Why Morgan Freeman changed the ending of a movie he told people not to watch
Honesty is usually the best policy in any walk of life, but when it comes to acting, the talented are self-aware and smart enough not to trash their most recent movie. However, all bets are off once the dust has settled, an opportunity Morgan Freeman seized with both hands.
After finally breaking through to the mainstream towards the end of the 1980s, it’s fascinating to imagine how Freeman’s career could have panned out were Driving Miss Daisy to not exist. It might be regularly named as among the least-deserving winners of the Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’ there’s ever been, but it was a huge boost for the star’s profile.
Freeman secured his first Oscar nomination for playing a vicious street-level pimp in 1987’s Street Smart, but from Driving Miss Daisy onwards, he was largely cast as sages, veterans ready to dispense nuggets of life-affirming wisdom at a moment’s notice, and kindly figures without so much as a bad bone in their body.
In his own words, the icon was in danger of being typecast as “noble, wise, and dignified”, which is ironic considering his breakout part was that of a pimp. He’s rarely played villains in the last four decades, but on the first occasion that he did in the post-Shawshank Redemption years, he ended up having the ending changed to ensure his survival.
Mikael Salomon’s Hard Rain was a colossal flop at the box office, and while there are people willing to die on the hill defending it as an unsung gem from action cinema’s boom period, Freeman isn’t one of them. He was originally set to be killed off at the end of the film, but after test audiences decided they didn’t want to see him die, he lobbied to ensure he rode off into the sunset.
“I played a bad guy in a movie and they showed it to an audience – and we’re letting an audience tell us what to do now – and the audience said, ‘Well, I don’t want him, Morgan can’t die!’ And I was a thief. ‘He should get some money’. So that’s a dilemma. It’s a real dilemma,” he said to The Guardian.
“We went back into the studio and reshot it so that I didn’t die, and I did get some money,” he continued before telling anyone willing to listen they shouldn’t waste their time on Hard Rain. “Did any of you see this movie? Don’t, just don’t. Well anyway, this is the case, you know I’m right.”
It’s pretty mischievous for Freeman to acquiesce to the audience’s demands, push the studio into reshooting the end of Hard Rain so he survives and then telling people not to watch it, but he ended up getting paid for his efforts either way, so he’s clearly unbothered.
