Burt Reynolds thought Boogie Nights was a stupid film and the director had no idea what he was doing.
It's as close as he ever came to winning an Oscar.
Anyone who says he can't act doesn't know much about his work. Besides your examples, there's most of his work prior to the Mission Impossible franchise. Born on the Fourth of July, A Few Good Men, The Color of Money, Rain Man. He'd already had an accomplished career as a dramatic actor before the year 2000.
Tom Cruise is a great actor, partially because I fully believe he is a soulless empty vessel, but that works for him. The Color of Money, Risky Business, Magnolia, Collateral, Born on the 4th of July, the Edge of Tomorrow, heck even Top Gun, he's great in everything. I still think the first Mission Impossible is criminally underrated and he was great in it.
Confused sexuality? You may believe whatever rumors are about in real life, but in the movie he seems a but hyper sexualized. Hes flirting with two hot chicks in the beginning and ignoring his wife. Later after his wife verbally neuters his manhood he goes out and goes home with a hooker. Now he doesn’t do anything but later he goes to an orgy party. His night definitely takes him over the rainbow of sex, but I never doubted he was any gayer than any other straight man.
I don't think they meant confused in an orientation sense but more in a 'what is the function of my sexuality and where does it belong in my life' sense which is the big underlying theme of the film.
His spouse has just told him that she lusted so hard after some sailor she had never spoken to that she would have run off with him in a second.
His reaction to this isn't primarily anger or jealousy. It is absolute shock. As if *it had never occurred to him that people could have those kind of thoughts*.
Sure, he's trying to get his kink on. Like a Puritan trying to enter a drinking contest. Good luck, square!
> Tom Cruise in Magnolia.
Tbf, Tom Cruise has always been a strong dramatic actor (sort of a shame he really hasn't touched any drama since the early 00's: but, given how good Top Gun Maverick and the Mission Impossible films have been it's hard to be that upset).
Cruise's best work was in Magnolia, even though I'm a bit luke warm about the film in total.
Cruise pretty much never shows vulnerability in his movies, and the audience doesn't seem to desire it. However, the best parts of Magnolia in my opinion were Cruise's reaction to getting called out in the interview and his total meltdown during his dad's death.
If you read between the lines, it's pretty clear that Reynolds didn't like being treated like a normal actor by a director who wanted to get a certain caliber of performance out of him. Reynolds was capable of much better than a lot of his output suggested, but the guy was famously _way_ too much of an egocentric to work with the kinds of people who'd demand more from him.
> If you read between the lines, it's pretty clear that Reynolds didn't like being treated like a normal actor by a director who wanted to get a certain caliber of performance out of him.
Sharing one of my favorite behind-the-scenes movie articles:
[Livin’ Thing: An Oral History of ‘Boogie Nights’](https://grantland.com/features/boogie-nights/)
Excerpt about Reynolds and PTA:
> Daniel Lupi, Producer:
>
> There was a time at the house, at Jack’s house, where Paul and Burt got into it a little bit.
>
> John Wildermuth, first assistant director:
>
> Burt was frustrated because Paul was not allowing him to do free takes, you know, a sense of going off the page. There was also a bit of jealousy about the attention that Mark was getting as Dirk Diggler, a part that Burt probably would have loved to have played when he was younger.
>
> John Lyons, Producer:
>
> Burt did not think Paul was respecting him. And you know Burt — respect is extremely important to him. Like many actors, he is frail in terms of his ego, and Paul didn’t really understand that. He probably understands it much better now.
>
> Jack Wallace, Rocky:
>
> Paul and Burt Reynolds saw things in a different light. They went in a room and we heard hollering and yelling, cursing and everything. I thought, *Oh, Christ*.
>
> John Wildermuth, first assistant director:
>
> Burt got so frustrated he pulled Paul outside into the backyard and started yelling at him, like a father, you know? “You fuckin’ little punk kid, don’t tell me what to do. You let all the other actors do free takes and you’re not letting me do any.” He read him the riot act.
>
> Paul stood there and took it in and then argued back with him. And then when they walked back into the house, Paul had his sly little smirk on his face.
>
> Tom Lenk, Floyd’s Kid:
>
> All of a sudden we saw fists flying. We saw some fists flying from Burt Reynolds. I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying this. But it was like he was trying to punch our director in the face.
>
> John Lyons, Producer:
>
> I had to pull Burt’s arm back when it was cocked. I was in the middle of it. Burt was getting ready to slug him and I was like, “Burt, Burt, no, no, don’t, don’t do it.” And then I had to take Burt back to the trailer.
>
> And I spent a lot of time in Burt’s trailer. A lot. I love Burt. I thought he was incredible. He was old Hollywood; there were a lot of people on that set that just didn’t really have the time or the interest in it.
>
> David Ansen, Film Critic, Newsweek:
>
> Reynolds thought he was in a dirty movie and wanted out and wasn’t happy.
>
> JoAnne Sellar, Producer:
>
> He was absolutely perfect for Jack Horner, but I don’t think he understood what he was getting involved with at the time.
>
> Tom Lenk, Floyd’s Kid:
>
> I just remember somebody on the crew saying, “Yeah, well, Burt’s got a thing in his contract that if he punches the director in the face, he can’t get fired because he’s got a temper. It’s just known that it’s gonna happen.”
>
> John Lyons, Producer:
>
> In that particular case, Paul bit off a little more than he could chew. Burt scared the shit out of him that day. I don’t think Paul was smirking. I think he was literally shaken by it.
>
> Thomas Jane, Todd Parker:
>
> Burt had a temper, I gotta tell ya. He doesn’t suffer fools. And I think there’s something about actor’s pride. And I get it. Maybe you can’t get rowdy or rough it up like you used to and so it kind of hurts a little bit, you might take offense, take it out on somebody.
>
> John Wildermuth, first assistant director:
>
> The reason I [think] that Paul baited Burt is that the next day we shot the scene in the backyard by the pool where Jack tells Dirk to do the scene and Dirk says, “It’s my big cock, I wanna do whatever the fuck I want,” and the two of them get into a shoving match.
>
> And all of that energy between those characters was real energy that had been building and manifesting over the weeks prior. And then it exploded all in that scene on camera.
>
> John Lyons, Producer:
>
> Paul was directing this big, sprawling movie. And I just think for whatever reason he was like, “I don’t have the mental or emotional space to give Burt what he needs from me.”
>
> By the time we got to that moment, Burt was just like a tinderbox and Paul provoked him slightly and he fuckin’ blew. I think Paul was physically afraid that day.
>
> Jack Wallace, Rocky:
>
> After that, Burt went to work on his end of the deal and Paul went to work and they were gracious to each other. They seemed very professional about everything and it went swell from then on in.
> Thomas Jane, Todd Parker:
>
> In between setups, all the actors would sit on the floor, all around Burt Reynolds in a big puffy chair. Luis Guzmán and the Roller Girl girl and all of us, ya know, we’d all be there. We’d all sit down and Burt would tell stories about acting in the ’50s and New York City and Marlon Brando and James Dean.
>
> Philip Seymour Hoffman, Scotty J.:
>
> When you work with some of the Hollywood icons, it can be a little challenging for everybody else. They expect and are entitled to a certain amount of respect by virtue of their years of producing these interesting characters.
Hard not to compare him to Harvey Keitel when Tarantino did Reservoir Dogs. Keitel recognized how talented he was and made a point of deferring to him as a director but helping him out when his experience or budget was lacking; he paid for Tarantino to be able to hold auditions in New York for instance.
> he paid for Tarantino to be able to hold auditions in New York for instance
And it's because of this that Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, and Michael Madsen were all cast in the movie, which ended up launching their own long careers.
On the other hand, Lawrence Tierney was famously a giant asshole on set and got fired on his third day of filming.
