FILMS THAT WERE NEVER MADE

Bleak Hotel by D M Thomas turns out to be a great new book about how The White Hotel was (to date) not made into a movie. I gladly gave D M permission to use my emails in the sorry, sometimes hilarious saga. Films that were never made is an interesting genre. I, Claudius was a great pity--Josef Von Sternberg started shooting with Charles Laughton. Some great scenes survive. I met Sternberg in Melbourne in 1967 and showed him my paintings and 8MM shorts--he said stick to movies. He was quite bitter about Hollywood, which I didn't understand at the time, since he had done so many great things. Probably all the films never made would be as good as the films, or better, than the movies made. They couldn't be worse.