The 1997 scene Jason Isaacs admitted was “probably illegal” to shoot: “Is it an orgy? Is it a massacre?”
Having set out his stall as one of the most outspoken character actors in the business, Jason Isaacs had no problem confessing that a scene shot right next to where he was working may have been illegal.
Since he wasn’t there, he can’t be 100% sure whether or not any laws were broken, but he was in close enough proximity to get a better handle on the illicit goings-on than almost everyone else. It wasn’t drugs, and it wasn’t murder, at least, but there was still something mighty suspicious unfolding.
He might have been working solidly across film, television, and the stage for almost 40 years, but thanks largely to Hollywood, Isaacs is best known for his sneering sideline in hammy villainy. Harry Potter‘s Lucius Malfoy might be the most famous example, but The Patriot‘s William Tavington is easily the best.
Whether he’s almost ruining his career by pulling double duty in 2003’s Peter Pan or earning the first major mainstream awards recognition of his professional life for The White Lotus, the star has done an effective job in cornering the market on being a detestable dickhead, and, with the greatest of respect, he’s got the perfect face for it, if we’re being honest.
He can do stoic, too, though, even if Isaacs is nowhere near as effective when he’s buttoned up. In his second major role in an American movie, and the first one anybody remembers, since you either didn’t know or completely forgot he was in Dragonheart, the actor played ship doctor DJ in Paul WS Anderson’s Event Horizon.
Is the sci-fi horror flick a good film? That’s up for debate, although it does have its moments. However, it can’t be denied that over the last three decades it’s become a firm cult favourite, to the point that its fabled director’s cut has taken on almost mythic proportions, mostly because nobody will ever see it after the extra footage was destroyed.
The theatrical version is pretty gnarly as it is, but Isaacs suggested that some of the scenes left on the cutting room floor would have significantly upped the ante. “If you watch the film, it does occasionally flash to what happened when it went to hell,” he explained. “And there’s all kinds of what looks like, ‘Is it an orgy? Is it a massacre? What’s going on?”
Beyond that, he even suggested that those orgy/massacre scenes were even more shocking in the flesh. “They shot it on a soundstage next to us, and there are things that are definitely illegal to do now, probably illegal to do then, with a whole bunch of people with certain things wrong with their body or mind,” he added, making it sounds like some seriously fucked-up stuff was going down on that set.
Sadly, we’ll never know if it was a bird, a plane, a massacre, an orgy, or merely a bunch of extras and background actors being so good at their jobs they convinced Isaacs that laws were being flagrantly broken, but this long after Event Horizon‘s 1997 release, he must have seen some shit for it to remain seared into his brain so long after the fact.
