The director terrorised by an apathetic Gene Hackman: “He was scary as hell to work with”
With a face that looked like it was hewn out of a rugged mountaintop, Gene Hackman came across as a guy who wasn’t to be trifled with. While that came in handy when he was giving a string of iconic performances as an array of no-nonsense characters, it wasn’t quite as easy for some of the directors he worked with.
Wes Anderson admitted that he wrote The Royal Tenenbaums for Hackman against his wishes, and the actor brought that apathy to the production. He was a nightmare for the youthful filmmaker to try and contain, not that the friction between them prevented him from delivering yet another solid turn.
Hackman hadn’t lost his penchant for terrorising directors even in the final film of his distinguished career, 2004’s Welcome to Mooseport. Donald Petrie was an experienced hand who’d helmed movies like Mystic Pizza, Miss Congeniality, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, but that didn’t prevent his grizzled star from telling him to shut the fuck up and leave him alone.
While the latter years of Hackman’s filmography contain the odd flashes of his old brilliance, it was hardly on display in The Mexican, Behind Enemy Lines, and Under Suspicion. He did have a stellar 1995, though, bringing his gravitas to Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead, Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide, and Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty.
The latter was a box office hit that was received well by critics, and Hackman pulled his weight as Harry Zimm. However, as the director discovered after production had wrapped, the veteran never considered bringing his A-game to the picture until it was too late, hardly an ideal situation when Sonnenfeld was already scared of him.
“He was scary as hell to work with,” the filmmaker admitted to The Guardian. “He’s very intimidating and suffers no fools. After the New York premiere, he pulled me aside and said, ‘I wanted you to know, the entire time I was working with you, I didn’t think you had a fucking clue what you were doing’. I said, ‘OK, thanks, Gene’. He said, ‘That’s not my point’. I said, ‘Oh, there’s more?’ He said, ‘I’m so mad at myself because if I had realised you knew what you were doing, I could’ve done so much better.'”
Hackman effectively admitted to Sonnenfeld that he’d phoned in his Get Shorty performance because he wasn’t convinced the director was up to the task of marshalling a major motion picture, only to wish he’d put more of an effort in after he realised the crime comedy was actually pretty good.
He should be commended for his honesty, but surely it would have been in the best interests of all parties for Hackman to avoid letting him know that not only did he think he was clueless all the way through the shoot, but his performance wasn’t as good as it could have been because he thought Sonnenfeld was out of his depth?
