The movie Winona Ryder made to avoid being sued: “I tried pulling out of it”
While the 198os saw a new wave of teen idols exploding onto the mainstream consciousness, Winona Ryder opted for the left-field, with slightly darker and more complex roles compared to many of her contemporaries, making her one of the most recognisable and idiosyncratic stars of her generation. She quickly proved her versatility with roles in everything from Heathers to The Age of Innocence, sailing into the 1990s as reigning over the relatable and charming performance category.
Despite riding high on the back of multiple successes, which allowed her to work with the likes of big names such as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola (just before his career got considerably worse), a few of Ryder’s films failed to find acclaim. This is an aspect of being a Hollywood star that actors must learn to take in their stride; you can try your best, but sometimes a film simply won’t turn out as good as you’d hoped. Ryder didn’t let the failure of a certain movie stop her from persevering in the industry, although she found the whole experience rather frustrating.
It was the middle of the decade, and the actor became intrigued by a script based on James Salter’s short story Twenty Minutes. She signed onto the project, titled Boys, which would see her star opposite Lukas Haas, playing a girl named Patty who Haas’ John rescues and keeps hidden in his boarding school dorm as the pair engage in a romantic relationship.
While Ryder gave a strong performance, as usual, the movie was received negatively, which the actor wasn’t too surprised about. In fact, when she had agreed to do the film, the script she’d read was rather different to the one that ended up informing the final product.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter in 1997, Ryder revealed: “Reality Bites and Boys are the examples. I think that if those movies had had an unknown actress, they would have stuck more to the script, but because they got a known actress, they tried to capitalise on that and make them big movies and, in the case of Boys, completely destroyed it.”
The movie presented Ryder with some legal issues, leading her to suck up her problems with the new script and film it anyway, much to her lack of interest. “Boys was this tiny script that I liked and got attached to do. I also like [director] Stacy Cochran, so I verbally agreed to do it. Then I got this new draft in the mail that was completely different. I tried to pull out of it, but they said they’d sue,” she explained.
Despite the fact that Ryder would’ve preferred not to have done the movie, she walked away from it knowing more about the industry, especially the legal side of things. “Next time I get a script for a tiny movie, I’ll have to have a serious contract drawn up saying nothing can be changed without my approval. Except the thing is, I don’t want to have that kind of power when it’s somebody else’s movie. I don’t want to start taking control away from the director.”
Sadly for Ryder, Boys hasn’t gone down in cinema history as a particularly noteworthy piece of filmmaking, but hey, not everything can be. She has continued to find success over the years, however, proving herself as a star with enough versatility to prevent a few bad movies from making a dent in her reputation.
