The movie Jeff Bridges was banned from starring in: “The studio wouldn’t do it”
There are some actors who slot perfectly within the mind of another director, whether it be Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro or Laura Dern and David Lynch.
It’s the kind of unexplainable intrinsic connection, with two minds completely uniting in a shared vision of an idea, leading to films founded on a creative partnership at the heart of it.
This type of working relationship should be nurtured at all costs, with the rarity of two artists completely understanding one another and working on the same wavelength more than once being a rare occurrence in an often temperamental business.
However, one of Terry Gilliam’s creative soulmates was unfortunately stripped away from him when trying to cast his 1995 film 12 Monkeys, with one previous colleague being immediately rejected from the project, despite his best efforts to make it happen.
Gilliam is a once-in-a-generation mastermind, known for crafting wacky and beautiful stories about people who defy the darkness of the world around them and find a way towards the light, even if it is all in their heads and doesn’t exist at all. Whether it be the imagined version of New York in The Fisher King or the dreamworld in Brazil, the director has a knack for capturing escapist versions of reality that help his characters break free from bleak and unfeeling worlds.
However, he became somewhat infamous for his onscreen pairings, with the combined powers of Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges being one of his most beloved and unexpected offerings. But when the director went to cast for his 1995 film, many audiences were surprised by the very conventional lineup, believing Gilliam to have lost his touch and given in to the norms of Hollywood.
But the director later revealed that this was completely out of his control, describing how his first choice had actually been another pairing. When discussing this, Gilliam said, “The first names I came up with were Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges, because both of them are great actors, but the studio wouldn’t do it with them. So I pulled away from the whole project”.
“I felt I could do it if we had control over it,” he added, “But it was clear from the problems over casting that we didn’t quite have the kind of control I wanted”.
He added how the final casting was done and the deliberations he underwent to settle on it: “Then a few weeks later, I got a call to say that Bruce Willis was interested. ‘Uh-huh,’ I thought. We talked to David and Jan a lot about whether we thought Bruce could do it. I had met him on Fisher King, when I was casting the part that Jeff played; he was really keen to work with me and we spent a very enjoyable afternoon together.”
While Brad Pitt and Willis might be undeniable movie stars, Gilliam was known for working with people less conventional, which was no doubt why he connected so deeply with Bridges. But unfortunately, the studio gods were not on his side and clearly wanted a more palatable cast, and while it might have worked out well with their suggestions, who knows how it might have been if he had been able to reunite with his former collaborator.
