[Wes]

For years I had the idea to do a screenplay about an Italian film crew making a cannibal film – a once great Giallo director now washed up is hired by a fly-by-night Eurociné-style group to make a cannibal film. The film-within-film is made in a remote stretch jungle but the production is dogged by hellish terrain, bad weather and a difficult leading man refusing to slaughter animals on camera. When financing falls through midway, (film was to be set in the early 80’s as the genre was dying out) the film gets progressively weirder and more hallucinatory...

There was a real mess of different influences going on – the Italian Cannibal cycle, Apocalypse Now, Aguirre Wrath of God (my diva director was to be along the lines of a tantrum throwing Klaus Kinski), and a bunch of moviemaking-is-hell films like The State of Things, Living In Oblivion, Irma Vep, The Last Movie, and all of it overlaid with a Boogie Nights style period sweep. I went to start this screenplay many times but it never went anywhere – honestly I have no idea about the science of writing a screenplay, a minute per page etc. Tentatively and terribly titled The Green Hell...