- 3 months ago
When all else fails? Apparently get the French mob to finance the rest of your movie.
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00:00Hello all of you beautiful people, Jules here for WhatCulture.com.
00:03And you know what, making a movie, even a terrible one, is incredibly difficult.
00:08And of the many, many things that can go wrong, there's always just the possibility that you'll just run out of money.
00:14And when that happened for these films, they took some rather outlandish routes to get back on track.
00:19So let's take a look at them.
00:20This is WhatCulture.com, and these are movies that did crazy things when they ran out of money.
00:25Director Rennie Harlan spent one million dollars of his own money to fix the script.
00:29Cutthroat Island
00:30Films don't get much more calamitous than Cutthroat Island, the 1995 action-adventure film that bombed so catastrophically at the box office
00:39that it put studios off swashbuckling movies for almost an entire decade.
00:43That was until Pirates of the Caribbean reaffirmed their commercial viability.
00:46The production was beset by numerous delays and on-set accidents, which caused the budget to balloon to a ludicrous 98 million dollars by the time it was all said and done.
00:56Though some estimates even peg it as high as 115 million dollars.
01:00Furthermore, the script just wasn't working during pre-production, and though Rennie Harlan asked the producers to bankroll rewrites,
01:07production company Carol Cold Pictures was on the verge of bankruptcy and had no further funds to give.
01:12As a result, a desperate Harlan ended up spending one million dollars of his own cash to pay the writers to complete a new draft.
01:19Even though Harlan was a rising superstar director after the success of Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, that was still a majorly drastic move for any filmmaker.
01:28And it was ultimately all for naught.
01:30The film was critically panned, with particular attention paid to its shoddy screenplay.
01:35While Harlan received a Worst Director Razzie nomination, and it grossed a brutal 10 million dollars worldwide.
01:41George Miller paid the crew in beer and used his own car in a stunt, Mad Max.
01:47The original Mad Max was made for just $400,000, which given the necessity for sequences involving risky stunts, was certainly quite the ask.
01:57But filmmaker George Miller at least had a novel and very, very Australian way to keep the movie at low cost,
02:03by deciding to pay his extras and some of the crew not with money, but beer.
02:07It's certainly not a call that would fly on any union set today.
02:11However, beyond keeping the cast and crew in suds, Miller further kept the balance sheet in check by using and crashing his own 1966 Mazda Bongo for one of the movie's vehicular stunts.
02:23Thankfully, Mad Max's phenomenal worldwide success ensured that Miller was blessed with a budget more than 10 times the size for the sequel,
02:31allowing everyone to actually get paid, you know, cash money.
02:35Robert Rodriguez kept bloopers in the film because he couldn't afford multiple takes.
02:39El Mariachi
02:40Robert Rodriguez wrote the book on how to produce an ultra-low-budget movie,
02:45quite literally, in fact, because he chronicled the production of his filmmaking debut, El Mariachi,
02:50in the much-loved 1992 tome Rebel Without a Crew,
02:53or how a 23-year-old filmmaker with $7,000 became a Hollywood player.
02:58Indeed, Rodriguez produced his entire indie western for barely $7,000,
03:02much of which he raised by participating in experimental drug trials,
03:06using every corner-cutting trick possible to ensure that he didn't run over budget,
03:11because, well, he literally had no other option.
03:13Rodriguez borrowed a 60mm camera, shot every scene in just one or two takes,
03:18edited on video to save money,
03:20and used real guns because he couldn't afford prop ones,
03:23as well as having his cast also double as crew members.
03:26The budget was so razor-thin that if the maximum two takes of a single setup were blown by mistakes,
03:32he would simply incorporate the goofs into the story or cut to the next setup as soon as possible,
03:37hence the film's oft-choppy editing style.
03:39And yet, despite being so blatantly held together with duct tape and sheer can-do spirit,
03:44El Mariachi's feverish charm and energy endeared itself to critics and indie film fans,
03:49launching Rodriguez's Hollywood career in the process.
03:52Setting it on a single night to reduce wardrobe costs, Halloween.
03:56Given that John Carpenter's Halloween was made for just $325,000 back in 1978,
04:03the budget was razor-thin,
04:05with Carpenter and his crew pulling out every penny-pinching trick in the book to keep things chugging along.
04:10One of the more inconspicuously expensive aspects of filmmaking is costuming,
04:15of acquiring all the different outfits for the various characters across the various days in which the story takes place,
04:21on bigger productions, this alone can end up costing more than Halloween's entire budget.
