The “terrible” movie Harrison Ford completely disowned: “I hated making that film”
Despite starring in a few bad movies and many forgettable ones, Harrison Ford doesn’t tend to speak ill of his previous work. There remain exceptions, though, and only one that he completely disavowed.
It’s become a running gag that the erstwhile Han Solo refuses to acknowledge the existence of the Star Wars Holiday Special, but he still doesn’t hate it as much as George Lucas, who’s never given it an official release because he knows he fucked up.
Some of Ford’s immediate post-Star Wars roles aren’t remembered too fondly, either, with the star surmising Force 10 from Navarone as “a piece of total dogshit” that he only made because it was the only offer that came his way before Lucas’ franchise-launcher had released, after which he was inundated.
It was also part of his master plan to diversify his onscreen portfolio, with the actor keenly aware that he didn’t want to be ‘the Star Wars guy’ and nothing else. Another thing he’d noticed by the late 1970s was that, despite being a handsome fella, he’d never been given a love scene in a movie, something he was desperate to change.
That was the sole motivator behind his decision to sign on for writer and director Peter Hyams’ 1979 romantic drama, Hanover Street, where he played an American pilot who starts an affair with a married woman while in London, only to end up flying her husband into Nazi-occupied France on a secret mission.
“I don’t even like to think about Hanover Street,” he said several years later. “The director and I did not get along. I’ve never seen the film. My motivation for doing Hanover Street was because I had never kissed a female human being on the screen before. The characters I played were totally sexless, and here was a movie that was being touted as a romance.”
It’s a valid enough reason for doing it, with Ford also suggesting that the Star Wars-assisted increase in his basic salary may have been another. “That was a clear, obvious reason for doing it,” he explained. “There are a lot of other reasons, which may or may not have been the right ones for doing it.”
With the benefit of hindsight, his determination to prove himself as a manly man at long last by romancing a member of the opposite sex was something he regretted: “I hated making that film from start to finish,” he stated. “They wanted me to promote it, but they wouldn’t show it to me, and I’d never pay to see it. It was a terrible experience.”
The good news was that hardly anyone saw Hanover Street after it died a quick and painless death at the box office, but whenever it was brought up, Ford didn’t waste any time in distancing himself as far away from it as possible.
