Blind Items Revealed #1 - Anniversary Month

January 25, 2016

If there is anyone in this world who probably wishes that Aloysius Pendergast was a real person it would be this foreign born director. Our direct was the next it director back in the day. He worked his way up from shorts to music videos to one of the best feature length movies incorporating music ever. It put him on the fast track to fame and fortune and big box office productions. Then, he went over the edge so to speak and it all went away.

While researching and writing what was supposed to be his first big box office production he was introduced to voodoo. From the second he learned about the religion, he was enraptured. He turned in the script he was writing to the studio and started to direct the big box office movie and then he was replaced.

It was just a few days into shooting but he was freaking everyone out. The movie was being filmed on a remote island occupied by an aboriginal tribe. They practiced something akin to voodoo and our director was fascinated. He had the tribe perform all types of rituals on the set and they were not just dancing and singing.

There were sacrifices and painting with blood and a parade of animal skulls the actors had to walk through to perform their scenes. Panic calls went out by satellite phone. There was no internet service on that island and it would have been spotty in most places at that time period. Crew members barricaded themselves together because they were so terrified about what the director would try next.

As soon as the studio got someone to the set, our director was replaced. Instead of heading back home in disgrace, our director began living with the tribe. He lived with them for well over a year and stalked the production of the film. It is said he cursed the movie and if you look at the results on film and at the box office, I would agree.

It gets deeper than that though. It is said he cursed every star in the movie too. No one from the movie has ever had the career they had before the movie. The lead actress in the movie was so convinced she was cursed that she has spent her entire life since trying to figure out a way to reverse the curse and practices all types of witchcraft and other religions to break the spell. Two of the actors had been A list coming in to the movie. One was probably always going to be because of past work, but that movie shook him. He was never the same and only made a couple of crap movies before he died. Most of the time he kept himself locked in his home with armed guards standing outside his house and bedroom while he slept. Another lead actor has worked steadily but his chance at A+ listerdom crashed and burned the next year which he blamed on the curse.

Our actor also has spent the past years trying to lift the curse through a variety of religious practices. He went to Native Americans for help and did every kind of spiritual drug or ceremony they could think of but it didn't work. he spent a fortune trying to lift the curse. He switched religions but now is close to death and blames it on the director.

Our director? He is convinced there are zombies or at least people who can become zombies and he has traveled the world looking. He has been to the darkest parts of Africa and scoured South American tribes looking. He films it all and is convinced he will capture a zombie on film.

Richard Stanley/Island of Dr. Moreau/John Frankenheimer/Fairuza Balk/Marlon Brando/Val Kilmer