04:26And so, Carpenter and co-writer Deborah Hill came up with a novel solution.
04:31While the film was originally set to transpire over several days,
04:34it was decided instead to have the carnage take place on a single night,
04:38in order to minimize the number of costume changes required for the cast.
04:42Hell, the wardrobe requirements were consistently so minimal
04:45that Jimmy Lee Curtis bought her own clothes for the film from department store JCPenney for a mere $100.
04:52And then once the film had cut costs by setting itself on a single day,
04:56Carpenter and Hill had their big brainstorm moment by making that day Halloween.
05:01Director George Slyzer borrowed money from the French mob.
05:04The Vanishing, 1988
05:061988's Dutch horror masterpiece The Vanishing is a film of such composed confidence
05:12that it feels like every aspect of the production went exactly as filmmaker George Slyzer originally planned.
05:18And yet, the film was reportedly made for a budget of just $165,000,
05:23which was so scant it wasn't even enough to feed the cast and crew through to the end of shooting.
05:28According to the director,
05:29he ended up paying a visit to some shady figures from the French criminal underworld and asked them for a loan.
05:35The mobsters complied,
05:36but also assured the filmmaker of the dire consequences if he couldn't settle his debt as agreed.
05:42Slyzer didn't elaborate on how it all shook out,
05:44but given that the film was a considerable critical and commercial success,
05:47and he lived for another 25 years seemingly free of mob hassle,
05:51the gamble evidently paid off.
05:53Condensing three movies into two,
05:55The Lord of the Rings
05:56Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings was originally intended to be a trilogy,
06:03with one film planned for each of J.R.R. Tolkien's three novels.
06:07Yet, budgetary limitations resulted in Studio United Artists condensing the three books into two movies,
06:14with the first film adapting all of The Fellowship of the Ring and half of The Two Towers.
06:19Bakshi produced the film for just $4 million,
06:21which combined with the movie's pricey and time-consuming animation made it a stressful project for the filmmaker.
06:28Furthermore,
06:28the studio made the ill-advised decision to remove part one from the title,
06:33ensuring audiences who expected to see a full adaptation of Tolkien's trilogy were left bitterly disappointed by seeing only half the story.
06:40And to make matters worse, despite the film turning a hefty profit,
06:45disagreements between Bakshi and United Artists led to part two never being made.
06:50William Shatner Recycled Footage, Extras, and Costumes
06:54Star Trek V The Final Frontier
06:56Star Trek V The Final Frontier is generally accepted to be the worst of all the Trek movies.
07:01It's a bit of a bore for the most part,
07:03and lacks the glossy, big-budget feel of its predecessors,
07:06despite having a markedly bigger budget than the three prior sequels.
07:10The William Shatner-directed project was a massive challenge for all involved.
07:14There was considerable pre-production squabbling over the script,
07:17Shatner wrestled with Paramount over the budget,
07:19there was a writer's guild strike going on,
07:21and there were major issues while shooting on location and during post-production.
07:25Because Shatner's budget was revised,
07:27and by his own claim he didn't receive enough help to correctly allocate his allotted money,
07:31he had to cut corners at almost every turn to bring it on budget.
07:35This included reusing the same extras in different camera setups,
07:38to imply Cyborg's ability was larger,
07:40recycling costumes from previous Trek films,
07:43and filming the campfire scenes closer up,
07:45because there wasn't time or money to build more expansive sets for wide shots.
07:49Worst of all, the film's climax was originally intended to have Kirk be chased by a fleet of rock monsters.
07:55But when there simply wasn't the money to pull it off,
07:57and a single rock monster test scene wasn't satisfactory,
08:00Shatner was out of options.
08:01As a result, he ended up reusing previously shot footage of God for the climax,
08:06who manifests an attempt to kill Kirk,
08:08only to be blown to smithereens by Klingon disruptor fire.
08:11As much stick as Shatner gets for this movie,
08:13it really does seem like he tried to make the best of a rather terrible situation.
08:17The producers remortgaged their homes, Rocky.
08:20When Sylvester Stallone was first shopping Rocky around to studios,
08:24United Artists offered him $325,000 for the screenplay,
08:29with plans to produce it on a $2 million budget.
08:32But when Stallone insisted that he also play the lead role,
08:35despite United Artists planning to cast a name actor,
08:38the studio agreed with a provision that the budget be slashed in half.
08:42And moreover, any financial overspill would be covered by producers Erwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff.
08:49Ultimately, Rocky ended up grossing $1.1 million,
08:53with Winkler and Chartoff raising the additional $100,000 overspill by remortgaging their homes.
