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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
00:13of 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
00:38box 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
00:5398 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
01:17to 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
01:25a 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 dollars, which given the necessity for sequences involving risky stunts,
01:55was 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
02:02cost, by 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
02:17crashing 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
02:30for the sequel, allowing 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, quite literally, in fact, because he
02:46chronicled the production of his filmmaking debut, El Mariachi, in the much-loved 1992 tome Rebel Without a Crew, or
02:53how a 23-year-old filmmaker with $7,000 became a Hollywood player.
02:57Indeed, Rodriguez produced his entire indie western for barely $7,000, much of which he raised by participating in experimental
03:05drug trials, using every corner-cutting trick possible to ensure that he didn't run over budget, because, well, he literally
03:12had no other option.
03:13Rodriguez borrowed a 60mm camera, shot every scene in just one or two takes, edited on video to save money,
03:20and used real guns because he couldn't afford prop ones, as well as having his cast also double as crew
03:26members.
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, hence
03:37the film's oft-choppy editing style.
03:39And yet, despite being so blatantly held together with duct tape and sheer can-do spirit, El Mariachi's feverish charm
03:45and energy endeared itself to critics and indie film fans, launching 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, the budget was razor-thin, with
04:05Carpenter 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, of acquiring all the different outfits for the various
04:17characters 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, it was decided instead to have the carnage take
04:36place on a single night, in order to minimise the number of costume changes required for the cast.
04:42Hell, the wardrobe requirements were consistently so minimal that Jamie Lee Curtis bought her own clothes for the film from
04:48department store JCPenney for a mere $100.
04:51And then once the film had cut costs by setting itself on a single day, Carpenter and Hill had their
04:57big brainstorm moment by making that day Halloween.
05:01Director George Slyzer borrowed money from the French mob.
05:04The Vanishing, 1988.
05:071988's Dutch horror masterpiece The Vanishing is a film of such composed confidence that it feels like every aspect of
05:14the production went exactly as filmmaker George Slyzer originally planned.
05:18And yet, the film was reportedly made for a budget of just $165,000, which was so scant it wasn't
05:24even enough to feed the cast and crew through to the end of shooting.
05:28According to the director, he ended up paying a visit to some shady figures from the French criminal underworld and
05:34asked them for a loan.
05:35The mobsters complied, but also assured the filmmaker of the dire consequences if he couldn't settle his debt as agreed.
05:41Slyzer didn't elaborate on how it all shook out, but given that the film was a considerable critical and commercial
05:46success,
05:47and he lived for another 25 years seemingly free of mob hassle, the gamble evidently paid off.
05:53Condensing three movies into two, The 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, which combined with the movie's pricey and time-consuming animation
06:25made it a stressful project for the filmmaker.
06:28Furthermore, the studio made the ill-advised decision to remove Part 1 from the title,
06:32ensuring audiences who expected to see a full adaptation of Tolkien's trilogy were left bitterly disappointed
06:38by seeing only half the story.
06:41And to make matters worse, despite the film turning a hefty profit,
06:45disagreements between Bakshi and United Artists led to Part 2 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 and 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.
07:13There 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 and by his own claim he didn't receive enough help
07:29to correctly allocate his allotted money,
07:31he had to cut corners at almost every turn to bring it on budget.
07:34This included reusing the same extras in different camera setups to imply Cybox's ability was larger,
07:40recycling costumes from previous Trek films,
07:42and 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,
07:54but 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.
08:02As a result, he ended up reusing previously shot footage of God for the climax
08:06who manifests an attempt to kill Kirk only 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.
09:17Orson Welles set a scene in a Turkish bath so he didn't need costumes.
09:22Othello
09:231951
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,
09:42mid-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,
09:57Welles ran so dry of money that the costumes being used for the film
10:01had to be impounded due to unpaid fees.
10:04Unable 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,
10:42complete 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,
10:51a relatively modest sum considering its scale and celebrated cast,
10:56and so the margins were tight enough that the movie was eventually shot
10:59without 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.
11:20Without any additional money to pay the crew to complete construction though,
11:23many of them were left as half-billed husks,
11:26with Mangold presumably having any contemporary-looking equipment
11:29shuffled 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.
