John le Carré once called filmmaking “the enforced bonding of irreconcilable opposites”, an ultimately collaborative effort that requires multiple moving parts to function. Although there are numerous movies that faced this tension in post-production, such as Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four or Zack Snyder’s Justice League (although these apparently weren’t much fun to film either), this list overviews those movies which faced major obstacles during the physical shoot. Sometimes to achieve that ‘movie magic’, behind-the-scenes had to undergo some true nightmares.
It’s worth mentioning that such production feats can become over-fetishized. Just because something was ‘hard’ to make does not mean it is ‘good’. Filmmakers who seek out such production difficulties can normalise the abuse and poor conditions of workers beneath autocratic directors. Plus, there’s a definite element of toxic masculinity in these typically testosterone-heavy shoots trying to ‘prove’ their dedication and toughness within a ‘superficial’ medium of film. It’s not only that Greta Gerwig was determined to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere on the set of Lady Bird, it’s also that high-strung tempers are far less tolerated in women. These stories aren’t meant to validate how gruelling such productions can be, but rather to highlight the efforts that can occur behind-the-scenes.
Robert Eggers’ critically-acclaimed The Lighthouse follows a trend of poor filming conditions replicating the mania of the film’s main characters. The rainy and cold weather of the remote Nova Scotia location made everybody wet and miserable, pushing the cast and crew against each other despite its relatively small size. Robert Pattinson admits to “nearly punching” the director for making him repeatedly re-take scenes and barely talking to co-star Willem Dafoe outside of their scenes together. Although Pattinson seemingly inflicted a lot upon himself, making himself vomit, pee himself and eat mud to go ‘full method’ as the increasingly unhinged Lighthouse Keeper. One can only hope he pushes himself as far for The Batman.
Apocalypse Now was famously troubled during its production, the madness of the trek into the Vietnamese jungle mirrored by the hellish months-long filming in the Philippines. Originally Apocalypse Now was meant to be directed by George Lucas, but after he got caught up with a little film called Star Wars, Francis Ford Coppola took up the ambitious project after the huge success of The Godfather Part II. As a result, Coppola and the crew were delayed by the oppressive heat and deadly diseases of the region, as well as having sets destroyed by typhoons. Additionally, Coppola was still figuring the script out on the fly, going through several mental breakdowns as he struggled with the enormity of the production and its budget (much of which he had personally financed).
Matters where not helped by Marlon Brando infamously arriving on set late, having not read the script or original book, and 100 pounds overweight. He also came into blows with Dennis Hopper, who was constantly high and intoxicated during filming. Martin Sheen was also undergoing alcoholic issues, with Apocalypse Now’s opening scene of his hotel-room having Sheen be actually drunk and really cutting his hand on the mirror. Later on Sheen suffered a heart-attack and had to crawl himself onto a public bus for first-aid. Coppola downplayed the incident as heat-stroke so that investors would not pull out. All these problems are captured in Hearts of Darkness, alongside Coppola’s adamant confession about this classic widely-regarded masterpiece; “the film will not be good”.
Coppola and Apocalypse Now were heavily inspired by Aguirre: The Wrath of God, but Fitzcarraldo is the most infamous of Werner Herzog’s film productions. The movie’s major set-piece revolves around a 320-ton steamship being hauled over a hill, which Herzog decided to replicate for real without any special effects. The harsh conditions led to many injuries, including lead actor Jason Robards getting dysentery and having to be recast, and 40% of the film reshot. Herzog had worked with his replacement, Klaus Kinski, before, but this hardly improved Kinski’s notoriously temperamental mood, who would go on volcanic rant about the most trivial of details.
Kinski angered everybody so much that some Peruvian extras offered in all sincerity to kill him for Herzog, which he reluctantly declined, as he needed to finish the film. However, several indigenous extras and crew did sustain serious injury, and a few even died, when making this film, making Fitzcarraldo an extremely ethically controversial film. Its own making-of documentary, Burden of Dreams, details this tumultuous process although it also details Herzog’s appreciation for the crew to accomplish this spectacle. Herzog would not ask them to do anything he wouldn’t do himself, although there is little that Herzog wouldn’t do.