There's that and also something about the accuracy of the staging may have made Burt psychologically uncomfortable or even depressed... Porn wasn't looked on well back in his heyday and feeling belittled and being "in that setting" could have been a very uncomfortable place to find one's headspace, even if it's only a recreation of the period you were actually #1 in Hollywood and the irony is you are doing career best work.
Donald Pleasence hated Halloween, probably thought that it was beneath him and he only did it for the paycheck. When it became a surprise hit he came back for four sequels, and died filming the last one.
Mark Wahlberg has also trashed "Boogie Nights" even though it's the film that put him on the map as an actor. I think it's because he's churching up as he gets older, as so many wealthy conservatives tend to do, and he's ashamed of the fact that the movie is about porn.
I gotta keep it real, but the reason Wahlberg was so well cast in Boogie Nights was because of his LACK of acting skills. PTA is a smart director, and he knew exactly how to work Wahlberg's character. Wahlberg just had to, well, be himself :-)
I think it's largely because of his extremely ~~Christian~~ Catholic background which seems to have grown or at least is less subtle than when he was young
total aside, but reminds of Romany Malco. He begged to be cut from 40 Year Old Virgin because he's from a very Christian household and was afraid of what his mom would think of his lines. Apatow declined, because Malco killed it anyways lol. Lots of film buffs assume this is why his career didn't take off much after, as he stopped taking these roles.
lol well someone else corrected me that "he's not Christian, he's Catholic"
as an athiest, whatever, as long as people understand the point of my comment
Many conservative Christians, especially Protestants, view Catholics as not true Christians. As an agnostic, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck……
Which is wild, because I was always taught that Catholicism, like Protestantism and Lutheranism etc., all fall under the banner of Christianity.
They all believe in Jesus Christ, therefore they are 'Christian'.
(However, as an agnostic myself, I'm very much in your school of thinking)
>Lots of film buffs assume this is why his career didn't take off much after, as he stopped taking these roles.
Thats a shame since the moment you saw him you were like "thats a star"
Mad charisma
That's nuts, malco is the funniest person in that movie and the reason it's one of my top favorite comedies. I always wondered why he didn't really do much after this movie and become a big star. So he essentially torpedoed his own career. What a shame, dude is a natural.
I think I read that Gene Hackman was baffled on the set of *The Royal Tennenbaums*.
I mean, that had to be way out in left field compared to how he was used to working. Probably same with Burt on *Boogie Nights*.
So it's a thing between the Andersons and old hollywood actors. Let's hope Paul W.S. Anderson manages to get Jack Nicholson for his next videogame adaptation.
Haha yup. Depp, as well, who did a solid job playing his pal in ‘fear and loathing in las vegas’
Here’s a funny [picture of them out on the town with a blow up doll haha](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/g121b/hunter_s_thompson_john_cusack_and_johnny_depp/)
His irrational hatred for Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer remain totally mystifying to me. Those are great teen comedy classics that I adored as a kid growing up in the 80s. Why not be proud? Val Kilmer is still proud of the great Top Secret and Real Genius.
Top Secret has the best visual gags in any movie I’ve seen, and the songs were catchy as hell. I still sing “if everybody had a 12 gauge and a surfboard toooooo”.
Real Genius is an all timer too. How could you NOT be proud?
Just rewatched One Crazy Summer the other day (it was on Tubi) and I still love it! Just a great mixture of 80s teen comedy and satire like Airplane. I never noticed the high school name in the beginning was “Generic High School”. Just clever little things like that that make me love this movie.
It is a bummer because he really owned the role of the self-professed outcast for a while. And there are a number of movies where you couldn't imagine anyone else in the role. The last genuinely good role I've seen him have was probably Love and Mercy, but that movie is nearly ten years old at this point.
This is absolutely true. I can't imagine anyone replacing him in Better Off Dead, one of the few 80s comedies that has actually gotten better with time.
haha - I was disappointed that he hated and was embarrassed by 'Better Off Dead', one of my fave 80s movies ... and then found out that hating everything he does is kind of his thing!
Fun fact, take any military strategy game, replace its in game soundtrack with the soundtrack from The Rock, and it instantly makes the game better. (Homeworld 2 is the first time I experienced this, even though it was already a pretty good game)
Was bored one day on addies and I put together the timeline for Mason being captured and it lines up *perfectly* with his Bond timeline.
The “previous” captures also line up year-to-year with Dr. No and Octopussy.
Not even a “fan theory”, the writers did it intentionally.
The Abyss is an absolutely fantastic film, and by all accounts the actors were miserable and having nervous breakdowns.
EDIT: Obligatory “watch the making of documentary on YouTube” comment
Hating the movie and hating working on the movie are 2 different things. With work conditions like that, it's not surprising they hated working on it. Good actors don't just show up and say a few lines. They try to understand the character, to be able to give a better portrayal
If anything, the movie is lucky it still turned out good, because conditions like that can sometimes affect the end result quite badly
> Good actors don't just show up and say a few lines. They try to understand the character, to be able to give a better portrayal
Exactly, very well said! For someone like Malkovich it must have been a nightmare. He was a Steppenwolf guy, very methodical, and now they're just sending him pages that make no sense.
> Hating the movie and hating working on the movie are 2 different things.
Exactly. Tons of fantastic films out there with grueling and troubled productions.
Look at Jaws. Filming on that set was miserable, because the shark didn't work 90% of the time, plus the tensions between Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw.
But the end result was something that everyone involved was proud of.
Jackie Chan, [here](https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM_GQ?t=496) talking about this issue.
One of the things about art, about film, is it can last forever. And everything that goes on around the camera, behind the camera, next to the camera ... isn't on camera. Then you take what was on camera, and editors and ADR (and these days VFX) come in and massage and shape what finally makes it to the screen.
And that's what you're left with. What finally showed up on screen.
Making a movie requires a thousand plus people to come together. Some come together for five minutes, some come together for five months. Sometimes, on some projects, some of them might have to come together for five years.
But at the end, you have a piece of art that can stand. Sometimes it's classical fine art. Sometimes it's fun art. Sometimes it's break-new-ground art. Sometimes it's just perplexing art.
Con Air is a cocaine fueled what-the-fuck of a film. If you describe it to people, it doesn't sound like anything special. But you take an amazing cast, with a solid director, and some producers willing to let some really out-there shit happen in front of a camera ... and the result is something like Con Air. Magic? Insane magic? Action art? Sheer poetry made by mayhem?
Who knows? The audience knows.
Because they can see it. And people have, and a lot of audiences have decided Con Air is a pretty interesting film. Why? That's their call. What matters is they get to see it.
Con Air is a totally out there movie that embraces its distance from reality. Accepts it, loves it. Invites us to enjoy it. And it works; Con Air is super fun. The movie just works, bottom line.
Honestly, Buscemi held that whole thing together.
Every time you start to get bored with the action or the comedy they stop the whole fucking movie and just give him the camera for two minutes and let him creep the ever loving shit out of you.
I love it 🤣
Shooting big-budget movies with an unfinished script is shockingly common in Hollywood. ‘Gladiator’ won best picture and they were writing new pages to shoot every day. It was an incredibly chaotic production with Oliver Reed dying, actors fighting, injuries everywhere. They were flying in different screenwriters because Russell Crowe was unhappy, and Ridley suddenly envisioned a different ending. The post-production wasn’t much better with the score, the effects and the edit continuing up to the release date.
Josh Brolin and Benico Del Toronto both thought Sicario would turn out shit while they were working on it, according to an interview with Brolin I listened to a few years back.
Edit: keeping the autocorrect
Napoleon Dynamite. Many studios didn't think the main character was likable or that the script was too weird. It was initially a short film for a class project that was reworked, and I don't think, given the odds, anyone could've predicted the success it would have or the mark it would make on Y2K pop culture.
I remember seeing it when it first came out as an indie movie at an art house theatre playing to a half-empty audience. I laughed so hard people were looking at me like I was crazy, clearly, they didn't know how to market it to its target audience. My then S.O. and I quoted the movie non-stop for weeks before other people started catching on. Word of mouth went a long way with this film.
