Ash Wednesday - 1973
The film that wrecked Dominick Dunne as a producer and gave Helmut Berger the title of the Worlds Most Handsome Man (for five minutes). Elizabeth Taylor was past her peak and a mean drunk, albeit one who could hold her liquor better than Burton, her dissolute bore of a husband. The studio was still giving her everything she wanted (stunning locations, fresh roses every day), but it would be the last time. They all partied the nights away on booze and coke, hanging with Luchino Visconti, Berger's keeper. Visconti went on a tear over the talent-free young actors in current films one night, prompting Berger to snap "You think it's fun fucking an old man like you every night?" Has anyone seen this film? Even with Henry Fonda, it sunk like a boulder.
Helmut Berger today:
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | December 30, 2020 5:06 AM
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OP, how did it wreck Dunne? financially?
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | December 30, 2020 4:11 AM
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Found it...financially, but primarily about the fat joke he made about Mengers. Interesting.
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | December 30, 2020 4:24 AM
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OP - no homosexual on DL has ever seen this obscure movie. Please, tell us much more!
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | December 30, 2020 4:28 AM
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I’m a homosexual and I’ve seen the movie, a few times. I love Elizabeth Taylor.
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | December 30, 2020 4:48 AM
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You can find it in full on YouTube. The final film is okay (the theme is the best part) doesn't seem to have been worth all of the trouble that went into making it. Odd little film. Henry Fonda (as Mark Sawyer) was sixty-eight, and Elizabeth Taylor (as Barbara Sawyer) was forty or forty-one at the time of filming.
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | December 30, 2020 5:04 AM
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R2 The making of this film was so chaotic, and out of control, that wrecked his career as a Hollywood producer, and everything else Hollywood-related. It's absolutely notorious.
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | December 30, 2020 5:06 AM
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