Creative Clashes

The creative mind may seem inscrutable to you and me, but conflict seems to be a constant theme. Artists love to fight. Who has seen this clip of his handling of a heckler at a recent movie awards dinner and does not think that the director of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" was spoiling for a punch up? And what about Natalie Cole scolding the Grammy voters for raining awards down on Amy Winehouse instead of shunning the party girl for her recent downward spiral into drugs and dissolution? So be prepared to have a screaming match at some point in the production and don't let it slow you down in making the movie. On the Kubrick Napoleon documentary there may be more philosophical differences than creative. This is because the director Thomas Bender has still not finished his first documentary on the Witch School of the Sweet Corn Capital of the World, Hoopeston, Illinois and is trying to manage upwards and sideways on this new La Boca picture. And it will be up to me to contain any instability. It may sound like a losing game but I don't mind a good fight. It helps to cleanse the palate.

Picture of the day. Napoleon at the scene of one of his greatest triumphs, the battle of Austerlitz. Kubrick paid close attention in his script to the constant conflict between Napoleon and Alexander, the Russian emperor. Although Alexander suffered a decisive defeat at Austerlitz, Napoleon was to suffer a humiliating retreat from the Russian capital of St. Petersberg during Napoleon's expansionist period.