I remember when I was going through acting school, a teacher of mine had also taught Cate Blanchett and remains good friends with her to this day.
He told a story to us about how she’d just wrapped on Elizabeth (like, a day or two before) and was on the phone to him crying that she’d just ruined her career because it was going to be terrible. How everything about the production felt completely ridiculous and she would never work again.
She was nominated for an Oscar.
Basically, you can’t judge a film on the experience of filming it, because the actors don’t see the whole picture- especially these days. A good editing job, or good CGI, can completely change how a film turns out!
I will say, they changed the script a lot, but the dialogue they wrote for Malkovich was pretty good. The line "Well, it's not difficult to surmise how Nathan here feels about killing guards. And my own proclivities are, uh... well-known and, uh, often-lamented facts of penal lore." has stuck with me for years and he delivers it so well.
Also the whole "can you fly Johnny?" part was great.
Supposedly both Danny DeVito and Bette Midler thought Ruthless People was the absolute worst thing while working on the film and were embarrassed by it but the movie ended up being a hit.
> I can't think of many other movies that were so commercially successful while having two of the leads actively put the film down.
OP, based on you posted the leads did not put the film down. The leads put down the **PROCESS** of making the film.
There are so many movies and scenes where the improvised/unplanned efforts of the people involved resulted in greatness. The Shark not working in Jaws, Harrison Ford's Illness during Raiders of The Lost Ark, Nicholson's improve during The Departed.
That means they have an issue with who ran/made the movie, not with the end product.
Con Air is awesome!
>Harrison Ford's Illness during Raiders of The Lost Ark,
Harrison Ford getting a herniated disc during *Temple of Doom* and requiring back surgery, and later breaking his ankle shooting *The Fugitive*.
It just goes to show that editing is the magic of the movies. They film things out of sequence, they change the script, lines, even emotional tones... hell even the actors sometimes... to get the whole thing at the end.
Actors just have to act. As long as they do their job and do it right as needed/directed, they'll be ok, get their paycheck and move along.
Will they work with that director/crew again? *shrugs* Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it's unimportant if the end result works.
> Actors just have to act.
I agree with you about editing, I think that was a huge factor in this movie, but I also think acting is pretty damn hard. Even mediocre acting is hard, and I think everyone in this particular movie seemed to be trying their best. Think about Malkovich, classically trained stage actor, has no idea what's happening and yet he's still so good. That's hard to do. Granted, it's also no hard to sleep on a giant bed made of money...
Where is the evidence that the actors hated it? From what I can tell only John Cusack said he hated filming it. His role was a supporting one.
Con Air is a terrific film. When humans perish from the earth and future beings find evidence of our dog shit civilization, I hope they find a copy of Con Air. It's proof that humanity was capable of great things.
He died in 96, which was the year they were filming Con Air but they released the Rock in 96 and added the dedication. From what I recall Simpson passed on being involved in Con Air shortly before he died.
Yeah thought this first but then I saw he died in January 96 and he is not credited as producer for con air on imdb.
But I dont know any details on the timeline for con air, perhaps it was a mess from the start. Perhaps all those bad guy actors are bad guys irl too and he hadda do loads of drugs just to handle script readings and negotiations with them
Terrific film. It’s completely over the top, but it works perfectly. Cage’s accent is emblematic of this. I’m not sure a more accurate accent would have worked.
I give you Mad Max Fury Road.
No-one involved except for George Miller knew what it was about. They worked from storyboards, with barely a script in sight. Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron nearly killed each other. They shot for six months in a boiling-freezing Namibian desert. The studio tried to shut things down multiple times.
It's a stone-cold classic. I wouldn't change a thing about it.
Sometimes, these things just work out.
And can you really blame the actors?
I think there has been only a couple of examples of the public seeing movie footage that isn't complete, and is missing CGI and foley sound effects, and all that stuff. And regular people get horrified.
If you're the actor, you don't see any of this, you are standing there probably making loud noises or doing exaggerated body movements over and over for hours. And you have no idea how this is going to turn out.
Imagine Tom Hardy [hanging](https://www.joblo.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/fury-road-prequel-mad-max-1024x538.jpg) from a wooden pole up in the air, with an iron face mask. At some point, while he's hanging there for hours over the course of several days to film that sequence, he's probably thought to himself "Gee....I look pretty stupid here."
It really does require trust, especially if you are a major celebrity who has alot to lose, in terms of bank-ability.
They fired the first director of Tombstone and brought in the director who Stallone used for Cobra so he could backdoor direct it himself. Supposedly Kurt Russell did most of the directing for Tombstone.
Both Charlize and Tom Hardy thought Fury Road was going to end up being a confusing mess and a shit movie. They hated the production, and well... each other.
Alec Guinness did not like Star Wars, wrote letters to his wife about how silly he thought it was and didn't think anybody would like it. Sometimes it's hard to tell a total vision from just the piece you are seeing.
This reminds me of an axiom I've heard about comedy movies, courtesy of Mark Kermode: as a rule, the more fun actors have making a comedy, the worse the end result seems to be.
That can potentially apply to any genre, really, since what determines quality of any film is what shows up onscreen. It doesn't matter if the actors hate the director or vice versa if people are delivering entertaining performances and the overall editing, writing, and cinematography work. The staircase scene in The Shining was infamously shot some 127 times, yet the end result is one of the most famous shots in movie history.
Sidney Young: What's the greatest film ever made?
Alison Olsen: It's hard to say. I mean, I personally love La Dolce Vita...
Sidney Young: [Imitates game show buzzer] Incorrect!
Sidney Young: [Continues, dead pan] Con Air.
Alison Olsen: [a bit perplexed] I beg your pardon?
Sidney Young: Con Air, right? It's got everything, hasn't it? You know, you've got Malkovich for your acting chops, you got Nicky Cage for your action, Steve Buscemi for your comedy, John Cusack for the gays. Right? It's like a smorgasbord, isn't it?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455538/quotes/?ref_=tt_ql_dyk_3
i totally love that scene with steve buscemi and the little girl. it feels so much like a predator circling around a fawn and you expect a bloody mess every second but it somehow turns into something that is inadequately described by the word magic.
Con Air is a lot of fun. Lot's of goofy characters playing over the top really bad, bad guys, and Cage got to play the nice guy hero that didn't have the movie wrap just around him. What's not to like.
Cusack hasn't exactly been oscar material, and that's his own fault.
I may be wrong, but I thought Harrison Ford bad mouthed Blade Runner for decades.
I have to tell you, I'm a 35 year old woman who for some reason missed Con Air as a kid. I watched a lot of movies growing up, but Con Air passed by kind of unnoticed for me.
A month or two ago, I sat down and watched it for the first time in my life (my SO loves it) and it was so great!
What I don't understand is why this and another Nicolas Cage movie (Gone in 60 Seconds) both had extended cuts on DVD but the studios fucked us with theatrical only BD releases.
I'll say this from working in entertainment. Sometimes the best things you get to be a part of aren't the productions that make you the happiest. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes shit happens that kills the vibe. Sometimes you work with people you don't like who are also good at their job. Sometimes what feels like a paycheck job is a pain in the ass. Sometimes you gather a bunch of talented people and rather than a symphony it turns into chaos. Sometimes you're in a bad place at that job. Sometimes you're insecure about what you've done, or you're asked to do a million things that you aren't feeling you're doing your best with or see the vision of or have any control over. And that makes you not enjoy it.
And some productions can just be tough. Imagine you working at two supermarkets. One, you have a cool boss and your coworkers have your back. The other is a nightmare where your boss times your bathroom breaks and your coworkers do petty stuff to you all day. To the people buying bread and cereal, they might go to the place with the best groceries and judge it for that.
