The Smiley Smile Message Board

An extremely talented musician is on top of the world in his early 20s. He's even giving The Beatles some serious competition. Then, when he's working on the Greatest Album Ever Made, he has a serious mental breakdown. He shelves the whole project and will never fully recover from this defeat. For years he hardly leaves his bed. A controversial psychologist comes to the rescue, but eventually starts running his patient's life like a dictator. Eventually the main character manages to break free. And then there's the ultimate Hollywood ending: the Greatest Album Ever Made, almost 30 years after it was abandoned by it's creator, is finally gloriously released. And the hero of the story lived happily ever after.

I don't really understand why Hollywood hasn't picked this up yet. With a decent budget, a cast with real beards, a director who's name is not Oliver Stone and a script that Mike Love had nothing to do with it should make a great movie.

Thoughts?

Yes, it would be a great movie.  :)

Sounds a bit far fetched to me.  Who's Mike Love?

I would rather see a multi part release of vintage Beach Boys footage. Not a biography, just raw footage with perhaps a second audio commentary track that tells the story behind the songs and shows etc.

the Greatest Album Ever Made = Brian Wilson Presents Smile ?

This does sound like a Oliver Stone movie.  :-D

Wasn't Eddie and the Cruisers a pseudo Brian knock off?

There was a script about Brian...How Deep Is the Ocean? that floated around Hollywood for years. It was aquired by Castle Rock around 5 or 6 years ago and it seems to have died a slow death since then. I've read the script and I thought it was terrible.

Oh yeah, I think I saw that movie,  except after recording his masterpiece he had a fling with a Carole King type songwriter and then wandered off to drown himself in the surf one night. Then they found the "Season In Hell" tapes and had Phil Spector re-produce them. It was confusing. 

What was that called?  I thought it was dreadful - even though some people seem to rate it.  They were all 'types' - a Brian Wilson type, a Phil Spector type, a Carole King type etc.  All living in a parallel version of the 1960s.   

Grace Of My Heart
Eddie & The Cruisers

A movie about Brian would be much better now than 5 years ago. The Smile premier in London would make a perfect Hollywood happy ending.

I would love to see a full theater release of not just brian but the Beach Boys. I say starting from the beginning of their professional career and moving all the way up to present day.

ofcourse the movie will be like 4 hours long, but it would be pretty sweet!

Sadly I have a feeling that it will take Brian's death to get a real good quality movie made about him.  I don't know if anyone watches Entourage but there was a fictional Joey Ramone biopic in the works on there, and one of the characters said "now that Joey is gone, we can market this".  Its sad that that's the way it works but it seems to be the most likely scenario.  Hopefully it won't be for a long time, but I believe that it will get made someday.  

What was so terrible about the "How Deep Is the Ocean" script Jon?  I actually kinda like that title.

I liked the title too. And Im a huge fan of Entourage! :thumbsup

I haven't read it in years. I'd have to pull it out and read it again to get specific. I remember it just left me flat. It seemed to have zero edge. A very predictable presentation. I was hoping that movie wouldn't get made because it missed the potential. When I heard the script was basically dead at Castle Rock I was not surprised. IMO Brian needs a really irreverent take on his life for it to be interesting cinematically. Something with a lot of humor and a lot of pain.

Wouldn't it largely depend on the director to make something out of the script, no matter how flat it seems? I'm not sure if his visual stylings would merely serve as a distraction given the subject matter, but for gibbering, drug-induced craziness, Terry Gilliam might be an interesting choice.

According to Rob Reiner, the project was abandoned because he couldn't get a good script.  I'm not sure if the script that Jon is referring to is the exact script, or maybe Rob bought the rights and tried to get a new one written.  It was reported that the same writer of the adaptation of "The Basketball Diaries" was hired by Reiner to do the Brian story, to be called "The Mozart of Hawthorne."  Whether it's the same as the "Ocean" script or something brand new, I'm not sure.  But Reiner is a principal of Castlerock, so perhaps he has/had options on both scripts.  There is also an option on a script that covers the Landy years, to be produced by Steven Soderbergh, which also appears to have gone nowhere.

Reiner's idea is to do a biopic about Brian that shows his musical genius, with his life story as a backdrop.  To me, that sounds pretty dead, anyways.  I don't think the general public would be interested.  It's the soap opera that's the hook in Brian's story.  The demographics of a Brian/Beach Boys biopic probably skew too old and too white to get the millions of dollars required to make such a movie.  It's hard to get backing for anything now, but this would be a very expensive proposition with a risky potential payback.  The music rights alone make any musical biopic expensive.  I also think that Brian might be difficult to make sympathetic or interesting to some people, for a variety of reasons.  I agree that it might work best as a black comedy, but I doubt Rob Reiner is the person to make that movie, and he's the only one that seems to have made a push to make a Brian movie happen.  Gilliam might be a good choice.  A couple of others I've thought of would be David Lynch or John Waters.

Just keep Stamos away from it!!!!!

And damn it, someone better check with ME before they cast this one!

Who should be cast as Brian?  Michael Richards or Brad Douriff?

I think the only way to do it would be to have a series of movies or one 15-hour long behemoth.

Or better yet, a TV series.  It could run for several years, and you wouldn't have to truncate as much of the story.

Actually, a TV series based on some of the Beach Boys antics, more of an anecdotal kind of thing, sounds like a good idea...

They should do "Thirty Two Short Films About the Beach Boys", like they did with Glenn Gould.  No atempt at chronology, blaming anyone or tearjerker hollywood endings. Just stick to the essence of each character in the saga.

There have already been two sorry (imho) biopics made about the BBs, so I vote thumbs down on any future films. I'm skeptical about anyone's ability to do the story justice in a 2-4 hour format.

Well, if it was to be a series, HBO would be the place for it. And since Deadwood is almost done, David Milch could do the job. His classical feel would well befit the subject matter, tragic and pathetic as it is.

An HBO series is brilliant! Something like Band of Brothers...

They should make it a trilogy.  Then a few years later, do another trilogy that predates the original.  It worked for Star Wars.

Actor Patrick Bergin (see bad guy in one of the Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movies) looks a lot like the later years Brian.

I agree.  Probably focusing on just a segment or so  of his life and maybe starring Bill Murray (made a little taller) as post-70's  Brian.   This would be a great project for Jim Jarmusch.  I think he would combine the elements you mentioned into something very interesting and more artistcally worthy than another forgettable bio-pic.   

I think ther all-encompassing movie idea is out of the question: too much, impossible to please all the BW/BB geeks out there (er, in here!) with the details while retaining some popular appeal. My best ideas would be either the one mentioned earlier, that maybe would focus on a small period of BW's life (I like the post above this, with maybe a snippet of Brian's life in the 70s) or even a film about someone else--someone totally irrelevant--being inspired by the music. I think you could do something there, including that character learning about BW/BB while going through [X plot].

I don't know sh*t about making movies. I don't even watch many. So the smarter among you can go ahead with a good conversation now!

No pun intended I'm sure.

nice catch