09:00It was certainly a bold gamble, but also one of the smartest in the history of Hollywood,
09:05given that Rocky went on to gross an eye-watering $225 million globally,
09:11and Kickstarter still ongoing franchise that made Stallone, Winkler and Chartoff all the big bucks.
09:18Orson Welles set a scene in a Turkish bath so he didn't need costumes.
09:22Othello
09:221951
09:24Though Orson Welles might be remembered as a staunch perfectionist,
09:28he also rolled with the punches when necessary,
09:30as he proved beyond any and all doubt while he was filming his 1951 adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello.
09:36The film was ultimately shot over the period of three years,
09:39initially being shut down after the original producer announced bankruptcy mid-days into shooting.
09:44Welles decided to salvage the film by funding it himself,
09:47but due to the massive costs involved,
09:49he had to intermittently shoot between acting projects which he was using to bankroll production.
09:53Filming was stopped at least three times.
09:56During one of the shooting cycles, Welles ran so dry of money
09:59that the costumes being used for the film had to be impounded due to unpaid fees.
10:03Unable to deal with costly delays by sourcing new costumes,
10:07Welles had a rather ingenious lightbulb idea for shooting an upcoming murder scene.
10:11Welles decided to change the setting to a Turkish bath
10:14because this would provide a logical reason for the characters not being in their typical mode of attire,
10:19allowing him to keep filming despite the wardrobe being actually locked in storage.
10:23This is just one of the solutions that Welles found to combat his bleeding budget,
10:27but it's by far the most impressively creative.
10:29The set was only half-built, 310 to Yuma.
10:32James Mangold's 2007 remake of 310 to Yuma is a certified banger of a western,
10:38and given that westerns typically require large sets to be built complete with elaborate costumes and so on,
10:45it's little surprise that they tend to be expensive movies to make.
10:48310 to Yuma ended up costing $55 million,
10:52a relatively modest sum considering its scale and celebrated cast,
10:56and so the margins were tight enough that the movie was eventually shot without the central Arizona town being fully built.
11:03During the film's action-packed climax,
11:05it's even easy to spot unfinished buildings in the background,
11:08with scaffolding built up all around them.
11:11While they fit perfectly into the movie's aesthetic,
11:14buildings need to be built after all,
11:16and the town was indeed originally meant to be finished before shooting.
11:19Without any additional money to pay the crew to complete construction, though,
11:23many of them were left as half-built husks,
11:26with Mangold presumably having any contemporary-looking equipment shuffled out of the way before shooting.
11:31The Python team came up with a fourth-wall-breaking ending,
11:34Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
11:37Monty Python and the Holy Grail ends in rather hilariously surreal fashion,
11:41as the Army of Knights prepares to assault the French soldiers,
11:43only for modern-day police to arrive out of nowhere,
11:46arrest King Arthur and Bedivere, and break the camera.
11:49It truly feels like the film couldn't have ended any other way,
11:52and yet the Python team have confirmed numerous times over the years
11:55that an original scripted climax involved the actual battle that was set up in those final moments.
12:00Allegedly due to how much money had been spent on pyrotechnics for Tim the Enchanter's scene,
12:05there just wasn't enough money left to stage and shoot a battle in earnest,
12:09and so this fourth-wall-breaking ending was dreamt up instead.
12:12Co-star Michael Palin quite aptly called the ultimate ending both cheaper and funnier.
12:17This approach wouldn't work for more straight-laced movies,
12:19but something as willfully farcical as Monty Python, well, it absolutely did work.
12:23Going live action for one shot, heavy metal.
12:261981's legendary adult animated anthology film Heavy Metal
12:31was produced on a relatively scant $9.3 million budget considering its visual ambition.
12:38Though some of the shots throughout the film were rotoscoped,
12:41there's a single shot at the very end of the movie that was entirely live action.
12:46Because the production ran out of cash and had the release date moved up by several months unexpectedly,
12:51there simply wasn't time to rotoscope the house explosion in the final scene.
12:56And so, it's simply a live action shot of a model house being blown up,
13:01albeit somewhat cleverly disguised by being tinted green and oversaturated,
13:06to give it a more surreal heightened look that better fits in with the animated shots surrounding it.
13:11The shot passes quickly enough that many might not even notice that it's live action at all,
13:15but as the house's debris flies through the air, it's nevertheless clear we're not looking at something animated.
13:22Spike Lee gave up most of his fee and asked black celebrities for donations.