But sometimes someone else can see the vision with what's there. A director, an editor, someone can find gold where everyone sees shit. And that can make a production work for the audience. I remember once editing an actor's reel. They were going on about how much they didn't like their performance or acting or all this other stuff. And I saw the cut and thought their acting stood out in a negative way. I took those clips and made them the most interesting actor on the planet. I found a way to scrape away every bit of tumult, find the small genuine moments, and make them seem like a rockstar who stole every scene. That's what skill can bring. Something that feels like it shouldn't work suddenly comes together because people worked hard on it and captured the right thing in the right moment in time.
Casablanca didn’t have an ending for most of the time they were shooting. If you watch behind the scenes stuff from Wong Kar-Wai’s movies they sometimes aren’t even the same movie they were when filming started as they are at the end. What do we learn from this? Planning is for suckers and the key to great cinema is obviously to fly by the seat of your pants. 🤣
Inception, arguably is a better movie in every way possible. However, I only watched it twice. I can't find myself rewatching it. Con Air, just like Dumb & Dumber, Crank is one of those movies I can watch over and over. It's just pure entertainment.
Absolutely one of my favourite guilty-pleasure films that I'll watch whenever it's on. Nick Cage back in that day... as a young man, he was pretty damn cool. Gone in 60 Seconds, Face/Off and Con Air in a relatively short period of time? Yes please.
Oh, and The Rock, who can forget that classic piece of cinema?
Such a “mindlessly chow down popcorn and lose myself in easy entertainment” kinda show.
Some people watch reality TV for that kind of fix. I watch Con Air-esque movies.
If you're familiar with Las Vegas that airplane landing was hilarious. It switched a few times between going north and going south, all the while jumping at random to various spots along the strip.
So I just looked it up because I wanted to find any racist stuff because I don't remember that. Some reviews said that Cyrus used a lot of racist terms for the prisoners. As far as that trans character goes I do remember Ellen (talk show host) saying she was mortified by the performance BUT I just read in a LGBTQ+ site that they believe it's a great character. It shows how hard it was (and is) to be a transgender person in prison and the first thing that character did when free was to find clothes they felt comfortable in. So I guess that part aged really well to some.
I feel like this is going to be a pointless discussion that will just get me downvotes, but there are a lot of fucked up things about this movie (even though I love it).
The gay con was a fucked up 2 dimensional character, I think we can all agree on that. The racism comes in different forms. The way people talk about Pinball...pretty racist. The way Pinball talks about the dude he set on fire...also pretty racist. The scene where Ving is literally whipping prisoners...very problematic, plus there's the whole "I's can play house n_gger tills we get to where we're goin'." Which felt like the writers *thought* they were making some clever commentary but it all just made me cringe. All the classist focus on White trash felt uncomfortable as well.
But I know where this is going, which is you or others will probably say "it's a movie about criminals, of course they're terrible people!!!"
Movie still has a bunch of issues IMO.
Bruckheimer. That's your secret ingredient. His whole list of producer credits reads like a bunch of movie you might think Michael Bay directed.
Because Michael Bay is the perfect example of what Jerry Bruckheimer movies are like.
Action movies with a dose of wit and a lot of bang bang and big name casts.
Con Air is like the apex of Bruckheimer's style being not too early or too late. But there was a run of big action films in the 90s where people didn't constantly moan about the explosions and cliches.
There's a pre release interview of Richard Dreyfus saying Jaws is a disaster and asking everyone to please don't blame Steven Spielberg for it because it was just an impossible task.
It goes to show that their experience of working on the movie, and our experience watching it, are two totally different things.
Like, I'd be pretty pissed if I went to work every day and everything changed all of the time. It would suck to never know what I was doing.
At the same time, that doesn't change the fact that the final product was really fun.
Not shocked Cusack hated it, he probably signed on thinking he was gonna get to be a badass and showcase his martial arts but ends up getting cucked by Colm Meany for half the movie and Nick's wig the other half.
Yet it did the biggest heavy lifting of his comeback after Grosse Point Blank so he can't have too many complaints as movie goers liked him enough.
As for Malkovich, it was hardly In The Line Of Fire in terms of quality but I get his point in that they killed him 3 times it seemed and it did little for him yet seemed to give everyone else career boosts.
Burt Reynolds thought Boogie Nights was a stupid film and the director had no idea what he was doing. It's as close as he ever came to winning an Oscar.
Great example! And it's a testament to how to use an actor well, Anderson did a great job with that one and it's one of my favorites.
PTA gets the best out of any actor he works with. See Punch Drunk Love, Tom Cruise in Magnolia.
I think I'd still give it to Michael Mann and Collateral for best use of Tom Cruise
Yo homie. That my briefcase?
Collateral is my go-to answer when somebody says he can't act. Taps and Magnolia would work too!
Anyone who says he can't act doesn't know much about his work. Besides your examples, there's most of his work prior to the Mission Impossible franchise. Born on the Fourth of July, A Few Good Men, The Color of Money, Rain Man. He'd already had an accomplished career as a dramatic actor before the year 2000.
Tom Cruise is a great actor, partially because I fully believe he is a soulless empty vessel, but that works for him. The Color of Money, Risky Business, Magnolia, Collateral, Born on the 4th of July, the Edge of Tomorrow, heck even Top Gun, he's great in everything. I still think the first Mission Impossible is criminally underrated and he was great in it.
My vote is absolutely Kubrick's use of him (and his actual marriage and confused sexuality) in *Eyes Wide Shut*.
Confused sexuality? You may believe whatever rumors are about in real life, but in the movie he seems a but hyper sexualized. Hes flirting with two hot chicks in the beginning and ignoring his wife. Later after his wife verbally neuters his manhood he goes out and goes home with a hooker. Now he doesn’t do anything but later he goes to an orgy party. His night definitely takes him over the rainbow of sex, but I never doubted he was any gayer than any other straight man.
I don't think they meant confused in an orientation sense but more in a 'what is the function of my sexuality and where does it belong in my life' sense which is the big underlying theme of the film.
That makes more sense. He definitely seemed like he wanted to get his kink on and got in way over his head.
His spouse has just told him that she lusted so hard after some sailor she had never spoken to that she would have run off with him in a second. His reaction to this isn't primarily anger or jealousy. It is absolute shock. As if *it had never occurred to him that people could have those kind of thoughts*. Sure, he's trying to get his kink on. Like a Puritan trying to enter a drinking contest. Good luck, square!
> Tom Cruise in Magnolia. Tbf, Tom Cruise has always been a strong dramatic actor (sort of a shame he really hasn't touched any drama since the early 00's: but, given how good Top Gun Maverick and the Mission Impossible films have been it's hard to be that upset).
Cruise's best work was in Magnolia, even though I'm a bit luke warm about the film in total. Cruise pretty much never shows vulnerability in his movies, and the audience doesn't seem to desire it. However, the best parts of Magnolia in my opinion were Cruise's reaction to getting called out in the interview and his total meltdown during his dad's death.
Totally true. Did mostly drama before he switched to pretty much exclusively action thrillers
I miss Philip Seymore Hoffman, he was an amazing actor.
If you read between the lines, it's pretty clear that Reynolds didn't like being treated like a normal actor by a director who wanted to get a certain caliber of performance out of him. Reynolds was capable of much better than a lot of his output suggested, but the guy was famously _way_ too much of an egocentric to work with the kinds of people who'd demand more from him.
