“I only wrote it for him”: the movie that wouldn’t be made with anyone but Burt Reynolds
It’s a bold move to gamble making a film all on one specific actor, but Adam Rifkin was set on having Burt Reynolds in his movie, and he wasn’t going to make it if the legendary Hollywood actor wasn’t available.
Reynolds perhaps isn’t the first star you’d expect a director without any significant standing in Hollywood to be set on working with, considering the stories that have long surrounded him. Back in 1988, Kathleen Turner was cast alongside him in the film Switching Channels, and for the first time, she experienced a colleague she considered to be deeply unprofessional.
“Working with Burt Reynolds was terrible. The first day Burt came in he made me cry. He said something about not taking second place to a woman,” she revealed to Vanity Fair. “His behaviour was shocking. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t someone’s equal.”
But she’s just one of many actors and filmmakers with whom Reynolds found himself at odds with throughout his career. I mean, just look at his experience of shooting Boogie Nights with Paul Thomas Anderson. Reynolds was not impressed with Anderson as a director, considering him too young and inexperienced (he was 26 during filming).
The actor told GQ rather cattily, “Every shot we did, it was like the first time [that shot had ever been done]. I remember the first shot we did in Boogie Nights, where I drive the car to Grauman’s Theatre. After he said, ‘Isn’t that amazing?’ And I named five pictures that had that same kind of shot”.
Despite these infamous feuds and examples of rather unsavoury behaviour, Rifkin had his sights set on recruiting the Smokey and the Bandit star for a project he’d written with him in mind for the leading role. The Last Movie Star was penned just for him, and talking to The Hollywood Reporter, he revealed that he simply rang Reynolds’ agent once he put his pen down, and hoped for the best.
“I said, ‘Please send this to Burt and tell him we have no money and that if he doesn’t want to do it, I’m not making it, because I only wrote it for him.’ The next day I get a call from Burt Reynolds. It blew my mind. One reason I wrote the movie was that growing up, Burt Reynolds was my hero. So when I heard his voice on the phone, my jaw hit the floor.”
In shock, he gathered himself and got to work on taking the movie to the next stages of production, with Modern Family star Ariel Winter and Boyhood’s Ellar Coltrane joining the cast. It was actually quite an odd cast, because joining them were a few more controversial stars like Chevy Chase and Hairspray actor turned (alleged) airport racist Nikki Blonsky.
The movie wasn’t a shining success, but Reynolds’ performance was praised at least, with its obviously meta elements – Reynolds plays an ageing movie star reflecting on his career – working fairly well. It was only fitting, in a way, for this to be one of Reynolds’ last ever movies, with the actor passing away at the age of 82 the following year.
