- 15 minutes ago
Some of the most iconic roles in cinema could have turned out very differently…
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00It's well known that the majority of films aren't cast with the director or studio's first choices
00:05for the roles. The series Cameron Crowe has admitted that his first choice to play conflicted
00:09sports agent Jerry Maguire would have been Tom Hanks, not Tom Cruise. In fact,
00:14the role was specifically written with Hanks in mind. However, at the time
00:23and had to pass. The role ended up going to Cruise, who then spent the next nine months
00:28developing the part with Crowe. The result is iconic, and it might be hard now to imagine
00:33anyone else playing the role. Except for the fact that Maguire's whole feel-good character arc is
00:38quintessentially 1990s Tom Hanks. The cynic with a soft heart, the good guy in a rough patch who just
00:44needs the right inspiration to come out on top. Sandwiched between 1993's Sleepless in Seattle
00:50and 1998's You've Got Mail, Jerry Maguire is exactly the kind of movie that Hanks was making at the time.
00:559. Ruby Rod in The Fifth Element – Prince
01:00Remember DJ Ruby Rod in Luke Besson's gonzo sci-fi? High camp, high-pitched voice, dressed like he was,
01:07well, high? The part was written specifically for the late Prince. Costumes and props had been designed
01:12with him in mind, even down to the mole on Rod's cheek. Of course, Rod was actually played by comedian
01:18Chris Tucker. The official version of the story is that Prince's touring schedule prevented him from
01:22shooting the movie. But costumer Jean-Paul Gaultier has a different perspective. During the singer's
01:27Paris tour dates, Besson got Gaultier to go and meet Prince and show him some sketches.
01:31Of the experience, Gaultier said, quote,
01:34In broken English and with my strong French accent, I tried my best to make conversation.
01:39I showed him my drawings, but he didn't say a word. I had had a really funny idea for a
01:44costume with netting, through which quite long body hair would pass through, and I had done the front and back
01:49versions of it. So, I explained this to Prince. And viewers, I apologize, I'm about to do a really
01:53bad French accent, but trust me, it has a point, it's going somewhere. So, I explained to Prince,
01:58uh, it is, uh, fake hair, you know? The back is made of that hair, the back, uh, the focol, uh,
02:05a very big, uh, focol, end quote. And yes, I promise that was a quote. He explained that Prince gave him
02:11an odd look and then left without a word, and Gaultier later found out from Besson that Prince had pulled
02:16out of the movie, stating that the costumes were a bit too effeminate, and that he wasn't best
02:21pleased with Gaultier's lack of respect. And here's where the bad accent comes in. It turns out that
02:26where Gaultier had been saying focol, meaning fake ass, Prince had instead heard the words,
02:31f**k you. So yeah, you can't really blame a guy too much for pulling out of a movie where his first
02:36meeting with the costume designer, he thought he was repeatedly being told to go f**k himself.
02:418. Dolores Wilson in Sister Act, Bette Midler
02:45When screenwriter Paul Rudnick pitched the movie that would later become Sister Act to producer Scott
02:50Rudin, it was with veteran actor and Broadway singer Bette Midler in mind. Midler, however,
02:55passed on the film, convinced for some reason that her fans wouldn't want to see her play a nun.
02:59It made no sense. Dolores wasn't a nun, she was a brassy lounge singer forced to masquerade as one.
03:06Sister Mary Clarence is only Sister Mary Clarence while she's in witness protection,
03:10and she uses her showbiz instincts to transform the fortunes of the convent's choir.
03:14The part wasn't just written for Midler, it was made for her.
03:18Well, we all know how it goes from there. Eventually the film went to Whoopi Goldberg,
03:22and it also went through so many writers and so many drafts that Rudnick requested he be
03:26credited with a pseudonym, as it no longer resembled the movie he pitched.
03:30You know what survived the rewrites though? Dolores Wilson aka Sister Mary Clarence,
03:35and that movie was a huge hit. I for one am glad Whoopi Goldberg got the part.
03:417. Bruce Willis in What Just Happened, Alec Baldwin
03:45That's right, the role where Bruce Willis somewhat famously plays a douchebag version of himself
03:50wasn't actually written for Bruce Willis at all. Writer Art Linson and director Barry Levinson's
03:56Hollywood satire follows Robert De Niro's stressed-out film producer Ben from set to boardroom to set,
04:01amongst many other memorable moments. It features a subplot in which Bruce Willis turns up to shoot Ben's
04:07movie with an impressively luxurious beard which he refuses to shave off, despite it being completely
04:12inappropriate for the part. Well, that part was originally intended for Alec Baldwin, because it
04:17was actually based on Alec Baldwin himself. You see, what just happened is a fictionalised
04:22retelling of the stories from Linson's own memoir of the same name. In his book, Linson recounts
04:27Baldwin turning up to a shoot in 1997 with an impressively luxurious beard, which he refused
04:32to shave off. Baldwin's character was a fashion photographer whose plane crashes in the wilderness.