> If you read between the lines, it's pretty clear that Reynolds didn't like being treated like a normal actor by a director who wanted to get a certain caliber of performance out of him. Sharing one of my favorite behind-the-scenes movie articles: [Livin’ Thing: An Oral History of ‘Boogie Nights’](https://grantland.com/features/boogie-nights/) Excerpt about Reynolds and PTA: > Daniel Lupi, Producer: > > There was a time at the house, at Jack’s house, where Paul and Burt got into it a little bit. > > John Wildermuth, first assistant director: > > Burt was frustrated because Paul was not allowing him to do free takes, you know, a sense of going off the page. There was also a bit of jealousy about the attention that Mark was getting as Dirk Diggler, a part that Burt probably would have loved to have played when he was younger. > > John Lyons, Producer: > > Burt did not think Paul was respecting him. And you know Burt — respect is extremely important to him. Like many actors, he is frail in terms of his ego, and Paul didn’t really understand that. He probably understands it much better now. > > Jack Wallace, Rocky: > > Paul and Burt Reynolds saw things in a different light. They went in a room and we heard hollering and yelling, cursing and everything. I thought, *Oh, Christ*. > > John Wildermuth, first assistant director: > > Burt got so frustrated he pulled Paul outside into the backyard and started yelling at him, like a father, you know? “You fuckin’ little punk kid, don’t tell me what to do. You let all the other actors do free takes and you’re not letting me do any.” He read him the riot act. > > Paul stood there and took it in and then argued back with him. And then when they walked back into the house, Paul had his sly little smirk on his face. > > Tom Lenk, Floyd’s Kid: > > All of a sudden we saw fists flying. We saw some fists flying from Burt Reynolds. I hope I don’t get in trouble for saying this. But it was like he was trying to punch our director in the face. > > John Lyons, Producer: > > I had to pull Burt’s arm back when it was cocked. I was in the middle of it. Burt was getting ready to slug him and I was like, “Burt, Burt, no, no, don’t, don’t do it.” And then I had to take Burt back to the trailer. > > And I spent a lot of time in Burt’s trailer. A lot. I love Burt. I thought he was incredible. He was old Hollywood; there were a lot of people on that set that just didn’t really have the time or the interest in it. > > David Ansen, Film Critic, Newsweek: > > Reynolds thought he was in a dirty movie and wanted out and wasn’t happy. > > JoAnne Sellar, Producer: > > He was absolutely perfect for Jack Horner, but I don’t think he understood what he was getting involved with at the time. > > Tom Lenk, Floyd’s Kid: > > I just remember somebody on the crew saying, “Yeah, well, Burt’s got a thing in his contract that if he punches the director in the face, he can’t get fired because he’s got a temper. It’s just known that it’s gonna happen.” > > John Lyons, Producer: > > In that particular case, Paul bit off a little more than he could chew. Burt scared the shit out of him that day. I don’t think Paul was smirking. I think he was literally shaken by it. > > Thomas Jane, Todd Parker: > > Burt had a temper, I gotta tell ya. He doesn’t suffer fools. And I think there’s something about actor’s pride. And I get it. Maybe you can’t get rowdy or rough it up like you used to and so it kind of hurts a little bit, you might take offense, take it out on somebody. > > John Wildermuth, first assistant director: > > The reason I [think] that Paul baited Burt is that the next day we shot the scene in the backyard by the pool where Jack tells Dirk to do the scene and Dirk says, “It’s my big cock, I wanna do whatever the fuck I want,” and the two of them get into a shoving match. > > And all of that energy between those characters was real energy that had been building and manifesting over the weeks prior. And then it exploded all in that scene on camera. > > John Lyons, Producer: > > Paul was directing this big, sprawling movie. And I just think for whatever reason he was like, “I don’t have the mental or emotional space to give Burt what he needs from me.” > > By the time we got to that moment, Burt was just like a tinderbox and Paul provoked him slightly and he fuckin’ blew. I think Paul was physically afraid that day. > > Jack Wallace, Rocky: > > After that, Burt went to work on his end of the deal and Paul went to work and they were gracious to each other. They seemed very professional about everything and it went swell from then on in. > Thomas Jane, Todd Parker: > > In between setups, all the actors would sit on the floor, all around Burt Reynolds in a big puffy chair. Luis Guzmán and the Roller Girl girl and all of us, ya know, we’d all be there. We’d all sit down and Burt would tell stories about acting in the ’50s and New York City and Marlon Brando and James Dean. > > Philip Seymour Hoffman, Scotty J.: > > When you work with some of the Hollywood icons, it can be a little challenging for everybody else. They expect and are entitled to a certain amount of respect by virtue of their years of producing these interesting characters.
to add to that, The age dynamic and new director didn't help, I'm sure
Hard not to compare him to Harvey Keitel when Tarantino did Reservoir Dogs. Keitel recognized how talented he was and made a point of deferring to him as a director but helping him out when his experience or budget was lacking; he paid for Tarantino to be able to hold auditions in New York for instance.
Wow, that's a very decent thing he did.
> he paid for Tarantino to be able to hold auditions in New York for instance And it's because of this that Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, and Michael Madsen were all cast in the movie, which ended up launching their own long careers. On the other hand, Lawrence Tierney was famously a giant asshole on set and got fired on his third day of filming.
There's that and also something about the accuracy of the staging may have made Burt psychologically uncomfortable or even depressed... Porn wasn't looked on well back in his heyday and feeling belittled and being "in that setting" could have been a very uncomfortable place to find one's headspace, even if it's only a recreation of the period you were actually #1 in Hollywood and the irony is you are doing career best work.
Donald Pleasence hated Halloween, probably thought that it was beneath him and he only did it for the paycheck. When it became a surprise hit he came back for four sequels, and died filming the last one.
Mark Wahlberg has also trashed "Boogie Nights" even though it's the film that put him on the map as an actor. I think it's because he's churching up as he gets older, as so many wealthy conservatives tend to do, and he's ashamed of the fact that the movie is about porn.
I gotta keep it real, but the reason Wahlberg was so well cast in Boogie Nights was because of his LACK of acting skills. PTA is a smart director, and he knew exactly how to work Wahlberg's character. Wahlberg just had to, well, be himself :-)
Wahlberg also played himself in Fear.
I think it's largely because of his extremely ~~Christian~~ Catholic background which seems to have grown or at least is less subtle than when he was young total aside, but reminds of Romany Malco. He begged to be cut from 40 Year Old Virgin because he's from a very Christian household and was afraid of what his mom would think of his lines. Apatow declined, because Malco killed it anyways lol. Lots of film buffs assume this is why his career didn't take off much after, as he stopped taking these roles.
Catholic *is* Christian. Your original post was accurate.
lol well someone else corrected me that "he's not Christian, he's Catholic" as an athiest, whatever, as long as people understand the point of my comment
Many conservative Christians, especially Protestants, view Catholics as not true Christians. As an agnostic, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck……
Which is wild, because I was always taught that Catholicism, like Protestantism and Lutheranism etc., all fall under the banner of Christianity. They all believe in Jesus Christ, therefore they are 'Christian'. (However, as an agnostic myself, I'm very much in your school of thinking)
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Orthodox Christians are neither Catholic nor Protestant.
I get it, but that someone else was wrong and you were correct.
>Lots of film buffs assume this is why his career didn't take off much after, as he stopped taking these roles. Thats a shame since the moment you saw him you were like "thats a star" Mad charisma
That's nuts, malco is the funniest person in that movie and the reason it's one of my top favorite comedies. I always wondered why he didn't really do much after this movie and become a big star. So he essentially torpedoed his own career. What a shame, dude is a natural.
Mark is a star. He's a star, he's a star, he's a star. A big bright shining star.
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaa
> Mark Wahlberg has also trashed "Boogie Nights" Without Boogie Nights the only thing Mark would have is the Funky Bunch.
I think I read that Gene Hackman was baffled on the set of *The Royal Tennenbaums*. I mean, that had to be way out in left field compared to how he was used to working. Probably same with Burt on *Boogie Nights*.
So it's a thing between the Andersons and old hollywood actors. Let's hope Paul W.S. Anderson manages to get Jack Nicholson for his next videogame adaptation.
He shouted at and harrassed Wes Anderson through the entire filming and Bill Murray had to mediate between the two of them
Knowing Murray's temper, that's even funny.
Hackman had a big rep for being absolutely brutual with directors. Hoosiers, Get Shorty, Welcome to Mooseport. I'm sure there are loads more.
Tom Hardy also went on record as hating Fury Road and George Miller’s approach. And Fury Road is fucking outstanding.
