Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made

An interesting documentary by Finnish filmmaker Mika Kaurismaki (brother of the more famous Aki). Filmed in the mid 1990s, it has Jim Jarmusch accompanying the legendary Samuel Fuller (who was in his early eighties by this time) to the Amazon forest to revisit the place where in the mid 1950s he planned to make a film. A film that, as the title says, was unfortunately never made. Fuller tells the story of the failed production. Tigrero, by the way, means a hunter of jaguars (which are called tigers in many parts of South America). Fuller says that John Wayne was going to play the role of the hunter in the movie, and Ava Gardner was set to co-star. It seems hard to believe that top Hollywood stars would be filming in a place that was back then (and still is) extremely remote, without any sort of modern facility. In fact, Fuller tells that one of the reasons the movie was never made was the difficulty of insuring the stars in such a potentially dangerous shooting. In many of the proposed settings for the film, the Kayapo Indians live, and it is interesting to get a glimpse of their lives. The movie is interesting, though perhaps of limited appeal (though you don't have to be a fan of Fuller or Jarmusch to enjoy this).