Nastassja Kinski sings Little Boy Blue

One from the Heart (1982) composed by Tom Waits.

One from the Heart is a 1982 musical film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It is set entirely in Las Vegas, on the Las Vegas Strip and the desert surrounding the city. Though the film realistically evokes the feeling of being on the busy Las Vegas Strip, there were no location shots used in the film, it shot on studio sound stages with the single exception of one space on the backlot for a 'Las Vegas junkyard' set, described by a character in the film as being 'the garden of the Taj Mahal'.

The extraordinary cost of the production of this film would lead to Coppola's declaring bankruptcy. Originally intended as a small film after the enormous cost, pressures and production problems of Apocalypse Now, One from the Heart rapidly ballooned from a projected budget of $2 million to over $25 million. Rather than shooting on location, Coppola insisted on building sets, to add to the artificiality of the proscenium.

Set construction proceeded to such an extent that a replica of Las Vegas' McCarran Airport - complete with a jetway and jet airliner (built from the nose section of a crashed plane) - was built and used for the penultimate scene. The sets for the film consumed the entirety of soundstage space at Coppola's recently-acquired American Zoetrope studio. Because of the maze of wiring and flammable scrims, backdrops and other materials, Dean Tavoularis half-jokingly referred to the Vegas Strip set - the centerpiece of the film - as a "firetrap", saying it caused him to have "nightmares about fires" during the film's production.

In terms of his career, Coppola has stated that the films he made during the rest of the 1980s and most of the 1990s, such as The Outsiders, The Cotton Club, The Godfather, Part III, Jack and The Rainmaker, were done to pay off the debts incurred by the production of One from the Heart.

One from the Heart features an original soundtrack from Crystal Gayle and Tom Waits. Waits received an Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score. Dean Tavoularis, whose art department was next door to the musical rehearsal space, used Tom Waits' music as tonal inspiration which was incorporated into the film's highly-stylized 'look'. Mickey Hart, drummer for The Grateful Dead, and musician Bobby Vega were also credited for their contributions to the production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_from_the_Heart

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