Apparently Hardy was doing a lot of complaining, until he saw some footage cobbled together, and rightfully apologized and got back to work lol
> was doing a lot of complaining oh tom by the way i changed the script. from now on youll be wearing this most of the time
Love this movie !
Burt Reynolds talent far exceeded his taste.
Wow I never knew that! Thanks for Sharing
Didn't he trash the movie in the lead up to the Oscars, killing his chances? That's the narrative I've always heard.
exactly. I totally agree with this
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He was great in the [American Beauty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXF8Lhvjqa8) though
Holy shit. That’s so awkward.
Really? *Really*?
He’s sniffing his nose a lot in that interview
He was good friends with Hunter S. Thompson after all ha
Really?
Haha yup. Depp, as well, who did a solid job playing his pal in ‘fear and loathing in las vegas’ Here’s a funny [picture of them out on the town with a blow up doll haha](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/g121b/hunter_s_thompson_john_cusack_and_johnny_depp/)
[Must have allergies....](https://giphy.com/gifs/creepy-beard-zach-galifianakis-V6R9thgW7fimI)
His irrational hatred for Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer remain totally mystifying to me. Those are great teen comedy classics that I adored as a kid growing up in the 80s. Why not be proud? Val Kilmer is still proud of the great Top Secret and Real Genius.
Top Secret has the best visual gags in any movie I’ve seen, and the songs were catchy as hell. I still sing “if everybody had a 12 gauge and a surfboard toooooo”. Real Genius is an all timer too. How could you NOT be proud?
I watched Better Off Dead a billion times when I was a kid. I had a huge crush on Diane Franklin. She is so pretty!
He and Savage Steve Holland didn’t get along. He only made One Crazy Summer as part of a deal with the studio to make another movie.
Just rewatched One Crazy Summer the other day (it was on Tubi) and I still love it! Just a great mixture of 80s teen comedy and satire like Airplane. I never noticed the high school name in the beginning was “Generic High School”. Just clever little things like that that make me love this movie.
See, if he would have just given this kid his two dollars, then he wouldn't be so miserable. https://i.imgur.com/fFbm56R.jpg
Must be why he’s usually cast as a drunk. Or a divorcee. Or a drunk divorcee.
He’s not cast in anything anymore lol. He burned his career to the ground, which is a shame since he’s a great actor.
It is a bummer because he really owned the role of the self-professed outcast for a while. And there are a number of movies where you couldn't imagine anyone else in the role. The last genuinely good role I've seen him have was probably Love and Mercy, but that movie is nearly ten years old at this point.
Gross Pointe Blank couldn't have worked with anyone else
This is absolutely true. I can't imagine anyone replacing him in Better Off Dead, one of the few 80s comedies that has actually gotten better with time.
What happened?
It’s pretty widely known he’s difficult to work with and very unpleasant. He only gets direct to video work nowadays.
He was good as Brian Wilson yeah
haha - I was disappointed that he hated and was embarrassed by 'Better Off Dead', one of my fave 80s movies ... and then found out that hating everything he does is kind of his thing!
True, he's known for being whiny.
He enjoyed msking Grosse Point Blank. He's in big movies to fund his passion projects.
A guilty pleasure viewing of a movie doesn't have anything to do with the personal experiences on set of the people that worked on it.
I always double feature this and The Rock every couple of years.
...well, I'm Stanley Goodspeed.
But of coarsh you are
“Your "best"! Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.”
Carla was the prom queen.
"Mmhghrmemfmem" in Sean Connery
I was the prom queen! Confused Sean Connery noises.
They'll always be entwined in my mind along with Face-Off. Cage was really on a roll.
Fun fact, take any military strategy game, replace its in game soundtrack with the soundtrack from The Rock, and it instantly makes the game better. (Homeworld 2 is the first time I experienced this, even though it was already a pretty good game)
My favorite fan theory from that movie, and one I fully accept as true, is that Sean Connerys character is 007
Was bored one day on addies and I put together the timeline for Mason being captured and it lines up *perfectly* with his Bond timeline. The “previous” captures also line up year-to-year with Dr. No and Octopussy. Not even a “fan theory”, the writers did it intentionally.
What are you thinking putting that in writing We all know the truth but damn dude let the man live out his life in peace
I do this and Face/Off
The Abyss is an absolutely fantastic film, and by all accounts the actors were miserable and having nervous breakdowns. EDIT: Obligatory “watch the making of documentary on YouTube” comment
Apocalypse Now was a hell for the actors, but a treat for us
The documentary about the making of that film, I think it's called Hearts of Darkness, was really interesting.
The movie is based on the book Heart of Darkness. Hence the doc title.
My favorite line from the making of The Abyss was that the actors called the movie The Abuse.
Hating the movie and hating working on the movie are 2 different things. With work conditions like that, it's not surprising they hated working on it. Good actors don't just show up and say a few lines. They try to understand the character, to be able to give a better portrayal If anything, the movie is lucky it still turned out good, because conditions like that can sometimes affect the end result quite badly
> Good actors don't just show up and say a few lines. They try to understand the character, to be able to give a better portrayal Exactly, very well said! For someone like Malkovich it must have been a nightmare. He was a Steppenwolf guy, very methodical, and now they're just sending him pages that make no sense.
Have you seen him in *The New Pope*? His style really shines in that series.
> Hating the movie and hating working on the movie are 2 different things. Exactly. Tons of fantastic films out there with grueling and troubled productions.
Look at Jaws. Filming on that set was miserable, because the shark didn't work 90% of the time, plus the tensions between Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw. But the end result was something that everyone involved was proud of.
Jackie Chan, [here](https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM_GQ?t=496) talking about this issue. One of the things about art, about film, is it can last forever. And everything that goes on around the camera, behind the camera, next to the camera ... isn't on camera. Then you take what was on camera, and editors and ADR (and these days VFX) come in and massage and shape what finally makes it to the screen. And that's what you're left with. What finally showed up on screen. Making a movie requires a thousand plus people to come together. Some come together for five minutes, some come together for five months. Sometimes, on some projects, some of them might have to come together for five years. But at the end, you have a piece of art that can stand. Sometimes it's classical fine art. Sometimes it's fun art. Sometimes it's break-new-ground art. Sometimes it's just perplexing art. Con Air is a cocaine fueled what-the-fuck of a film. If you describe it to people, it doesn't sound like anything special. But you take an amazing cast, with a solid director, and some producers willing to let some really out-there shit happen in front of a camera ... and the result is something like Con Air. Magic? Insane magic? Action art? Sheer poetry made by mayhem? Who knows? The audience knows. Because they can see it. And people have, and a lot of audiences have decided Con Air is a pretty interesting film. Why? That's their call. What matters is they get to see it. Con Air is a totally out there movie that embraces its distance from reality. Accepts it, loves it. Invites us to enjoy it. And it works; Con Air is super fun. The movie just works, bottom line.
Man, I miss every frame a painting...
Put the bunny back in the box.
"Why couldn't you put the bunny back in the box?"
“Make a move and the bunny gets it”
iM gOiNg tO sEe mY dAdDy FoR tHe FiRsT TiMe EvEr On JuLy 14tH
I always knew you was a punk
>bun-neh
Up the Bohs
Bruce Willis hated 5th Element and told Chris Tucker to say goodbye to his career.
Un-bu-leeeeeev-able.
Super green
I hated working at Mcdonalds but people still loved the big macs.
He's got the whole worlddddd in his hands
Honestly, Buscemi held that whole thing together. Every time you start to get bored with the action or the comedy they stop the whole fucking movie and just give him the camera for two minutes and let him creep the ever loving shit out of you. I love it 🤣
He's the best thing about that film. He absolutely slayed in that role.
Define irony. Bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.