13:26Malcolm X
13:27Spike Lee's Malcolm X ended up costing $35 million,
13:31which was almost as expensive as Lee's five previous films combined.
13:35Even with the epic biopic Lee was trying to make,
13:38some pushback from Warner Brothers wasn't entirely unreasonable,
13:41who had reservations about the $30 million that Lee asked for and also demands of a three-hour runtime.
13:47Lee was nevertheless allowed to begin filming with $28 million as a budget,
13:51and convinced Warner Brothers to raise it to $33 million during shooting.
13:55But as Lee continued to shoot and found himself unable to get any more money from the studio,
14:00he decided to surrender $2 million of his own $3 million salary to the budget.
14:05After four months of shooting were completed,
14:07the insurance company took control of the film,
14:09and amid runtime arguments between Lee and the studio,
14:12shut down post-production with the costs running dry.
14:15Lee got desperate and made the highly unconventional decision
14:18to effectively crowdfund post-production from prominent black celebrities,
14:21including Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Janet Jackson, and Prince.
14:27These donations, not investments, Lee made clear,
14:30allowed Lee to get back into the editing suite
14:31and finish the 201-minute cut that he envisioned from the outset.
14:35Though Malcolm X was a modest commercial success,
14:38and netted Denzel Washington a Best Actor Oscar nomination,
14:41Lee's unconventional chicanery soured his relationship with Warner Brothers for years,
14:45such that he was prevented from helping develop Space Jam.
14:48Switching to black and white film, If.
14:51The 1968 satirical drama If is shot in both color and black and white,
14:56with director Lindsay Anderson regularly switching between the two
15:00in a way that seems more or less random,
15:02despite some viewers' desperate need to extrapolate meaning from it.
15:06The truth, in fact, is that the production, priced at just $500,000,
15:11was low on both funds and time.
15:14While shooting scenes set inside a chapel,
15:16Anderson realized he could save both by shooting in black and white,
15:20given that lighting scenes for color takes much longer.
15:23After that, Anderson decided to shoot additional scenes in monochrome,
15:27and with films generally being shot out of sequence,
15:30the rhyme and reason to which scenes were color and which were black and white was
15:34fluid, to say the least.
15:36Given the film's surreal bent,
15:37it's been said that Anderson additionally wanted to throw audiences off,
15:42and keep them uneasy with the seemingly unmotivated divergence into black and white.
15:47It's weird, but it certainly works,
15:50while saving the production desperately needed money and time.
15:53Planned sets were replaced with cardboard cutouts,
15:56The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
15:59Terry Gillum strikes again,
16:00this time not in a $400,000 Monty Python film,
16:04but the $46.63 million 1988 fantasy flick,
16:09The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
16:11Incredibly, the project was originally budgeted at $23.5 million,
16:15which ballooned to roughly double that by the end of production,
16:18a figure which Gillum predictably disputes.
16:20Whatever the true price tag,
16:22plans to build a Moon City set at Pinewood Studios were scrapped
16:25because there literally wasn't the money to create them.
16:27Gillum, ever a man to thrive under pressure,
16:30decided instead to have the concept sketches of the city enlarged,
16:33printed, and stuck to giant plywood boards,
16:36which were then moved around by crew hands as necessary to imply movement and scale.
16:40And so, when The Baron and Sally arrive at the city,
16:43it has a really weird surreal 2D aesthetic,
16:46which rather than suggest budgetary constraints,
16:48feels totally on brand for Gillum's madcap vision.
16:52Though the film was ultimately a massive commercial failure,
16:54grossing barely $8 million globally,
16:56it was at least nominated for four Oscars,
16:59including Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects.
17:02The epilogue was a series of storyboards, Skyline.
17:052010's sci-fi disaster film Skyline had a production budget
17:09listed as somewhere between $10 to $20 million.
17:12Yet, despite this, the actual money put aside for physical shooting was just $500,000.
17:18The rest of the budget was spent on executing the movie's ambitious visual effects sequences.
17:23Yet, this evidently didn't stretch to the epilogue,
17:26where Elaine is rescued from the aliens by her now-alien husband, Jared.
17:30As a result, this sequence was reduced down to a series of crudely animated storyboards
17:35interspersed throughout the credits,
17:37as they presumably cost a mere fraction of actually shooting
17:40and rendering the entire scene the traditional way.
17:44Despite how impossible it is to take the movie's ending seriously,
17:47Skyline turned a solid profit at the box office,
17:50enough to produce two better-received sequels beyond Skyline and Skylines.
