The unscripted line Gene Hackman was blackmailed into saying: “I’m not doing any of that”
While improvisation and off-the-cuff moments are often encouraged on set, some actors don’t like deviating from the script. Gene Hackman wasn’t one of them, as several memorable moments from his career can attest, but he tried to draw the line at a seven-word sentence that wasn’t in the screenplay.
Large parts of his Academy Award-winning performance in The French Connection were improvised, with director William Friedkin’s loose approach to the classic crime thriller requiring Hackman to shoot from the hip when the cameras were rolling, and it’s not like he didn’t pull it off.
Even when he played against type, the grizzled star was capable of rolling with the punches. “Where are you going? I was gonna make espresso!” is arguably the standout line in Mel Brooks’ timeless Young Frankenstein, and the comedy legend revealed that Hackman made it up on the spot, so he was no slouch in going off-book.
Nathan Lane also shared that his exchange with the two-time Oscar winner when they danced together in The Birdcage was largely unscripted. Hackman’s “I bet you were wonderful” in response to Lane’s “You know I played Eliza in high school?” once again proved that he was comfortable with improv, even when sharing scenes with established comics.
And yet, when Sam Raimi asked him to say a simple, “What are the odds on the kid?” in The Quick and the Dead, he refused. For a spell, at least, until the director effectively blackmailed him by letting him know the audience would get a better payoff to a late-film revelation if he did.
“The first day of shooting, Sam explained what he had in mind,” Bruce Campbell shared in his memoir, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor. “OK, Gene, when you come out that door, I’d like you to tip your hat to the guy across the street, then come over here and sit in this chair. Now, I know this isn’t scripted, but I’d like you to lean over to this guy, and whisper, ‘What are the odds on the kid?'”
A simple request from filmmaker to actor, and it’s not as if Raimi was asking him to deliver a monologue. However, Hackman put his foot down. “Gene looked at Sam in silence for a beat,” Campbell recalled. “I’m not doing any of that’, he declared. Cut to Sam, turning white. Fortunately, he is extremely prepared.”
Hackman agreed to tip his hat but said he “won’t sit in the chair.” After another gentle nudge, he agreed to tip his hat and sit in the chair, “but I’m not gonna say that line.” Thinking on his feet, Raimi informed his unruly star that it would benefit the story and add another layer to his performance if he did.
“That’s fine,” Raimi blatantly lied. “You don’t have to, but later on, when the audience realises you are the kid’s father, they’ll think back and say, ‘Cool, he really did care about his son’. Gene looked at Sam in silence again.” Finally, he relented, and when The Quick and the Dead drops the bombshell that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Kid is the son of Hackman’s John Herod, everyone realised it had been foreshadowed. He didn’t want to say it, but after a little blackmail, Raimi got what he wanted.
