TCM has a good, recent documentary about this project. Lean worked on the script with playwright Christopher Hampton ("Dangerous Liasons"), who had proposed his own "Nostromo" to the BBC, and then his friend Robert Bolt. Hampton is one of the main interviewees, as is French actor Georges Corraface, whom Lean wanted in the title role and who had to keep going to gyms all round the world for years to stay muscular for a film that was never made (and which the money men, just before Lean's death, in the end would never have allowed him to appear in - they insisted on a big American name). You actually get to see some clips of Corraface's screentests, when he is playing off a then little known Alan Rickman. The documentary shoots down some false information about the potential cast that floats around internet: Marlon Brando actually turned down a Lean invitation, and Lean rejected Isabella Rossellini. The production sketches look amazing. David Lean’s ‘Nostromo’: The Old Man and the Untold Tale of the Seaboard • Cinephilia & Beyond
I read of a movie based on murderous Western Swing bandleader Spade Cooley, called SHAME ON YOU. It had a star as Spade - who directed it - and a female co-star.
Obviously, couldn't Arnold as Sgt. Rock have been made an immigrant? Austrian, too - not German! So, good.
If I remember correctly, elements of the Cagliostro script were reused for The Mummy (also starring Karloff).
