‘Get to Know Your Rabbit’: Brian De Palma’s disastrous first studio movie
For many filmmakers, being recruited by a major studio is the ultimate goal, with the prospect of working with a bigger budget on a bigger canvas capable of kicking down doors that had previously been locked shut. Brian De Palma got his chance eventually, but it didn’t end up working in his favour.
When Warner Bros hired him for the 1972 comedy Get to Know Your Rabbit, the director was hardly a novice, with De Palma already four features deep into his career. Not only that, but the genre was something he was plenty familiar with, making it a natural next step and logical progression. On paper, at least.
After debuting on 1968’s experimental murder mystery Murder a la Mod, he gave Robert De Niro the first major role of his career in the jet-black draft-dodging film Greetings, took a turn into farcical territory with The Wedding Party, and reunited with De Niro for Hi, Mom!. Four flicks, three of them comedies, so he looked to be a solid pick for a trip to the big time.
Get to Know Your Rabbit starred Tom Smothers in the role of Donald Beeman, a corporate executive who abruptly quits his high-flying job in favour of becoming a tap-dancing magician, with Orson Welles slumming his way through another thankless paycheque gig as enigmatic mentor Mr Delasandro.
Beeman’s old boss wants him back in the corporate world, but he decides that creating a course for other frustrated business types to follow in his tap-dancing footsteps is the better course of action. It’s nonsense, in short, but a baptism of fire for De Palma nonetheless. He didn’t think he was out of his depth, but his leading man wasn’t the only one who thought otherwise.
Smothers wasn’t convinced De Palma was experienced enough and cared so little for what the director was making that he disappeared for two days of scheduled shooting, and when he did eventually come back, he refused to shoot more takes than he believed any given scene required. Once shooting had wrapped, Warner Bros drafted in Peter Nelson to try and salvage a cut the studio wasn’t happy with and oversee reshoots, which meant Get to Know Your Rabbit wasn’t released until two years after cameras had stopped rolling.
De Palma had grown accustomed to getting his own way, admitting to The Talks that he’d had the final cut on every single film he’d ever made “except Get to Know Your Rabbit“. When asked why that was the sole exception, his response neatly summed up the entire miserable experience; “I got fired.”
While De Palma did eventually figure out how to navigate the minefield of studio politics, being replaced in post-production on the first attempt would have inevitably had a huge knock on his confidence.
