Trick or Treat (unfinished film)

Trick or Treat is an unfinished British film directed by Michael Apted that was started in 1975 but never completed. It led to the breakup of the producing partnership between David Puttnam and Sandy Lieberson.[2][3]

Trick or Treat
Directed byMichael Apted
Produced byDavid Puttnam
Sandy Lieberson
Written byRay Connolly
Kathleen Tynan
Based onnovel by Ray Connolly
StarringBianca Jagger
Jan Smithers
Nigel Davenport
Production
company
Goodtimes Enterprises
Release date
Unreleased
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£600,000 (£400,000 of which was spent)[1]

Premise

A lesbian couple who want a baby become involved with a married couple.

Cast

Production

Ray Connolly first thought of the idea in 1969. He wrote it as a novel in 1974. He then turned it into a screenplay and succeeded in attracting the interested of David Puttnam of Goodtimes Enterprises. Connolly:

It was, in my mind, a love affair between four people, a sort of erotic Chabrol piece about sexual relationships and emotional ambivalences. It was to be set in Europe and to star three Europeans and one American. At a time when English films were unattractive outside Britain, here seemed an opportunity to make a film with international appeal. In fact I’d even gone to Paris to write the novel in the first place.[1]

Finance was obtained from the National Film Finance Corporation, EMI Films, and an Italian company called Rizzoli Film. Later Playboy's film division contributed to the budget. Bianca Jagger and Stephanie Audran were cast in the leads; Audran later dropped out and was replaced by Elsa Martinelli.

Production on the film commenced in 1975. Connolly says that Bianca Jagger was difficult to work with:

She wanted the script to be more faithful to the book, which was a surprising request since the book was much more sexually explicit than any of the scripts. During the next six months the question of the sex and nudity was to be a point for endless discussions between Bianca and the rest of us; we wanted to make a serious film about a sexual relationship between two women and a man. To us that involved nudity. In Bianca's mind there was some big bad film baron who wanted us to make a dirty film; that was absurd. Neither the producers nor the financiers ever put any pressure upon us to make a film other than the one we had always intended to make. Bianca never said she wouldn’t do the nudity – and even signed a contract to say that she would: she just moaned a lot about it. But then she moaned about most things … the costumes, the way the film was lit, the importance of having a say in approving the other girl and the eventual choices of the married couple... But most of all she moaned about the script.[1]

Kathleen Tynan was called in to work on the script.[4] Jagger refused to do nude scenes during filming in Rome.[5] She claimed the movie was "pure pornography".[6]

Filming was eventually called off in January 1976. Connolly estimated around £400,000 had been spent leaving under forty minutes of usable footage.[1]

Impact

The fate of the film contributed to the breakup of the partnership between David Puttnam and Sandy Lieberson.[7] It also resulted in a number of lawsuits[8] and was how Tynan met Puttnam and Apted; the three later made Agatha together.[4]

References
  1. "The Making of Trick Or Treat?" The Sunday Times Magazine, September 1976, at Rayconnolly.co
  2. Trick or Treat at BFI Screenonline.
  3. "Bianca Jagger and the Film that Never was". Sunday Times. London. 5 September 1976. p. 43[S]+ – via The Sunday Times Digital Archive.
  4. Krier, Beth Ann. (October 11, 1978). "Unraveling a Christie Mystery". Los Angeles Times. p. f1.
  5. "Date set for police hearing". The Guardian. London (UK). September 16, 1977. p. 2.
  6. Roberts, Michael (29 February 1976). "Look! News in Fashion". Sunday Times. London. p. 43 – via The Sunday Times Digital Archive.
  7. "Interview with Sandy Lieberson", 1970s Project 6 March 2008 Archived 27 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine accessed 26 May 2014
  8. Mann, Roderick. (March 30, 1978). "It's Goodby Glitter, Hello Work". Los Angeles Times. p. f14.
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