James “King of the World” Cameron has a reputation for being one of the most fearsome and exacting directors in Hollywood. As a perfectionist, Cameron would often take charge of all technical aspects to deliver the precise film he wants. This made large-scale productions like Titanic and Avatar particularly stressful, but even Cameron admits he “never wants to go through” something like The Abyss again. Focusing on a mysterious deep-sea occurrence, 40% of principal photography took place underwater in specially created tanks. Not only did this mean most filming was spent literally drowning the actors on a 6-month, 70-hour-week, shoot on isolated claustrophobic sets, but flooding and technical issues led to severe delays. The difficulty of underwater filming was exacerbated by a lightning-strike that damaged to black tarpaulin cover of the tanks, so that production had to shift to cold and dark night-shoots.
The slow pace, given everyone needed to be depressurised and set-up underwater, and dismal conditions made everybody involved miserable. Michael Biehn claimed to have only acted four weeks out of 5 months on set. Ed Harris had a full breakdown one night for his scenes, which included having his helmet filled with water he had to pretend to breathe (in the film this water is oxygenated ‘breathable’ water. In reality it was not). Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio underwent a brutal resuscitation scene where she is soaking wet, topless, and being hit by Ed Harris; one take causing her to explode saying “we are not animals!”. In fairness Cameron himself was endangered, nearly drowning one shoot when his regulator failed and his diving assistant, not realising this, held Cameron down underwater to try and ‘calm’ him. Cameron only survived by punching him in the face and swimming upwards. Many involved refuse to talk about the project now, but during the rigorous shoot they gave it derogatory names like “Life’s Abyss and Then You Dive”, or more simply, “The Abuse”.
Fury is one of the most egregious examples of these, as it feels most like the production unnecessarily manufactured to replicate the wet miserable grime of the WW2 setting (rather than just happening due to the environment). David Ayer pushed the actors to experience the authentic ‘bonding’ of their tank-unit, having them undergo a brutal 4-month boot camp training and live in their tank together (which included eating, sleeping and defecating). The men physically fought each other in preparation, with Brad Pitt punching Jon Bernthal in the stomach and kicking him between the legs. Ayer also encouraged them to personally insult each other, admitting to slipping personal secrets to each other for ammunition.
Shia LaBeouf was particularly adamant to prove his ‘serious actor’ bona fides with Fury (that he was also undergoing serious substance abuse issues at the time seems relevant), having a tooth pulled out for filming (by a dentist) and cutting genuine scars onto his face (by himself). Of all the film productions, Fury seems to the one most ‘trying’ to be a nightmare to make. Its success in this regard says little about whether it was worth it.
For years of Hollywood legend, Terry Gilliam’s The Man who Killed Don Quixote was the most famous film never made. Since Gilliam’s interest in 1989, it existed in an excruciating ‘development hell’ that took 29 years to be made. The 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha made the film particularly infamous. After optioning and trying to get it made for over 10 years, Gilliam finally started filming in 2000. Only on the first day an airplane from a nearby NATO base made footage unusable. And on the second day, hail and flash-floods damaged filming equipment and irrevocably altered the landscape. Additional problems included the lead actor, Jean Rochefort, having to quit mid-way through filming due to contracting a herniated disc.
Gilliam made repeated attempts to make the film after Lost in La Mancha, which both increased general knowledge of the project, but also aided its notoriety as a ‘cursed film’ that investors did no want to touch. Gilliam also had to reclaim the rights from insurance companies of the 2000 shoot, only reacquiring them in 2005. As he tried to secure financing, actors like Johnny Depp either lost interest, or like John Hurt, died before filming could start. Gilliam then went through a protracted legal dispute with producer Paula Branco (who manipulated the budget, made overt creative demands and declared that he now owned the film), before eventually releasing The Man who Killed Don Quixote in 2018, starring Jonathan Pryce and Adam Driver.
This frustrating journey was underlined by the irony of being a Don Quixote adaptation, a story about madmen “tilting at windmills” and creating grand quests for themselves. Many of these movies depict uncompromising men, the nightmarish productions mirroring their obsessive alienating measures. So no matter how underwhelming The Man who Killed Don Quixote itself was received, the trials and effort of the behind-the-scenes production becomes a legend unto itself.
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