The movie that made Michael Caine put a stipulation in every contract that followed: “Shovelling up horse shit”
Most actors get into the business for either the love of the profession or the money, sometimes a combination of both, but Michael Caine was so dissuaded by one particularly miserable experience that he went out of his way to ensure it would never be replicated.
There’s something commendable about a performer being so adamant they’ll never make the same mistake twice that they add a clause into their contracts for the rest of their days, guaranteeing there’s no chance it’ll happen ever again. However, it does ironically carry a shade of the Nigel Powers about it.
When Caine made his cameo appearance in the Austin Powers sequel, Goldmember, his debonair patriarch famously said, “There are only two things I can’t stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the Dutch.” It’s not an exact like-for-like comparison, but even now that he’s retired, don’t expect to see him show up in a Spanish municipality anytime soon.
1969’s war drama Play Dirty stars the two-time Academy Award winner as an oil executive tasked to lead a band of convicts through North Africa in an effort to destroy a Nazi fuel depot at the height of World War II. As well as his untrustworthy accomplices, the harsh desert conditions begin to convince the out of his depth businessman that he may well have embarked upon a suicide mission.
The original plan was for Play Dirty to shoot on location in Israel, but when that fell through, Morocco and Algeria were suggested. When that didn’t pan out, either, director Andre de Toth instead settled on the Tabernas Desert in Almería, which left the leading man less than thrilled by the end of production.
“There are six sand dunes in Almería, we’d all come round the hill chasing Rommel’s tanks, and there’s horse shit all over the desert and a stagecoach in the other directions being chased by Indians,” Caine was quoted as saying in biography Raising Caine. “The other film units were forever wiping out tank tracks to get their westerns, and we were forever shovelling up horse shit and wiping out hoof prints to get our El Alamein.”
Just like that, Caine swore to himself that no matter how lucrative the offer may be, Almería was officially on his no-fly list. Play Dirty must have been a genuinely horrendous time for the star if he spent the next four decades of his career steadfastly refusing to even contemplate a return, but he is known for having a certain code that he’ll only break under certain circumstances.
Steven Seagal’s directorial debut On Deadly Ground was another misstep from Caine after he admitted he should have never broken his “cardinal rule” of bad movies by agreeing to head off to the frozen tundra for the sake of a film he knew from the very beginning wasn’t going to be anything worth writing home about.
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