trailer when poor Harvey Weinstein has been tested positive 😠😠ðŸ˜
ReplyDeleteSo this film played a couple theaters and then went VOD? How does a film with major actors get made without any sort of distribution deal? Did the distributor hate the 90 minute version the producers cut instead of the director's 2 1/2 hour version? I'd never heard of this film. There is an article about it at https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/the-incredible-story-behind-tiptoes-the-movie-in-121940150.html
ReplyDeleteWow. This film got pitched, and greenlit. Then it got funded. Then it got cast, and made. Are these the same people who saw the rushes of "Cats" and said, "Hell yeah! Hit City, baby!!
ReplyDeleteMost groundbreaking film since THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN.
ReplyDeleteWritten and directed by Matthew Bright, who played Squeezit in "Forbidden Zone."
ReplyDeleteDid you read the new autobiography written by Woody Allen? He is angry that none of his friends stood up for him.
ReplyDeleteI am reminded of the episode of MASH where Klinger announces that he's found a copy of "The Terror Of Tiny Town"--a Western with an all-little-people cast.
ReplyDeleteWhich also exists.
There's an excellent play by Michael Frayn titled "Benefactors". One of the characters is an architect commissioned to design a public housing project. He starts out with an idealistic vision, the exact opposite of the cold impersonal towers then being built. Over the course of the play, various compromises lead him to exactly that, and somewhere he misses the transition: He's fighting to build the very thing he hates.
ReplyDelete"Making Of" books for animated Disney features always include "concept art" that show a completely different and often a more fascinating vision. "Emperor's New Groove" was going to be a hugely ambitious, mostly serious musical. The final film, a fun light comedy, was made to salvage at least some of the development.
Anyway, a sort of Friday question: What was the greatest distance between a project you started and the final product?
Funniest thing to me was the phrase "command performances". What, the Queen of England requested they make this film?
ReplyDeleteI've watched it twice and I'm confused. Am I supposed to be appalled or shocked? Because I'm not. This isn't FREAKS redux; it's not even TWINS with Schwartenegger and DeVito. It raises an intriguing question paralleling a real-life example on the old reality show LITTLE PEOPLE, BIG WORLD. Dwarves Matt and Amy had twin sons, one of normal height, the other a dwarf. The tall one carried a heightened genetic possibility that his children would be like his parents and brother. Any girl seriously involved with tall Jeremy had to consider the increased risk of her child being a dwarf. What if Jeremy's son turned out to be like brother Zach? Was she prepared to handle that? (I watched the series for several years, but I stopped before the question was answered.) Maybe people are just put-off by the way the film tackles the question. I can't really tell much about from the trailer, but the question at the center of the picture is an interesting one.
ReplyDelete-30-
Nobody went to the movies last weekend. Nobody misses the celebrities.
ReplyDeleteFor the love of God, pay some people less. Stop worshipping them and caring what they say, especially since most of them have taken to the woods and left us behind.
Are you sure this is a movie and not a YouTube stunt of some sort? Have you seen it all? Has anyone?
ReplyDeleteWow. Catchy. Isn’t it amazing how an experienced trailer editor can make a lousy purse into a sows ear? With apologies to the sow.
ReplyDeleteThat move came directly from the Money Laundry.
Read the Wikipedia notes. It explains some things. Janice B.
ReplyDeleteActually Woody Allen is angry with the writers' community for not standing up for him and being vocal in their support.
ReplyDeleteIs he right Ken? Or does he expect the impossible?
Apparently, Peter Dinklage said the TWO AND A HALF HOUR LONG ORIGINAL DIRECTOR'S CUT was a good movie, but the studio took it away from the director and cut it down into a 90-minute "rom-com with dwarves," at which point the director disowned it.
ReplyDeleteI'm shocked at the disdain heaped upon this serious, socially-conscious film. I'm just sorry that one of the normal-sized actors didn't win an Oscar. Imagine the acceptance speech, "...but most of all, I want to thank the little people."
ReplyDeleteI...what...?
ReplyDeleteWow, just wow. My jaw dropped. Thanks, Ken for the much needed humor on a shitty day. Thanks to the readers for some of the hilarious comments also.
ReplyDeleteYou cannot be serious! 4.4 rating on IMDB. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316768/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
ReplyDeleteO
ReplyDeleteM
G
Kind of reminds me of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
By the way, I understand why you disabled comments on your previous post. But I just wanted to tell you, I sincerely hope you and your family are well. Stay safe.
ReplyDeleteDinklage speaks
ReplyDeleteI told him I was impressed that he would defend “Tiptoes,” a movie that seems, on its face, ridiculous. “It was a lovely mess of a movie while we were making it,” he sighed. “I saw the director’s cut, and it was gorgeous.” That two-and-a-half-hour director’s cut was shown at a film festival in Austin, Tex.; the director, Matthew Bright, was reportedly fired shortly afterward, and the movie was recut. “The people who fired him ruined the movie,” Dinklage insisted. “They made it into a weird little quirky rom-com, but with dwarves.” He looked gloomy as he recalled this. “It was sort of an amazing idea for a movie, but the result was what we were fighting against — the cutesiness of little people.” I asked if he ever hoped to be a spokesman for the rights of little people. He made an exasperated sound and held his hands out, palms up. “I don’t know what I would say. It would be arrogant to assume that I. . . .” He put his hands down on the table. “Everyone’s different. Every person my size has a different life, a different history. Different ways of dealing with it. Just because I’m seemingly O.K. with it, I can’t preach how to be O.K. with it. I don’t think I still am O.K. with it. There’s days when I’m not.”
Looks awful. But it caused me to remember one of my favourite scenes from The Odd Couple show. Felix’ meltdown at the end still makes me laugh all these years later.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/mGI9vFheRCE
My god... the horror! THE HORROR!
ReplyDeleteI’ve got to see this movie. I would have loved to be in the room when it was pitched and when people were so excited to green light. It must have been similar to the meeting when they green lighted the Edsel
ReplyDeleteI have to see this movie! Better yet, I would have loved to seen when this movie was green lighted. It was like green lighting the Edsel
ReplyDeleteI was a development exec in the late 90s and was pitched this project with all the attachments.
ReplyDeleteLoved the cast of course, but yeah, we passed...
For more TIPTOES info...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/the-incredible-story-behind-tiptoes-the-movie-in-121940150.html?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKyH9DhzOKbzbddyfdlmec0WPdf6U8ifktLPgPM5vfQfV1Re8GzdvsUUBcgcJImtXy-QuxrD4B-6Gn8DCpSBtepRGr8QRqx2AD3KZ6DOtzH44YXrsARRP-JH_kChnhFHaLmWwhdqH-5E1b2WCrnkgfIdlUGZ_IhjdEW2wZSYRbl8
Wasn't this plot already done as a storyline on "St Elsewhere?"
ReplyDeleteomg why?
ReplyDelete