The movie Gene Hackman hated every second of making: “I’m going bananas”
As counterintuitive as it sounds, Gene Hackman loved acting, and he loved being an actor, but he often hated the process of making the movies that allowed him to live his dream, especially if he found himself working with a director he felt was out of their depth.
To be fair, he’s not the only one. Denzel Washington, one of the all-time greats, hates being called a movie actor when he considers himself a stage performer who happens to make films. Anthony Hopkins, another legend, hates everything about the industry apart from being on set and reciting his lines.
Hackman wasn’t alone in having a counterproductive approach to his vocation, and one of the frequent outcomes was bitter behind-the-scenes battles. He’ll always be remembered as one of American cinema’s true titans, but when he had to deal with a director he didn’t like, he wasn’t shy in letting them know.
Several filmmakers had a nightmarish time with Hackman, but as soon as the cameras were rolling, he didn’t hesitate to put on his game face. Even if he loathed a production or person with every fibre of his being, he was never anything less than professional, even when 1975’s Lucky Lady almost pushed him to the brink and caused him to blow his top at one of his colleagues.
The two-time Academy Award winner didn’t even want to play Kibby in director Stanley Donen’s seafaring dramedy opposite Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli, but with the start of shooting looming and George Segal dropping out of the role, he graciously accepted for what he called an “obscene” amount of money, admitting he was “seduced” by a $1.25million paycheque.
A combination of filming on the open water, adverse weather conditions, a completely new ending being added at the last minute, and a budget spiralling out of control saw Hackman’s patience run increasingly thin, with Reynolds revealing he became prone to telling Minnelli to “shut the fuck up” when she annoyed him, causing rising tension among the cast and crew by generally being a cantankerous git.
Before shooting had even finished, Hackman made it clear he wasn’t having a very good time. “You don’t go below,” he told The New York Times of the boat Lucky Lady had been filming on. “That’s the worst, because below it smells bad. I have a limit, but we aren’t there yet.” He got there eventually and didn’t hold back when trashing his experience.
The French Connection favourite acknowledged that he’d only made Lucky Lady for the money, and he probably kept thinking about his bank balance to get him through the days. Before the movie had even wrapped, Hackman confessed that he was losing his mind: “I’m going bananas,” he said. “The work is not satisfying.”
Unsatisfying, but also well-paid. That’s about the only positive he could find from a nightmarish shoot that threatened to drive him insane. On paper, the combination of Hackman, Reynolds, and Minnelli in the mid-1970s sounded like magic waiting to happen, but in practice, it was a picture he’d rather forget.
