The cult classic every major star in Hollywood turned down: “This was the project from hell”
To illustrate that it isn’t wildly hyperbolic to say that every major star in Hollywood flirted with a movie that became a sleeper hit and cult favourite before passing on one of the two key roles, the film’s tortured history began with James Stewart and almost ended forever when Jim Carrey dropped out.
Funnily enough, the former is the latter’s favourite actor, and while they were A-listers from completely different eras, they were both connected to the same script. It boggles the mind that such a simple, straightforward, effective, and economical picture could spend three decades in development hell, but that’s barely the tip of an iceberg that saw virtually every bankable leading man in the business come and go.
Anybody who’s seen Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth would never guess that its origins trace back to a time when Alfred Hitchcock was still making movies, but screenwriter Larry Cohen devised the high-concept premise during a three-hour lunch with the ‘Master of Suspense’, with the scribe inspired by Lifeboat and Rear Window when concocting his largely single-location psychological thriller.
Shortly after Hitchcock’s Frenzy had premiered in 1972, the legendary auteur approached Cohen and asked, “How are you coming along with our phone booth movie?” Three decades later and the script gained real traction when none other than Tom Cruise tried to buy it, but Cohen opted to sign with 20th Century Fox instead.
It caught Steven Spielberg’s attention, too, with Cohen revealing that “he briefly toyed with directing.” Nicolas Cage was the first big name attached to star, until Mel Gibson stuck his foot in the door and suggested that he could pull double duty by playing the lead role and directing, but the writer wasn’t enthused by the two-time Academy Award winner’s plans to drastically overhaul the screenplay.
“I told him he was wrong,” Cohen explained to the Los Angeles Times. “But at a second meeting, he had a few clever notions on how to add twists, and I told him, ‘I’m going to use your ideas whether you act in this picture or not’, to which he was immediately agreeable.” That didn’t happen, either, and it was back to the drawing board.
Up next were Will Smith and Michael Bay, but as soon as the Bad Boys director asked, “OK, how do we get this thing out of the damn telephone booth?” Cohen knew it was a doomed endeavour. The Hughes brothers came and went, leaving Phone Booth‘s creator to think his passion project would never get made.
“I began to suspect this was the project from hell,” he surmised. “Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, and Robin Williams were interested, but the studio wanted to go younger. Robin still wanted to do the voice of the sniper, as did Anthony Hopkins, who promised me that he’d use his Hannibal Lecter voice. Fox passed. Then Jim Carrey suddenly materialised as star, with Schumacher back on.”
A month later, Carrey dropped out in favour of The Majestic, but Schumacher had an idea. He’d recently worked with a promising newcomer on Tigerland called Colin Farrell, who he thought would excel in the tightly wound genre piece. He did, it boosted the actor’s Hollywood credentials, Phone Booth made almost $100 million at the box office on a $13 million budget, and it’s continued to develop a following over the last 20 years. There was a light at the end of the tunnel; it just took a long time to get there.
