Alec Baldwin & James Toback Team Up For Secret Cannes Documentary ‘Seduced and Abandoned’

Cannes. Cannes, Cannes, Cannes, Cannes, Cannes. CANNES!

Okay, now that I’ve gently eased you into it, here's some news from everyone’s favourite film festival – you know, the one that kicked off today. This piece of news comes from Cannes, and is about a film that’s being made at Cannes, which is about raising money at Cannes to make another movie – that other movie could be set anywhere really…but nobody’s ruling out Cannes.

The film in question is “Seduced and Abandoned” and is being put together by veteran writer/director James Toback ("The Gambler," "Fingers," "Two Girls And A Guy") and Alec Baldwin. If this all sounds a bit confusing, that’s because it is. Here’s how Toback explains it: “The film idea was generated by conversations Alec and I have had over a long period of time and we decided we’d go to Cannes and shoot a record of our quest to find money to make a movie, which in effect is not a movie we’re definitely making, but rather one we will make in the future if we raise the money for it here. This film is about that process, documenting the progress and the potential success or failure of the two of us in a picaresque attempt to obtain the financing of a movie we have a general idea about making.” That all makes sense now, right?

The pair already have an interview with Martin Scorsese in the can, and plan to speak to Bernardo Bertolluci and Roman Polanski during the festival and later with Francis Ford Coppola when they get home. “We will talk to every billionaire financier in Cannes, to a few directors and movie stars to get a sense of where film is today and how it is changing as a business, and the whole evolution of Cannes from a pure festival to this bizarre mix of wildly diverse elements. It still clings to the pure notion of film, with all sorts of other ramifications from financial to maritime implications that make it so complex,” said Toback.

Toback’s adamant that they will make the second movie if they do indeed secure the funds during the course of shooting this documentary. “If we get the money, will make the second movie. If we don’t, we will have made a movie I will be thrilled to have made anyway. This is no prank,” he said. So what of the second movie then? What will that entail? Well Toback will direct, and Baldwin will star, and Toback describes it as “an intimate story and a rather ambitious political drama mix.” [Deadline]