11:36Monty 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
11:58that was set up in those final moments.
12:01Allegedly due to how much money had been spent on pyrotechnics
12:03for 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
12:15both cheaper and funnier.
12:17This approach wouldn't work for more straight-laced movies,
12:19but something as willfully farcical as Monty Python,
12:22well, it absolutely did work.
12:23Going live-action for one shot, Heavy Metal.
12:271981's legendary adult animated anthology film Heavy Metal
12:31was produced on a relatively scant $9.3 million budget
12:36considering 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
12:44that was entirely live-action.
12:45Because the production ran out of cash and had the release date moved up
12:49by 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,
13:05to give it a more surreal heightened look
13:08that 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,
13:18it's nevertheless clear we're not looking at something animated.
13:21Spike 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 Bros. wasn't entirely unreasonable,
13:41who had reservations about the $30 million that Lee asked for
13:44and 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 Bros. 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.
14:04After 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
14:17to effectively crowdfund post-production from prominent black celebrities,
14:21including Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan,
14:24Magic 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 Bros. for years,
14:45such that he was prevented from helping develop Space Jam.
14:48Switching to black-and-white film,
14:51The 1968 satirical drama If is shot in both colour 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,
15:07is that the production, priced at just $500,000,
15:11was low on both funds and time.
15:13While 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 colour takes much longer.
15:23After that,
15:24Anderson 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 colour
15:32and which were black-and-white was...
15:34fluid, to say the least.
15:36Given the film's surreal bent,
15:37it's being said that Anderson additionally wanted to throw audiences off,
15:42and keep them uneasy with the seemingly unmotivated divergence
15:45into 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 Gillam 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,
16:14which ballooned to roughly double that by the end of production,
16:18a figure which Gillam 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.
16:27Gillam, 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
16:38to 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 Gillam's madcap vision.
16:51Though 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.
17:01The 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,
17:14the actual money put aside for physical shooting was just $500,000.
17:18The rest of the budget was spent on executing
17:20the movie's ambitious visual effects sequences,
17:23yet this evidently didn't stretch to the epilogue,
17:26where Elaine is rescued from the aliens
17:28by her now-alien husband, Jared.
17:30As a result, this sequence was reduced down
17:32to a series of crudely animated storyboards
17:35interspersed throughout the credits,
17:37as they presumably cost a mere fraction
17:39of actually shooting and rendering the entire scene
17:42the traditional way.
17:43Despite 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
17:52beyond 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.
18:11Halfway 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
18:22to 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
18:35a 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
18:44that is still thriving today.
18:45Deadpool forgets his guns.
18:47Deadpool
18:48Though it's clear that Deadpool was produced
18:50on a more conservative budget
18:52than your average superhero film,
18:54it was nevertheless originally given
18:55a provisional $66 million price tag by Fox.
18:59But just before the movie was given
19:01the 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
19:10and the filmmakers,
19:11who had to figure out a way to execute
19:13the film's vision with a hefty chunk
19:15of 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
19:24planned for the finale.
19:25And so, embracing the title's character,
19:27Wink Wink Spirit,
19:29the rewrites had Deadpool forget
19:30his 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,
19:42helping 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
19:52He-Man movie,
19:53Masters of the Universe,
19:54was an utter mess.
19:55It 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
20:03that eventually added $7 million
20:05to the superhero's flick's budget,
20:07bringing it to a hefty $22 million.
20:10Nevertheless,
20:11Cannon were obsessed with cutting budgetary corners
20:13wherever 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 pickups,
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 of 1985's cult action film,
20:39Blood Debts,
20:40though it's clear to anyone who's seen more than a few seconds of it
20:43that it was a roughshod shoot thrown together on a shoestring budget.
20:47It is,
20:48in its own way,
20:49a tremendously entertaining death wish knockoff,
20:52in which Vietnam vet,
20:53Mark Collins becomes a one-man army
20:55to avenge his daughter's rape and murder.
20:58Later,
20:58Mark's vigilantism brings him to blow
21:00with corrupt businessman,
21:02Bill,
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
21:29and is now serving a life sentence.
21:31A 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
21:43ran 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
21:52in the movie's budget
21:53literally ran out
21:54in the middle of Bill's body
21:55being blown through the air.
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