Plastic Explosive: Waiting for Fashion the Movie

Amid the moldering pile of links and news I've been stretched too thin to send your way, one in particular retains the color, flavor and gentle glow of its original discovery last week. It's the enigma of Fashion -- or, more specifically, Fashion the Movie.

Michael Madsen, Jeff Espanol, Faye Dunaway and Darryl Hannah in the staggering trailer for Fashion the Movie

I first read about Fashion the Movie last week, when the Daily Mail used a pair of planted production stills to ruminate on Faye Dunaway's plastic surgery. A few days later, Dana Harris noted the film had taken out a two-page spread in Variety "that contains perhaps the worst photograph of Ms. Dunaway that I've ever seen."
But enough quibbling: Simply put, Fashion the Movie is positioning itself to be the greatest film ever made. For starters, a director named Jeff Espanol has jammed the 66-year-old Oscar winner and half of Kill Bill's villains (Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine) into black berets and battle fatigues, added his own glowering, gun-toting cameo and furnished an automatic-weapon-to-actor ratio of 10:1 in the service of a story best explicated on the film's Web site (heavy on the [sic]):

Fashion The Movie a film trilogy.

An international obstacle course for undercover CIA agents in the glamourous world of high fashion.

An action thriller shooting in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Moscow, St. Tropez, Sardeigna, Milan.

Produce and directed by Jeff Espanol. Featuring great hollywood actors and the latest styles of haute couture.

Eschew Kung Fu: David Carradine, automatic weapons-praiser

The site also features not-quite-lavish production stills and photos of a co-producer who looks mysteriously like an American flag. But where things get really promising -- like "holy fucking shit" promising -- is in a trailer you must see to believe, a Trapped in the Closet-level mindfuck featuring runway disco, hails of bullets and dialogue that would send David Mamet into shuddering paroxysms of envy:

Narrator: In the world of high fashion and luxury, the CIA is on a worldwide mission to assassinate a list of dangerous individuals.

Carradine: You know, the advantage of an automatic weapon is it levels the field -- makes everyone get along really fine.

Hannah: John, clean up the street. Gino, Carlo -- come on. We gotta get Shepperton out of here alive.

Dunaway: Jesus!

Madsen: Hey! Heeeeyyyy!!!!

Hold the tilde: The mysterious actor/filmmaker behind it all

Of course, there is no "Movie"; no IMDB profile, no production news, no way to establish its legitimacy. For now, anyway, Fashion the Trailer is more like it, a genuinely fascinating budget bait gambit not too far removed from film school fundraising and YouTube-era word-of-mouth. But as far as captivating car wrecks of big dreams and bigger nightmares go, (Dunaway's weapon-wielding peak ended in bloody slow motion 40 years ago), little boasts the tantalizing, raw potential of the visionary Jeff Espanol -- whoever he is. Viewers, open your hearts. Moguls, open your wallets. And somebody -- anybody -- please, please explain what it all means.

Posted at May 23, 2007 12:04 PM