Movies are a cultural viewfinder, filled with snapshots of who people are, what they believe and want, and who they strive to be. A motion picture can condense heady subjects into a couple of hours and pique curiosity long after the credits roll. Going to the movies is both a pastime and event, a shared leisure, escape, and engagement. The ability to experience multiple experiences is the luxury of cinema. Films move audiences to take action, laugh, cry, think, and be endlessly entertained.
There comes a time when a movie doesn’t do so well at the box office for a number of reasons. Poor marketing, budgeting, or word of mouth can cause celluloid to burst into flames. What could be worse than moviegoers disavowing a director’s seminal vision of the zeitgeist? A director knowing and admitting he made a bad movie. Understanding what went wrong during the making of a movie becomes more interesting than the movie itself. Unfortunately for its directors, the ends did not justify the means.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Alfred Hitchcock - Rope (1948)
The psychological crime thriller from Alfred Hitchcock was one of Hollywood’s most experimental films. Hitchcock called Rope an “experiment that didn’t work out.” The movie was shot in real time using four long takes edited together to give the appearance of a single, continuous take for the entire running time. Hitchcock directed with meticulous measures, making sure props, cameras, microphones, and actors were harmoniously choreographed and in sync. Both the film and the play it’s based on share a homosexual relationship between its main characters, controversial for the time. The real dissatisfaction, however, came from the tedium Hitchcock devoted himself to. This gave him the fear something would go wrong during the shoot. At one point, an electrician was caught in a scene. Hitchcock would painstakingly shoot the entire film over again until it was shot all the way through uninterrupted.
David Fincher - Alien 3 (1992)
David Fincher disowned Alien 3, saying to The Guardian, “I had to work on it for two years, got fired off it three times and I had to fight for every single thing. No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me.” The third installment of the Alien franchise was Fincher’s directorial debut, and he had big shoes to fill. The production team wasn’t as passionate as Fincher was, leading to frustrating studio interventions and rewrites.
David Lynch - Dune (1984)
Universal Pictures
A masterpiece of science fiction by Frank Herbert was adapted by the surrealist director David Lynch with a negative reception. Some argue that the film was inaccessible to audiences unfamiliar with the novel. Others thought the disjointed, ornamented storytelling from Lynch was heavy-handed and too abstract. Rather than having the main character be treated like a god, the film instead makes him a god. As a result, sequels with Lynch were canceled. The director said that Dune was “no one’s fault but my own… I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved… [but] I knew I didn’t have final cut.”
Jerry Lewis - The Day the Clown Cried (1972)
A previously unreleased film from comedian Jerry Lewis, The Day the Clown Cried was prevented by Lewis from ever being seen until June 2024. No complete film negative exists and its release has been withheld due to copyright issues as well. Lewis, along with other comedians, were apprehensive about playing a German clown that led Jewish children to gas chambers during the Holocaust, but he took the part and made revisions to the script. Lewis made a dark comedy with a sympathetic clown, which viewers of rough cuts said was wildly insensitive, comparing it to Life Is Beautiful and Jakob the Liar, films that used the plight of the Jewish people in Nazi concentration camps for tragicomedy. Lewis did it to show a stark contrast between life and laughter: “I believed it could be a black mark against people who felt strength from hate. I feel weak from hate.” Despite Lewis’ fears in making the controversial film, it highlighted some events of the Holocaust when little documentation was being done at the time. Today, it still challenges the fine line between humor and horror.
Joel Schumacher - Batman and Robin (1997)
Joel Schumacher was pushed by the studio to make his film more toyetic. The idea of making an abstract film even more abstract by treating its cast as inanimate objects defeats the purpose. Schumacher agreed with the negative response the film received and apologized to Batman fans. “A lot of it was my choice. No one is responsible for my mistakes but me… [Batman & Robin] was like I had murdered a baby.” A Bat Credit Card couldn’t pay for the damages done to the Dark Knight’s franchise.
Josh Trank - Fantastic Four (2015)
Josh Trank didn’t care for the superhero genre when he signed on as director of the Fantastic Four reboot. Trank wrote his own script against initial screenwriter Jeremy Slater’s. Trank was instead inspired by David Cronenberg’s The Fly and Scanners for the dark aesthetic, but his version of the film was redacted by 20th Century Fox during production. Trank posted his dissatisfaction with his film on Twitter one day before its release: “A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though.”
Kevin Yagher - Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (1996)
The Hellraiser series went in a new direction under the supervision of its author and original director Cliver Barker. When Miramax Films agreed to the pitch for Hellraiser: Bloodline, they lowered the budget due to the expected cost of intricate scenes. Kevin Yagher was a special effects technician brought on to direct. Over the course of filming, crew members either suffered illnesses or were replaced until the film’s completion. The events that occurred may or may not have been a consequence of filming at the supposedly haunted I. Magnin Building. Exhausted by the shoot, Yagher declined reshooting the studio’s requests and left the project. Yagher ended up removing his name from the credits and using the nickname for directorial disappointment instead: Alan Smithee.
Woody Allen - Annie Hall (1977)
United Artists
Breaking the fourth wall is a useful social commentary tool for director Woody Allen. His comedy Annie Hall is often regarded as his best film because of the candor behind the technique. Audiences thought the film revolved around the relationship between Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) and Allen’s character, Alvy Singer. For Allen, the focus was meant to be on the mindset of a male and a self-critique of his public figure and neurotic humor through the semi-caricature of Singer. He said, “In the end, I had to reduce the film to just me and Diane Keaton, and that relationship, so I was quite disappointed in that movie.” The irony of Allen addressing the audience and still not getting this point across the first time is priceless.
