The cancelled passion project that crushed Gene Hackman: “It’s really depressing”
There are many artists who have one passion project that keeps them going – an idea they lie awake at night thinking about and holding onto amidst everything else. It could be a role that you’re dying to play or a script that you one day hope to make, but there are many people in the film business who cling to one story and use it as inspiration to fuel their career.
Whether it be Metropolis and Francis Ford Coppola’s bizarre swansong or Martin Scorsese’s version of the Kool-Aid movie in The Studio, countless filmmakers have shared their struggles in creating their passion project, from the hurdles of blocking off a freeway for the opening scene of Damien Chazelle’s La La Land to Jane Schoenbrun’s titular masterpiece I Saw The TV Glow. However, while it is great when these projects are pulled off, there are many who aren’t so lucky, with Gene Hackman once describing the film he desperately wanted to make before the plug was pulled last minute.
Many directors have attempted to turn classic novels into films, ranging from Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby to the disastrous It Ends With Us series. When working with a well-known text, it can be nearly impossible to do so without immense scrutiny from fans of the original story, something that is being seen in spades with Emerald Fennell’s controversial adaptation of Wuthering Heights, with many criticising their insensitive approach to casting and whitewashing of such a pivotal story.
However, Hackman found himself attached to an adaptation of Ernest Hemmingway’s classic novel, Across the River and into the Trees, with John Frankenheimer attached as the director before it all fell apart. It was one of those seemingly doomed productions, with endless ups and downs as the project teetered between one step forwards and two steps back, flitting between shoots as it was repeatedly stalled.
For this reason, perhaps it was a cursed film from the beginning, with warning signs during pre-production as six different directors and stars were attached to the project, and 20 different versions of the script were commissioned.
However, after weeks spent filming in Italy and finally making a little bit of progress, the film was once again cancelled, with Hackman saying, “We spent weeks in Italy last winter working on the script. And we were set to start shooting in three weeks’ time. Now I just found out it’s been canceled. It’s really depressing, I worked hard with John on the script revisions and we did some good work, I think. And he tested Mariel Hemingway for the girl”.
It is extremely demoralising to start shooting something only to then find out that it is being cancelled, with many people working on something that turned out to be a waste of effort. Unfortunately, this is something that happens fairly often, with some studios shooting entire movies only to bury them after being intimidated by the post-production costs, which is baffling considering how much it costs to shoot something.