17:55The cast and crew took out high-interest bank loans
17:57and begged local businesses to help.
17:59The Evil Dead
18:00It isn't a secret to anyone that Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead
18:03was a seat-of-the-pants production,
18:05where he and his inexperienced cast and crew
18:07wrung every last penny out of their $375,000 budget.
18:12Halfway through filming in the winter of 1980,
18:14Raimi actually ran out of money,
18:16and so in order to restart shooting,
18:18Raimi, his producer, and star Bruce Campbell
18:20committed themselves to doing whatever it took to find the extra funds.
18:24Between them, they took out high-interest bank loans,
18:26borrowed money from friends and families,
18:28and even cold-called local businesses around Michigan,
18:31begging for catering resources, gasoline,
18:33and all of the other logistical accoutrements of film production needs.
18:37These risky gambles all paid off,
18:39as The Evil Dead was a phenomenal commercial success
18:42that launched an entire horror empire that is still thriving today.
18:46Deadpool forgets his guns
18:47Deadpool
18:48Though it's clear that Deadpool was produced
18:50on a more conservative budget than your average superhero film,
18:54it was nevertheless originally given
18:56a provisional $66 million price tag by Fox.
18:59But just before the movie was given the official green light,
19:02they slashed the budget by $8 million,
19:05knocking it down to $58 million.
19:08This created a headache for Ryan Reynolds and the filmmakers,
19:11who had to figure out a way to execute the film's vision
19:14with a hefty chunk of the expected moolah slashed away.
19:17This ultimately led to a last-minute write
19:20where nine pages were cut from the script,
19:22including an elaborate gunfight planned for the finale.
19:25And so, embracing the title's character,
19:27Wink Wink Spirit,
19:29the rewrites had Deadpool forget his duffel bag of guns,
19:32forcing him to forge ahead without them.
19:34Most serious-minded action movies
19:36couldn't get away with something so daft,
19:38and yet, given Deadpool's whole shtick,
19:41it worked perfectly, helping lower the budget
19:43while giving the audience a laugh.
19:45The second unit was sent home early,
19:48Masters of the Universe.
19:49Production on 1987's live-action He-Man movie
19:53Masters of the Universe was an utter mess.
19:56It was by far the most expensive film
19:57ever produced by the Cannon Group at the time,
20:00and they were desperate enough for a smash hit
20:02after a string of flops that eventually added $7 million
20:05to the superhero's flick's budget,
20:07bringing it to a hefty $22 million.
20:09Nevertheless, Cannon were obsessed
20:12with cutting budgetary corners wherever possible,
20:14scrapping planned sequences,
20:16and at one point,
20:17even dismissing the film's entire second unit team.
20:20Though the film does have a credited second unit,
20:22Cannon executives sent them home during filming
20:25rather than pay them to complete pick-ups,
20:27insisting instead that director Gary Goddard
20:29carry out any additional photography.
20:31Ending the movie with an abrupt title card,
20:33Blood Debts
20:34Little concrete is known about the production
20:36of 1985's cult-action film Blood Debts,
20:40though it's clear to anyone who's seen
20:42more than a few seconds of it
20:43that it was a rough-shot shoot
20:44thrown together on a shoestring budget.
20:47It is, in its own way,
20:49a tremendously entertaining Death Wish knock-off,
20:51in which Vietnam vet Mark Collins becomes
20:54a one-man army to avenge his daughter's rape and murder.
20:58Later, Mark's vigilantism brings him to blow
21:00with corrupt businessman Bill,
21:02leading to a delightfully action-packed climax
21:05in which Mark assaults Bill's henchman-filled compound.
21:08Bill finally seems to have the drop
21:10on gravely wounded Mark,
21:11until Mark pulls a concealed rocket launcher
21:14from his sleeve and fires it.
21:16The rocket hits Bill,
21:17instantly exploding him,
21:19but before his remains have even hit the ground,
21:22the shot abruptly freezes
21:23and a title card appears on screen,
21:25explaining that Mark turned himself into the police
21:28after the shootout and is now serving a life sentence.
21:32A few seconds later,
21:33the credits roll,
21:34and that's that.
21:36Though it's basically impossible
21:37not to laugh at such a harshly abrupt ending,
21:40it's also howlingly obvious
21:42that director Teddy Page ran out of funds
21:44to film the movie's actual ending,
21:46presumably where Mark turns himself in.
21:49It's easy to believe,
21:50whether true or not,
21:51that the remaining film and the movie's budget
21:53literally ran out in the middle of Bill's body
21:55being blown through the air.
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