The Cotton Club

Harlem in the thirties. A club that serves white customers and puts Black performers on stage, with the mob circling it. The film watches a cornet player and a dancer from two ends of the same world. Francis Ford Coppola directed. The real story is behind the camera. Producer Robert Evans conceived it as a major statement on African-American history. He first hired Robert Altman to direct, but Altman's Popeye flopped on 12 December 1980, the very day the appointment was announced, and Paramount pulled the financing. Coppola came in during 1984, mainly because he needed money after his own financial collapse. The script chaos is on record: according to William Kennedy, twelve screenplays were produced between July and August 1983, five of them in a single 48-hour weekend. A crew of over 600 was costing a reported 250,000 dollars a day, and at one point Coppola walked off demanding to be paid in full. The financing involved strange names: the Saudi businessman Adnan Khashoggi, Las Vegas casino owners and the vaudeville promoter Roy Radin. Radin was murdered in May 1983. His killers later claimed they had been hired by Evans and Radin's girlfriend over disputes about the film's profits. The budget rose to 58 million dollars against a 25.9 million gross. The reviews were good anyway: Roger Ebert gave it four stars and it was nominated for Oscars in art direction and editing. In 2017 Coppola spent over 500,000 dollars of his own money restoring his original cut and released the 139-minute The Cotton Club: Encore. Who it is for: viewers who want jazz, dance and gangsters together, and anyone drawn to Hollywood disasters. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a coherent narrative. The theatrical version plays like two films stitched together, and the reason is everything written above.