“People wanted me”: the movie Woody Harrelson paid $400,000 not to make
The higher an actor’s profile, the more money they’re paid to play a role. It’s simple Hollywood economics, but Woody Harrelson discovered what happens when the shoe is on the other foot.
Instead of pocketing a substantial paycheque to make a movie, he put his hand into his own pocket and forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own cash to guarantee that he didn’t have to. It was a risky gamble, but one that rewarded him handsomely in the short and long term.
This was in the early 1990s, by which point Harrelson was far from a broke and struggling thespian trying to make a name for himself. While his big-screen career hadn’t quite taken off yet, his ongoing role on Cheers ensured that he was taking home a decent per-episode wage, so he could afford the payoff.
In hindsight, it was the right call, since the film he made instead of the one he’d previously signed on to lead coincided with an upturn in his cinematic fortunes. In the space of 17 months, the star played key roles in White Men Can’t Jump, Indecent Proposal, and Natural Born Killers, which went a long way to establishing him as much more than just the guy from that sitcom everyone watched.
However, there was some wrangling involved to ensure he was cast opposite Demi Moore in Adrian Lyne’s erotic drama. Harrelson had agreed to play the first title character in Jeremiah S Chechik’s dramedy, Benny & Joon, but when the offer to have Robert Redford float a million-dollar idea to sleep with his wife arrived, he opted to place the dramedy into an unfortunate position.
“By that point, people wanted me,” he explained to Backstage. “In fact, I was kind of supposed to do another movie with Johnny Depp that I pulled out of and got into a bunch of trouble. I had to pay like $400,000 to pull out at the last minute.” Naturally, that cast Benny & Joon into chaos.
With Harrelson gone, Aidan Quinn was brought in as his last-minute replacement. Winona Ryder was supposed to play Joon after Laura Dern had backed out, but with Depp also part of the cast and the then-couple having recently broken up, Ryder exited the project and got sued for it, with Mary Stuart Masterson ultimately playing the other titular role.
Meanwhile, Indecent Proposal became one of the highest-grossing releases of 1993 and the biggest box office hit of Harrelson’s film career, earning almost ten times more from cinemas than Benny & Joon. Retrospectively, he did what he thought was best for himself, and it paid off, not that he was 100% convinced that everything would work out.
“I’ll be honest; I can’t say I knew it,” he confessed. “I can just say the people who were minding me were pretty certain.” He may have fucked Benny & Joon over and landed himself a $400,000 shortfall, but he didn’t regret a thing when the picture he did make turned out to be an overwhelming success.
