Disney Won't Dance with Paltrow's "Duets"

by Emily Farache
Feb 14, 2000, 1:30 PM PT


Call Duets the little movie that couldn't.

The film first appeared on the radar way back when Gwyneth Paltrow
and Brad Pitt were the hot Hollywood couple. To be directed and
produced by Gwynie's dad, Bruce Paltrow, the musical road picture
promised to be a starring vehicle for the It couple.

But it was not to be. Six months after announcing their engagement,
the couple broke up. Daddy Bruce called off his feature-film
directorial debut, promising to revive the picture in the
heartbreak-free future.

Three years later, a retooled Duets is in the can, with Scott
Speedman replacing Pitt, but the film's still in trouble.

Disney, the studio behind the film, has yanked it from its May 5
release date and is shopping it around to other studios, according
to the Hollywood Reporter, all because higher-ups at the Mouse
House object to two purportedly violent scenes.

Duets follows three characters traveling across America on their
way to a karaoke competition in Omaha. (The third member of the
trio is ER's Maria Bello.)

Disney officials reportedly don't like a scene in which a
convenience-store clerk is gunned down and another scene wherein
one of the characters is shot while performing karaoke.

"Those two scenes completely take you out of the film," a Disney
source told the Reporter. "It's just not for us; it may get a
better release somewhere else."

This is the second time in a year that the studio behind Toy Story
2 and The Tigger Movie has looked to dump a film deemed un-Disney-
like.

Last April, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, cochairs of the Disney-owned
Miramax, purchased the rights to Kevin Smith's fallen-angel satire
Dogma to shield the Mouse House from potential backlash over the
film.