04:36His having the beard at the end of the movie made sense, but having it from the beginning made no
04:40sense whatsoever. Baldwin didn't quite see this, though. In the end, Baldwin had to be threatened
04:45with being fired from the movie and sued by the studio before he actually agreed to shave it off.
04:50De Niro, who was also a producer on the film, had originally approached Baldwin to play himself,
04:54thinking his famously prickly friend might have developed a bit of a sense of humour about the
04:59whole thing. Judging by the fact that Willis was cast in his place, I think we can all confidently say
05:04no such sense of humour had been developed.
05:076. Russell Hammond in Almost Famous
05:10Brad Pitt
05:12Writer-director Cameron Crowe wrote the script for Almost Famous with Brad Pitt in mind for the
05:16pivotal role of Stillwater guitarist Russell Hammond. Not only that, but he also managed to secure
05:21Pitt for the role, working with him for over four months in developing the character. However,
05:26Pitt pulled out of the film before shooting could begin, and Crowe rather frankly admits that he
05:30cried when he found out, worrying how it might look for his career.
05:33Billy Crudup was cast in his place and did a fantastic job in a career-making role.
05:38There's even an argument to be made that Pitt, an established movie star by that point with a
05:42ridiculous level of cool, wouldn't have been able to deliver the vulnerability or the callousness
05:46that Hammond exhibits. Nonetheless, there are multiple references in the finished film to
05:51Hammond being too good-looking and a golden god, and these lines were very clearly intended to be
05:56delivered by the blonde, god-like-looking Pitt.
05:595. Peter Weyland in Prometheus
06:02Max von Sydow
06:04Ridley Scott's long-awaited return to the Alien franchise began life purely as a backstory to his
06:09original film. The initial thoughts on what this film should look like were very different from how
06:14it actually turned out, and at one point it was going to quite heavily involve an elderly Peter
06:19Weyland, the founder of the Weyland Corporation. He was meant to be a man of advancing years,
06:24seeking to use his vast fortune to stave off death. Originally, Scott had legendary actor Max von
06:29Sydow in mind to play Weyland. He was 86 at the time, which is age-appropriate for the role,
06:34however a subsequent draft of the script called for a younger version of Weyland to appear.
06:38Weighing up the alternatives, it was decided to go with the equally formidable but considerably younger
06:43Guy Pearce, who could appear au naturel in the flashback part of the story and then be aged up
06:48with makeup for his other appearances. Pearce was cast, and the production proceeded, and then a further
06:53draft of the script cut the flashback sequence entirely, leaving Scott with the prospect of
06:57Pearce playing a character twice his own age for no good reason. With an actor of Pearce's calibre,
07:02it's not the worst thing in the world, but the old-age prosthetics the team used sort of did make
07:07him look like a mummy at times. Moral of the story? Maybe they should have stuck with Max.
07:124. Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III, Winona Ryder
07:18The Godfather Part III is over 30 years old now, and a lot of critical narratives have grown up
07:22around this movie. You know them by heart. It was too rushed, there wasn't a story,
07:27Francis Ford Coppola did it purely for the money, it didn't live up to the quality, blah blah blah.
07:32One thing almost everyone agrees on, though, is that Sofia Coppola, the director's daughter,
07:37was a disastrous choice to play pivotal plot point Mary Corleone, the daughter of the trilogy's
07:42protagonist. The critics savaged her performance in a way that almost felt too personal. She was
07:47called vacant and wooden, they said she didn't know how to perform on camera, and that her line
07:51delivery was childish. Of course, the fact is that Coppola hadn't intended to cast Sofia,
07:56he hadn't even intended to make the film until he was made an offer he couldn't refuse.
08:00With only 20 months to go from a blank page to a premiere, Coppola drew the best possible cast
08:05and crew around him. No one could say no to The Godfather, and that included Winona Ryder,
08:10who was perfectly cast as Mary Corleone. That is, until, having filmed three movies back-to-back,
08:16she pulled out due to nervous exhaustion a day before she was due to begin filming.
08:20Coppola didn't have anyone else except Sofia he could bring in to play Mary at such short notice,
08:25and he couldn't just rework the schedule, he was already pushed for time. That, in turn,
08:29led to one of the most notorious miscast roles in Hollywood history, and it's one that he's regretted
08:34for about 30 years.
