‘Cowboys & Aliens’: The movie Harrison Ford only made for the money
Generally, when an actor admits they made a movie primarily for money, it comes with a negative perception. However, Harrison Ford thinks it’s a good thing for money to once in a while be the great enticer to a star.
To be fair to Ford, it must be said that he’s always been a pretty straight-shooter in interviews, and he won’t sugarcoat anything to spare people’s feelings. In his early career, for instance, he admitted to making Force 10 from Navarone primarily for the money, and for the chance to play a character as polar opposite to Han Solo as possible. Then, because his character wound up being hard for him to connect with, and he hated the script, he labelled the movie “bullshit” in the pages of his biography, Harrison Ford: Imperfect Hero.
Fast-forward more than 30 years, and that trademark Ford “tell it like it is” attitude reared its head again. In 2011, the iconic star was promoting his role as the gruff, no-nonsense cattleman Woodrow Dolarhyde in Cowboys & Aliens, a sci-fi/western hybrid directed by Iron Man’s Jon Favreau, when he was asked by Cinema Blend why he chose to make a movie with such a potentially silly premise and on-the-nose title.
Amusingly, he admitted that when his agent first sent him the script, he read 30 pages and tossed it aside, saying, “I don’t get it. I don’t think that there’s anything in this for me”. Still, his agent pushed, reminding him that he’d told them to be strategic in finding him a movie “that people wanted to go see. One that appeals to what’s left of the movie audience”.
From this perspective, it’s pretty clear that commercial considerations were high on Ford’s list of priorities with Cowboys & Aliens, especially when you look at the string of middling performers he’d made in the preceding few years in Morning Glory, Crossing Over, or even Extraordinary Measures. After being forced to continue, reminded heavily that this one could be a lucrative gig, he began to nurse a change of heart about the movie. Then, when he found out he’d be starring alongside Daniel Craig, it started to sound more and more like a worthwhile feature to participate in making.
Naturally, because his role in Cowboys & Aliens required Ford donning a cowboy hat once again and leaping on a trusty steed, many fans were reminded of his tenure as the world’s favourite swashbuckling archaeologist, Indiana Jones. However, when asked if the chance to take a nostalgic trip down memory lane by galloping into Indy territory again played any part in his decision to make the movie, he practically laughed in the interviewer’s face.
“Nope!” Ford guffawed, “I’m in it for the money”.
As flippant as it may appear from a legend like Ford, to his credit, he went on to explain that he doesn’t view taking gigs for the money as a bad thing. To him, his job is to make good movies that moviegoers are excited to see, and that costs money, but if done well, it also makes everyone a lot of money, too.
“I’m in it for the money, and I mean that in the best possible way,” he once told the Los Angeles Times, “I want my films to succeed, for me and for all the people who work on them, even the people who put money in. But mostly, I want the films to succeed for the audience.”
When framed like this, Ford’s insistence that he made a movie like Cowboys & Aliens for the money sounds financially responsible, as opposed to artistically bankrupt. Is it possible that he’s just pulling the wool over our eyes to make greed sound more palatable? Maybe. But, it’s equally possible that he’s been making blockbuster films for long enough that he sees and respects the business processes that keep the industry alive.
Ultimately, this is why it was so darn ironic that Cowboys & Aliens flopped at the box office, despite Ford’s best efforts to stack the deck in his favour.
