The movie Morgan Freeman called the “one major nightmare” of his career
It’s par for the course for an actor who’s been working since the early 1960s to have made a misstep or two during their career, but there’s one movie that Morgan Freeman referred to as the most haunting nightmare in his stage and screen back catalogue.
The prolific veteran has made a lot of bad movies, and most of them have been released in the last decade. Of course, that was to be expected when he suddenly decided that his 80s were the ideal time to start racking up a string of shitty straight-to-video thrillers like an older and more wizened Nicolas Cage.
They provide the easiest paydays a recognisable name can get, though, and since he’s been more open than most of his peers in admitting that the almighty dollar is the number one driving force behind his choice of roles, it’s hard to begrudge an honest man for wanting to make as much money as he can.
Not that Freeman will be remembered for slumming it in bargain basement genre flicks, when he’s lent his name, gravitas, and syrupy sweet tones to countless classics, with his Clint Eastwood collaborations, The Shawshank Redemption, Seven, the Dark Knight trilogy, and many more, compensating for his recent fondness for utter dreck.
As long as he gets paid, the Academy Award winner doesn’t really care how the finished film turns out, although there’s one notorious dud that’s haunted him for decades. On paper, it should have been a runaway success, since it gathered together a cast and crew who were all riding the crest of a wave, and it was based on a wildly popular and bestselling novel, to boot.
And yet, when The Daily Beast pressed Freeman to take a trip down memory lane and single out one of his credits that he wanted wiped from his filmography, there was only one contender. “I had one major nightmare,” he confessed. “I’m not sure if I should say what it is…” Taking an educated guess, The Bonfire of the Vanities was mentioned.
“That’s it!” he confirmed. “It was one of my favourite, favourite books, and… Come on! Let’s go back and do it again, and do it right.” Remakes, reboots, and reinventions are all the rage these days, but in the three and a half decades since its release, nobody has thought that taking another crack at Tom Wolfe’s novel was a risk worth taking.
It should have been great, considering that the prospect of a satirical Brian De Palma black comedy releasing in 1990 with Freeman being joined by Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, and a young Kirsten Dunst was a tantalising prospect, only for The Bonfire of the Vanities to bomb at the box office, take a battering from critics, and land five Razzie nominations.
Freeman isn’t the only one who regrets it, either, with Tom Hanks also wishing that he hadn’t bothered making it in the first place, which speaks to just how badly the ball was dropped.