08:363. Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park
08:40Harrison Ford
08:41From the late 80s to the mid-90s, Harrison Ford was the biggest leading man in Hollywood. If a
08:46script had a male lead role over 45 years old, then they took Ford first, because if he said yes,
08:51their project would get an immediate greenlight. Of course, even a workaholic can't be in everything,
08:56and Ford has never been a workaholic, so he almost always said no. And that's exactly what happened
09:02with the role of Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, a role which was not so much
09:07written for him as modelled on the character that had made him a star. No, not so much Han Solo,
09:12though there could be elements of that, I guess. We're talking about Indiana Jones.
09:15If you check out the painted concept art that Spielberg had knocked up at the pre-production
09:19stage, the guy running away from the T-Rex with the two kids is the spitting image of Ford's rugged
09:24archaeologist. And that is not a coincidence. In retrospect, you can kind of see why he turned
09:29it down. Grant is a rough-and-ready prehistory geek, a paleontologist with a gung-ho attitude
09:35and a cool hat who spends half the movie running away from elaborate special effects. It's basically
09:40everything he spent half of the 80s doing, and you can't blame a man for not getting too excited at
09:44the prospect of doing it all over again.
09:462. Bloodsport in The Suicide Squad
09:49Will Smith
09:51During interviews in the run-up to The Suicide Squad's release, both James Gunn and star Idris
09:55Elba were keen to dismiss rumours that he'd been hired to replace Will Smith's Deadshot.
10:00Since it was a while before Elba's casting was attached to a specific character, the initial
10:04assumption was that the part of the hitman Floyd Lawton had been recast. Warner Bros were very keen to
10:09publicise that this wasn't the case, no doubt to ensure that Smith, arguably the biggest star,
10:14remained on the radar to return to the role in a potential threequel. After a bunch of rumours
10:18about different characters being introduced, it turned out that Elba was playing Gunn's version
10:22of DC's Bloodsport, aka Robert Dubois. The thing is, Elba's Dubois is Smith's Lawton. They're both
10:29bad-tempered gunmen and reluctant team leaders with a sinister metallic full-face mask. And,
10:34like Deadshot, Bloodsport even has a daughter who is, like Deadshot, the only good thing in his life,
10:39an addition to his character that only exists in Gunn's movie.
10:42Then, let's look at the timeline. Smith announced that he wouldn't be returning at the end of February
10:472019. Gunn's shooting schedule was set in stone, and Smith was already booked. Elba was announced to
10:52be in talks to join the cast a week later, and by this time Gunn had already written several
10:56drafts of a script that Warner Bros were reportedly high on. It seems obvious that those drafts included
11:01Deadshot. Peter Safran has all but admitted this in an interview last July. What it looks like from the
11:06outside is that they were going to recast Smith with Elba, but then panicked over losing their
11:11relationship with Smith, forcing Gunn to think on the fly and bring in a new character. However,
11:15given the huge similarities between the characters, it was less of a last-minute rewrite and more of
11:20a find-and-replace job. 1. Everyone in Blowdry
11:26Blowdry is a case study in the horrors of studio micromanagement. There may be no other film in
11:31history where the entire cast were all clearly intended to be practically anyone other than who they were.
11:37It's fair to say that 20 years ago, Oscar-winning screenwriter Simon Beauvoy didn't have the
11:41Hollywood clout that he probably enjoys today. Beauvoy's first feature was The Full Monty,
11:46an unexpectedly massive comedy about laid-off Sheffield steelworkers who form a male stripper
11:51troupe. The film featured a cast of virtual unknowns, most of whom came from the north of England,
11:55but when he attempted to duplicate the trick with his script for Never Better, this time being about
12:00rival hairstylists in Yorkshire, Beauvoy found his film placed with Miramax and the infamous Harvey Weinstein.
12:06Suddenly there were lists of Hollywood-famous actors flying around, mostly over his head. Even the
12:11director had little control over who was cast, which is how a movie supposedly about the authentic
12:16lives of working-class northerners ended up with pretty much no cast members from the north. I mean,
12:21there was Londoners, there was Australians, there was Americans, and all of them absolutely murdered
12:25the Yorkshire accent. The result was, to put it mildly, horrible. Unable to fix it, Beauvoy bowed out to
12:32make room for another writer, but since the whole point was to play up the connection with The Full
12:36Monty, he wasn't even allowed to remove his name from the film. Instead, in a towering moment of
12:41English passive aggression, he asked for his credit to read, based on the screenplay Never Better by
12:46Simon Beauvoy. Probably would have been even better if he had managed to get them to preface it with
12:50very loosely. And on that note, we've reached the end of this list of ten movie roles obviously
12:56designed for other actors. If you've got any more in mind then let us know in the comments down below,
13:00and remember to check out whatculture.com for more lists and articles like this every single day.
13:05As always, I've been Amy from WhatCulture and I'll catch you next time!
Be the first to comment