The director Rutger Hauer grew to despise: “We couldn’t stand each other”
When you’re making a movie, you’re always going to yield better results if you get on with your actors. Experiencing tension on set is always going to cause some difficulty, potentially even leading to total disaster.
A good director almost always knows how to salvage a film that seems to be tearing apart at the seams, the very foundation it has been built on just moments from collapsing. Look at Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, who were getting at each other’s throats so much during the filming of Fitzcarraldo that Herzog debated killing his lead actor. Luckily, he didn’t, and the movie turned out to be quite a success, although God knows how with the amount of issues that plagued that set.
What about Steel Magnolias, with director Herbert Ross essentially clashing with the whole cast? Julia Roberts once claimed he was incredibly “mean,” adding, “If he thinks he can talk about me in such a condescending way and not have me say something about it, then he’s nuts.”
Back in the ‘70s, before the days of Robocop and Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven made the film Soldier of Orange, which marked an early collaboration between him and actor Rutger Hauer. Almost a decade later, the pair made another film together, Flesh & Blood, which saw the pair of friends turn on each other, creating a bitter feud between the two that was never fully resolved.
There were issues from the start, with the producers asking Verhoeven to change several key elements of the plot, which he didn’t want to do. However, the real issues came when Verhoeven and Hauer started to clash, with the actor unhappy with the role he’d been given.
“We always got in arguments. I wanted him to play it lighter. My version of the movie was more like Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate. Chk-chk! Much more buoyant. And it never got to that; it was always heavy and straight,” the director said (via Top 10 Films).
He continued, “I would say he was an asshole, because he had changed so much… and he was not the same guy anymore. And Rutger probably would say, ‘Paul was so insecure, because it was his first American movie, that he couldn’t direct me anymore.’
“So we have two very good reasons, two ways of looking at things. And it would be not realistic to say that my version is the best one. I believe my version, of course — but I’m sure he believes his,” Verhoeven said. It’s sad when you fall out with a friend you once had a great creative relationship with, but that’s sometimes just the way things go, especially when the politics of filmmaking are involved.
“We hated each other. We couldn’t stand each other anymore!” the director declared, although he admitted that it was rather painful having to essentially lose a friend. “He was like an alter ego for me… the nice part of myself was Rutger. That’s why it was so difficult, because that nice part turned against me.”