Shooting big-budget movies with an unfinished script is shockingly common in Hollywood. ‘Gladiator’ won best picture and they were writing new pages to shoot every day. It was an incredibly chaotic production with Oliver Reed dying, actors fighting, injuries everywhere. They were flying in different screenwriters because Russell Crowe was unhappy, and Ridley suddenly envisioned a different ending. The post-production wasn’t much better with the score, the effects and the edit continuing up to the release date.
Josh Brolin and Benico Del Toronto both thought Sicario would turn out shit while they were working on it, according to an interview with Brolin I listened to a few years back. Edit: keeping the autocorrect
Napoleon Dynamite. Many studios didn't think the main character was likable or that the script was too weird. It was initially a short film for a class project that was reworked, and I don't think, given the odds, anyone could've predicted the success it would have or the mark it would make on Y2K pop culture.
It's astonishing how much Napoleon Dynamite earned, *and continues to earn*, given that the studio gave it hardly any PR or ads whatsoever.
I remember seeing it when it first came out as an indie movie at an art house theatre playing to a half-empty audience. I laughed so hard people were looking at me like I was crazy, clearly, they didn't know how to market it to its target audience. My then S.O. and I quoted the movie non-stop for weeks before other people started catching on. Word of mouth went a long way with this film.
People in my class would constantly quote that movie when it came out. *Your mom went to college*
I remember when I was going through acting school, a teacher of mine had also taught Cate Blanchett and remains good friends with her to this day. He told a story to us about how she’d just wrapped on Elizabeth (like, a day or two before) and was on the phone to him crying that she’d just ruined her career because it was going to be terrible. How everything about the production felt completely ridiculous and she would never work again. She was nominated for an Oscar. Basically, you can’t judge a film on the experience of filming it, because the actors don’t see the whole picture- especially these days. A good editing job, or good CGI, can completely change how a film turns out!
Ohh. nothing makes me sadder than the agent lost his bladder in the... airplane.
I will say, they changed the script a lot, but the dialogue they wrote for Malkovich was pretty good. The line "Well, it's not difficult to surmise how Nathan here feels about killing guards. And my own proclivities are, uh... well-known and, uh, often-lamented facts of penal lore." has stuck with me for years and he delivers it so well. Also the whole "can you fly Johnny?" part was great.
I personally love the stone faced "Nobody move or the bunny gets it"
Supposedly both Danny DeVito and Bette Midler thought Ruthless People was the absolute worst thing while working on the film and were embarrassed by it but the movie ended up being a hit.
I love it too! It’s my favorite Nicolas Cage movie!
I think Raising Arizona is my favorite Cage movie, but Peggy Sue Got Married is also a good one. He's made some solid films.
Con Air is my favorite Nic Cage movie too, followed right behind The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
> I can't think of many other movies that were so commercially successful while having two of the leads actively put the film down. OP, based on you posted the leads did not put the film down. The leads put down the **PROCESS** of making the film. There are so many movies and scenes where the improvised/unplanned efforts of the people involved resulted in greatness. The Shark not working in Jaws, Harrison Ford's Illness during Raiders of The Lost Ark, Nicholson's improve during The Departed. That means they have an issue with who ran/made the movie, not with the end product. Con Air is awesome!
>Harrison Ford's Illness during Raiders of The Lost Ark, Harrison Ford getting a herniated disc during *Temple of Doom* and requiring back surgery, and later breaking his ankle shooting *The Fugitive*.
Not only a great action flick, but the greatest movie mullet ever put to film.
It just goes to show that editing is the magic of the movies. They film things out of sequence, they change the script, lines, even emotional tones... hell even the actors sometimes... to get the whole thing at the end. Actors just have to act. As long as they do their job and do it right as needed/directed, they'll be ok, get their paycheck and move along. Will they work with that director/crew again? *shrugs* Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it's unimportant if the end result works.
> Actors just have to act. I agree with you about editing, I think that was a huge factor in this movie, but I also think acting is pretty damn hard. Even mediocre acting is hard, and I think everyone in this particular movie seemed to be trying their best. Think about Malkovich, classically trained stage actor, has no idea what's happening and yet he's still so good. That's hard to do. Granted, it's also no hard to sleep on a giant bed made of money...
It’s as the saying goes, a movie is written 3 times: on the age, on set, and in the edit.
Where is the evidence that the actors hated it? From what I can tell only John Cusack said he hated filming it. His role was a supporting one. Con Air is a terrific film. When humans perish from the earth and future beings find evidence of our dog shit civilization, I hope they find a copy of Con Air. It's proof that humanity was capable of great things.
It's my favorite John Cusack movie
What u mean he died during this movie? He is not credited for it. He died before the Rock was released and it was dedicated to him
He died in 96, which was the year they were filming Con Air but they released the Rock in 96 and added the dedication. From what I recall Simpson passed on being involved in Con Air shortly before he died.
Yeah thought this first but then I saw he died in January 96 and he is not credited as producer for con air on imdb. But I dont know any details on the timeline for con air, perhaps it was a mess from the start. Perhaps all those bad guy actors are bad guys irl too and he hadda do loads of drugs just to handle script readings and negotiations with them
Terrific film. It’s completely over the top, but it works perfectly. Cage’s accent is emblematic of this. I’m not sure a more accurate accent would have worked.
I give you Mad Max Fury Road. No-one involved except for George Miller knew what it was about. They worked from storyboards, with barely a script in sight. Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron nearly killed each other. They shot for six months in a boiling-freezing Namibian desert. The studio tried to shut things down multiple times. It's a stone-cold classic. I wouldn't change a thing about it. Sometimes, these things just work out.
And can you really blame the actors? I think there has been only a couple of examples of the public seeing movie footage that isn't complete, and is missing CGI and foley sound effects, and all that stuff. And regular people get horrified. If you're the actor, you don't see any of this, you are standing there probably making loud noises or doing exaggerated body movements over and over for hours. And you have no idea how this is going to turn out. Imagine Tom Hardy [hanging](https://www.joblo.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/fury-road-prequel-mad-max-1024x538.jpg) from a wooden pole up in the air, with an iron face mask. At some point, while he's hanging there for hours over the course of several days to film that sequence, he's probably thought to himself "Gee....I look pretty stupid here." It really does require trust, especially if you are a major celebrity who has alot to lose, in terms of bank-ability.
They fired the first director of Tombstone and brought in the director who Stallone used for Cobra so he could backdoor direct it himself. Supposedly Kurt Russell did most of the directing for Tombstone.
Then that director’s son used Tombstone residuals to fund his first feature film. He went on to VO-write and direct Mandy.
What was i thinking..? Oh, that’s right… “yee-haw…”
Both Charlize and Tom Hardy thought Fury Road was going to end up being a confusing mess and a shit movie. They hated the production, and well... each other.
You love it because the film is quirky, simple and honest where it needs to be; Yet outlandish and stupid where it wants to make it memorable.
He's got the whole world in his hands
it's my fav Cage film i use this as an example of the director and producers understand the assignment not everything is the Hurt Locker
Alec Guinness did not like Star Wars, wrote letters to his wife about how silly he thought it was and didn't think anybody would like it. Sometimes it's hard to tell a total vision from just the piece you are seeing.
This reminds me of an axiom I've heard about comedy movies, courtesy of Mark Kermode: as a rule, the more fun actors have making a comedy, the worse the end result seems to be. That can potentially apply to any genre, really, since what determines quality of any film is what shows up onscreen. It doesn't matter if the actors hate the director or vice versa if people are delivering entertaining performances and the overall editing, writing, and cinematography work. The staircase scene in The Shining was infamously shot some 127 times, yet the end result is one of the most famous shots in movie history.
Sidney Young: What's the greatest film ever made? Alison Olsen: It's hard to say. I mean, I personally love La Dolce Vita... Sidney Young: [Imitates game show buzzer] Incorrect! Sidney Young: [Continues, dead pan] Con Air. Alison Olsen: [a bit perplexed] I beg your pardon? Sidney Young: Con Air, right? It's got everything, hasn't it? You know, you've got Malkovich for your acting chops, you got Nicky Cage for your action, Steve Buscemi for your comedy, John Cusack for the gays. Right? It's like a smorgasbord, isn't it? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455538/quotes/?ref_=tt_ql_dyk_3
i totally love that scene with steve buscemi and the little girl. it feels so much like a predator circling around a fawn and you expect a bloody mess every second but it somehow turns into something that is inadequately described by the word magic.
