The Sylvester Stallone movie David Bowie refused to star in: “I pursued him hard”
As the old saying goes, a hero is only as good as their villain. Seeing as Sylvester Stallone is one of action cinema’s most iconic stars, it makes sense that he’d lock horns with a few memorable antagonists.
From Mr T’s Clubber Lang and Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago in the Rocky franchise to Brian Dennehy’s shit-eating sheriff in Rambo, via Wesley Snipes’ Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man and that guy with the gargantuan chin in Tango & Cash, Sly has gone toe-to-toe with some formidable adversaries.
However, in one of his biggest blockbuster hits, he almost found himself up against the most unlikely opponent of his career: David Bowie. The legendary musician was specific about what film roles he’d play, and in addition to turning down a James Bond villain, he wasn’t interested in Stallone’s Cliffhanger.
Even though Renny Harlin’s high-altitude actioner is basically ‘Die Hard on a Mountain‘, it’s one of the better knockoffs to emerge from the post-John McClane craze. That said, a huge amount of the film’s charm comes from John Lithgow’s deliciously hammy performance as Eric Qualen, which he called the best job he ever had, despite labelling his work as “dreadful.”
“I always look for something special, something to make the bad guy not just a moustache-twirling guy who is just going to blow up the whole universe with a nuclear weapon, and loves doing it, but find something special,” Harlin explained to SlashFilm. “My dream cast to play the bad guy in Cliffhanger was David Bowie. And I pursued him hard.”
The Die Hard 2 filmmaker flew out to New York to meet ‘The Thin White Duke’ and ended up “talking about the movie endlessly,” only for Bowie to decline the offer. Around the time Cliffhanger entered production, he’d recently starred in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and wasn’t far removed from wrapping up Tin Machine’s 69-date It’s My Life world tour, so his batteries needed recharging.
Harlin was apparently determined to cast a musician as the villain, considering his second choice was Bryan Ferry, who promptly flopped during a screen test: “I thought just in terms of his charisma and everything, he was perfect, but it didn’t go so well, and we didn’t end up casting him.”
On a broader scale, it’s one of those random Hollywood coincidences. Several years earlier, Bowie had been announced as A View to Kill‘s Max Zorin, but dropped out of the 007 movie and was replaced by Christopher Walken, who was originally on board for Cliffhanger before he dropped out at the last minute, which opened the door for Lithgow to play a part that Harlin desperately wanted Bowie for.
While it would have been fascinating to see Bowie chewing the scenery as the bad guy in a preposterous, action-packed Stallone flick, it would have robbed audiences of Lithgow’s gloriously over-the-top turn. That’s not to say he would have been worse had the director gotten his wish, but there were no guarantees he’d be better.
