The heavenly scene Gary Busey refused to shoot
It’s funny how some actors can go from starring in critically acclaimed hits, earning Oscar nominations and other coveted awards, only to find themselves scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel where few have feared to tread. In some ways, this is a courageous move because it takes real guts to sink that low and allow yourself to be cast in a movie that you know is going to be terrible from the get-go.
This is what happened to Gary Busey, who once found himself the object of critical attention when he played the classic 1950s rock and roll star in The Buddy Holly Story. He also appeared in A Star Is Born, Lethal Weapon, Point Break, Lost Highway, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, working alongside some acclaimed directors.
Yet, in 2003, Busey’s career was facing a huge slump, to say the least. To give you an indication of how bad and insignificant the movies that Busey starred in at this time were, only two of the seven films have their own Wikipedia pages. Out of all these, one stands out as the worst thing Busey has ever done – and could also be classified as a crime against cinema.
Quigley, a Christian comedy that received only positive reviews from religious organisations, is a genuinely bad movie. The film has the most outlandish premise, with Busey playing a greedy and selfish CEO who dies in a car accident. He is subsequently reincarnated as a pomeranian and forced to be good, somehow attempting to sort out the chaos he left behind.
The movie is poorly made, poorly acted, and poorly conceptualised. There was no way that a low-budget movie about Gary Busey turning into a dog would be a good idea, and it seems like it is only watched these days as a joke, making for good viewing when you and your friends have had one too many.
In the film, Busey’s character goes to heaven, but there are scenes that the star refuses to shoot until the crew listens to his demands. The actor had a specific gripe with the set design of heaven, which featured various mirrors. These couldn’t be shown because, according to Busey, heaven doesn’t have mirrors.
The actor claimed that he had actually died and gone to heaven in the past, so he was qualified to give his two cents about the appearance of the mysterious afterlife. Busey did die for a short period while having an operation after suffering a serious motorcycle accident in the 1980s. When he was temporarily dead, he claimed to have seen angels and to have experienced heaven.
He told Larry King two years after the release of Quigley, “I saw angels. I was surrounded by angels. And they don’t look like what they look like on Christmas cards. They’re big balls of light that float and carry nothing but love and warmth.”
The crew behind Quigley made sure that Busey’s demands were respected, but that didn’t make the movie any better. The film might be one of the worst things that the actor has ever done, but it is also one of the funniest.
