“It really pissed me off”: The movie line James Caan hated
With the greatest of respect, James Caan was a character actor who occasionally stepped up to become a leading man, but he could have been a genuine superstar if he hadn’t missed out on so many roles that would go on to become iconic.
Not that he was ever found struggling for work, with the prolific veteran first bursting onto the scene in the early years of the ‘New Hollywood’ movement to become an in-demand performer, with his tough guy persona and lived-in charisma coming in very handy in a number of stellar movies.
Just as famous for his outspoken nature as he was for his on-screen performances, Caan developed a habit of rejecting many of the most notable films of his era. Among the overtures he declined were those made by The French Connection, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, and Kramer vs. Kramer, all of which would have propelled his stardom to the next level.
Of course, he was just fine without them, but no matter how opinionated Caan was, he was often left at the mercy of his directors. When it came to 1973’s literary adaptation of Cinderella Liberty, he absolutely despised the dialogue that would go on to become one of the movie’s most memorable lines after he was unequivocally overruled by the person wielding the megaphone.
Caan’s John Baggs Jr is a sailor who falls for a prostitute, only to find cracks appearing in their freshly-minted marriage when she returns to her former profession following a personal tragedy. He thought the ending was entirely self-explanatory and aptly foreshadowed Baggs’ desire to reclaim his lost love in another city, but as he explained, the director thought it needed to be spelt out for the audience.
“I was mad at the director of Cinderella Liberty, Mark Rydell, who was a friend of mine at the time,” he told Rolling Stone. “He wanted that line at the end, ‘I hear they got some big shrimp in New Orleans’. I said to him, ‘I have just spent two hours creating a character who has no quit in him, who only sees the good, and if the audience doesn’t know he’s going down to New Orleans, then I have done a terrible job.'”
He thought that was that before he was left disgruntled by the subterfuge that followed. “He said, ‘Just say it, we won’t use it,” he continued. “Well, it’s the loudest goddamned line in the movie. It really pissed me off, plus it’s bad drama.” Bad drama or not, Cinderella Liberty ended up with a Golden Globe nomination for ‘Best Motion Picture – Drama’, so it hardly killed the film.
Still, Caan was suitably enraged that he let it be known in the years to come that if it was up to him, he’d have never said the line at all.