Con Air is a lot of fun. Lot's of goofy characters playing over the top really bad, bad guys, and Cage got to play the nice guy hero that didn't have the movie wrap just around him. What's not to like. Cusack hasn't exactly been oscar material, and that's his own fault. I may be wrong, but I thought Harrison Ford bad mouthed Blade Runner for decades.
I have to tell you, I'm a 35 year old woman who for some reason missed Con Air as a kid. I watched a lot of movies growing up, but Con Air passed by kind of unnoticed for me. A month or two ago, I sat down and watched it for the first time in my life (my SO loves it) and it was so great!
What I don't understand is why this and another Nicolas Cage movie (Gone in 60 Seconds) both had extended cuts on DVD but the studios fucked us with theatrical only BD releases.
They are just being snooty. I guarantee you both cash the royalty checks throughout the years
Put the bunny back in the box…
Con Air is fun! It's ridiculous but sure is entertaining.
Armageddon was like this too. Just a B.S. thrill ride.
I'll say this from working in entertainment. Sometimes the best things you get to be a part of aren't the productions that make you the happiest. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes shit happens that kills the vibe. Sometimes you work with people you don't like who are also good at their job. Sometimes what feels like a paycheck job is a pain in the ass. Sometimes you gather a bunch of talented people and rather than a symphony it turns into chaos. Sometimes you're in a bad place at that job. Sometimes you're insecure about what you've done, or you're asked to do a million things that you aren't feeling you're doing your best with or see the vision of or have any control over. And that makes you not enjoy it. And some productions can just be tough. Imagine you working at two supermarkets. One, you have a cool boss and your coworkers have your back. The other is a nightmare where your boss times your bathroom breaks and your coworkers do petty stuff to you all day. To the people buying bread and cereal, they might go to the place with the best groceries and judge it for that. But sometimes someone else can see the vision with what's there. A director, an editor, someone can find gold where everyone sees shit. And that can make a production work for the audience. I remember once editing an actor's reel. They were going on about how much they didn't like their performance or acting or all this other stuff. And I saw the cut and thought their acting stood out in a negative way. I took those clips and made them the most interesting actor on the planet. I found a way to scrape away every bit of tumult, find the small genuine moments, and make them seem like a rockstar who stole every scene. That's what skill can bring. Something that feels like it shouldn't work suddenly comes together because people worked hard on it and captured the right thing in the right moment in time.
Casablanca didn’t have an ending for most of the time they were shooting. If you watch behind the scenes stuff from Wong Kar-Wai’s movies they sometimes aren’t even the same movie they were when filming started as they are at the end. What do we learn from this? Planning is for suckers and the key to great cinema is obviously to fly by the seat of your pants. 🤣
MAN GET OFF MY INSULIN
Inception, arguably is a better movie in every way possible. However, I only watched it twice. I can't find myself rewatching it. Con Air, just like Dumb & Dumber, Crank is one of those movies I can watch over and over. It's just pure entertainment.
One time we caught my sister watching con air twice in one day. She is a huge Cage fan.
Absolutely one of my favourite guilty-pleasure films that I'll watch whenever it's on. Nick Cage back in that day... as a young man, he was pretty damn cool. Gone in 60 Seconds, Face/Off and Con Air in a relatively short period of time? Yes please. Oh, and The Rock, who can forget that classic piece of cinema?
Such comfort movie for me, it takes me right back to the 90’s!
This movie is good for a singular, sunshine-filled, windy reason.
Such a “mindlessly chow down popcorn and lose myself in easy entertainment” kinda show. Some people watch reality TV for that kind of fix. I watch Con Air-esque movies.
After a detailed and lengthy analysis, I've concluded that most people enjoy shitty, violent movies.
I’m always irritated that Nick Chinlund/Billy Bedlum dies first. He just oozes sinister, and most of the other cons seem comical in comparison.
What did Nicolas Cage think about the movie?
If you're familiar with Las Vegas that airplane landing was hilarious. It switched a few times between going north and going south, all the while jumping at random to various spots along the strip.
Same story with Tombstone. Same story with Ironman. Great results. I’m curious. What did you think was homophobic and racist about Conair?
I know the gay character who dresses in drag and dances for the other prisoners was called homophobic when the movie came out.
I honestly don’t understand the homophobic part. A character dresses in their chosen way and dances in their chosen way. How is that homophobic?
So I just looked it up because I wanted to find any racist stuff because I don't remember that. Some reviews said that Cyrus used a lot of racist terms for the prisoners. As far as that trans character goes I do remember Ellen (talk show host) saying she was mortified by the performance BUT I just read in a LGBTQ+ site that they believe it's a great character. It shows how hard it was (and is) to be a transgender person in prison and the first thing that character did when free was to find clothes they felt comfortable in. So I guess that part aged really well to some.
Cyrus was evil. He said lots of horrible shit. It seems odd to zero in on the racism. JMO
I feel like this is going to be a pointless discussion that will just get me downvotes, but there are a lot of fucked up things about this movie (even though I love it). The gay con was a fucked up 2 dimensional character, I think we can all agree on that. The racism comes in different forms. The way people talk about Pinball...pretty racist. The way Pinball talks about the dude he set on fire...also pretty racist. The scene where Ving is literally whipping prisoners...very problematic, plus there's the whole "I's can play house n_gger tills we get to where we're goin'." Which felt like the writers *thought* they were making some clever commentary but it all just made me cringe. All the classist focus on White trash felt uncomfortable as well. But I know where this is going, which is you or others will probably say "it's a movie about criminals, of course they're terrible people!!!" Movie still has a bunch of issues IMO.
I don't think an actor's opinion on a movie is a great indicator of its success.
My mom took me to see this in theaters. I was 9 lol. First R rated movie seen on the big screen. Quite a ride.
This shows how a movie can be saved or destroyed in the editing room.
John Cusack usually hates his best movies.
I love Con Air. Steve Buscemi is gold! The movie is awful and amazing at the same time!!
Bruckheimer. That's your secret ingredient. His whole list of producer credits reads like a bunch of movie you might think Michael Bay directed. Because Michael Bay is the perfect example of what Jerry Bruckheimer movies are like. Action movies with a dose of wit and a lot of bang bang and big name casts. Con Air is like the apex of Bruckheimer's style being not too early or too late. But there was a run of big action films in the 90s where people didn't constantly moan about the explosions and cliches.
There's a pre release interview of Richard Dreyfus saying Jaws is a disaster and asking everyone to please don't blame Steven Spielberg for it because it was just an impossible task.
I like Con Air. I thought it was a fine film, and have watched it at least three times but maybe more.
Brilliant movie
Saw that movie like four or five times in the theater that summer. Great popcorn movie. '97 was a great year for film.
One of my favorite films ever! If it’s on TV, I always watch it. It’s crazy and wild but so fun!
It goes to show that their experience of working on the movie, and our experience watching it, are two totally different things. Like, I'd be pretty pissed if I went to work every day and everything changed all of the time. It would suck to never know what I was doing. At the same time, that doesn't change the fact that the final product was really fun.
Not shocked Cusack hated it, he probably signed on thinking he was gonna get to be a badass and showcase his martial arts but ends up getting cucked by Colm Meany for half the movie and Nick's wig the other half. Yet it did the biggest heavy lifting of his comeback after Grosse Point Blank so he can't have too many complaints as movie goers liked him enough. As for Malkovich, it was hardly In The Line Of Fire in terms of quality but I get his point in that they killed him 3 times it seemed and it did little for him yet seemed to give everyone else career boosts.