The director Burt Reynolds regretted working with: “Steven Spielberg and George Lucas told me he was good”
There was a certain quality to Burt Reynolds that made him both alluring and aversive. The brutish man was not only incredibly good-looking and unafraid to bear witness to it, but he also had a no-holds-barred attitude to working, especially as he grew older. It meant that as he frequented interviews for promotional runs or even worked on set with some of the greats in Hollywood, he would be confident in his confrontational demeanour. But, sometimes, he was in the right.
Perhaps the most famous of these disputes was his clash with now-revered but then-very green director Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed Reynolds in Boogie Nights. An actor with a penchant for saying yes to movies after only reading the numbers on the paycheque, Reynolds was supremely unhappy with the picture about the pornography industry and found himself at odds with the filmmaker throughout much of the shoot.
The veteran actor and the new kid on the director’s block were a match made in hell. Reynolds noted, “Every shot we did, it was like the first time [that shot had ever been done].”
Speaking about the tensions between him and the director on the Conan O’Brien show, the actor noted: “I didn’t want to hit him in the face, I just wanted to hit him, I don’t think he liked me,” before adding that he hadn’t actually seen Boogie Nights and “didn’t want to see it”.
But he isn’t the only director who found a tough time working with Reynolds, and there was another filmmaker who found it difficult to get on board with the charismatic contrarian, the two combustible agents seemingly working together to create a terrible atmosphere on Malone. The picture is one of Reynolds’ worst and is typified by the difficult scene he and director Harley Cokeliss endured, though, at least in this instance, Reynolds acted more peacefully than is usually expected.
A combination of an early morning call, a cramped set and lengthy dialogue for the shoot meant Reynolds’ co-star Cliff Robertson was in an anxious spot when being asked to re-shoot by Cokeliss endlessly. Rather than react with hot tempers, Reynolds tried to guide Robertson through the scene, helping his co-star to achieve the right tempo and pitch for the performance. Robertson confirmed: “Burt knew what was happening in there could have turned ugly. He made sure I stayed focused on what my character needed… What Burt did was a very nice and needed gesture that helped me do the scene right.”
However, the exchange was enough for Reynolds to always regret working with the director and change the way he approached movies. He decided he now needed to do more when researching who he would work with. “Listen,” he explained, “I have to start doing my homework. I have to start writing names down of writers, and actors, and directors of movies I like.”
The homework he was referring to was checking out Cokeliss’ filmography. The director’s previous effort was the poorly reviewed Black Moon Rising, a picture Reynolds admittedly hadn’t seen and would soon realise was a gigantic error when agreeing to participate in Malone. But, to his credit, he had done some research — he had asked friends and colleagues in the industry and was adamant: “Steven Spielberg and George Lucas told me he was good”.
Cokeliss’ career would flounder, and Reynolds would never work with him again. While Reynolds having a tough time with his colleague was nothing new, holding his tongue certainly was. The only people at fault here were Spielberg and Lucas for making him do the picture in the first place.
