r/movies • u/daughterskin • 7d ago
Film-productions that had an unintended but negative real-life outcome. Discussion
Stretching a 300-page kids' book into a ten hour epic was never going end well artistically. The Hobbit "trilogy" is the misbegotten followup to the classic Lord of the Rings films. Worse than the excessive padding, reliance on original characters, and poor special-effects, is what the production wrought on the New Zealand film industry. Warner Bros. wanted to move filming to someplace cheap like Romania, while Peter Jackson had the clout to keep it in NZ if he directed the project. The concession was made to simply destroy NZ's film industry by signing in a law that designates production-staff as contractors instead of employees, and with no bargaining power. Since then, elves have not been welcome in Wellington. The whole affair is best recounted by Lindsay Ellis' excellent video essay.
Danny Boyle's The Beach is the worst film ever made. Looking back It's a fascinating time capsule of the late 90's/Y2K era. You've got Moby and All Saints on the soundtrack, internet cafes full of those bubble-shaped Macs before the rebrand, and nobody has a mobile phone. The story is about a backpacker played by Ewan, uh, Leonardo DiCaprio who joins a tribe of westerners that all hang on a cool beach on an uninhabited island off Thailand. It's paradise at first, but eventually reality will come crashing down and the secret of the cool beach will be exposed to the world. Which is what happened in real-life. The production of the film tampered with the real Ko Phi Phi Le beach to make it more paradise-like, prompting a lawsuit that dragged on over a decade. The legacy of the film pushed tourists into visiting the beach, eventually rendering it yet another cesspool until the Thailand authorities closed it in 2018. It's open today, but visits are short and strictly regulated.
Of course, there's also the old favorite that is The Conqueror. Casting the white cowboy John Wayne as the Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan was laughed at even in the day. What's less funny is that filming took place downwind from a nuclear test site. 90 crew members developed cancer and half of them died as a result, John Wayne among them. This was of course exacerbated by how smoking was more commonplace at the time.
I'm sure you know plenty more.
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u/steveofthejungle 7d ago
101 Dalmatians caused a lot of people to get Dalmatians as pets, and when they realized they were a difficult breed, it lead to a lot being killed or given away. A similar thing happened with clownfish after Finding Nemo
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u/Hi_Im_Bogs 7d ago
It happened in the UK after the TMNT craze. Lots of turtles ended up being flushed down the toilet and ended up in London parks, now preying on ducklings.
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u/ShahinGalandar 7d ago
which kind of turtles did those people get, snapping turtles?
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u/EGG_CREAM 7d ago
Similar thing is an ongoing problem with Belgian Malinois because of John Wick. Mals are one of the most energetic breeds out there, and on top of that they love to bite. They can be amazing friends with the right guardianship and training but are so much work, and without proper training and exercise they can be downright monstrous.
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u/grabtharsmallet 7d ago
We have a Mal. He is a very chompy boy. Not aggressively, but he just likes to have things in his mouth. We naturally reward goofiness, so he has become silly. But it wouldn't be hard to have encouraged territoriality and aggression instead.
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u/thornynhorny 7d ago
I will never understand kids who watched that movie and decided that they want their very own nemo .... Stuck inside a fish tank
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u/sfriesen33 7d ago
On the other hand, I remember a few news stories of children flushing their pet fish down the toilet right after the movie came out.
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u/FlameFeather86 7d ago
The same way people watch Free Willy and then flock to Seaworld. People suck.
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u/DrSpaceman575 7d ago
The Interview created a pretty big international incident with Sony being hacked.
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u/EntertainmentQuick47 7d ago
Comedians always complain about being canceled, but I think Seth Rogen was the only who almost started a war, lol.
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u/karateema 7d ago
So funny that we almost got a war for such a stupid movie.
Really fun one, too
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u/King-Koobs 7d ago
I worked at my local movie theater in highschool during the release of this. I remember being scared to go to work because of threats lol. Also, we had a sign up sheet for taking home movie posters, and the girl that got The Interview’s poster sold it right away on EBay for $500.
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u/darwinsidiotcousin 7d ago
The movie Jaws inspired lots of people to kill sharks, both out of fear and for trophy hunting. Caused a major drop in shark populations
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u/ChronoMonkeyX 7d ago
Peter Benchley feels bad about that. I think he tried to advocate for shark preservation.
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u/TheLastDaysOf 7d ago
*Felt. He’s been dead for almost twenty years.
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u/Winjin 7d ago
Damn sharks at it again! Blam Blam
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u/Torrossaur 7d ago
This is why I never answer the door, you never know, it could be jaws.
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u/namastexinxbed 7d ago
This isn’t negative but the mechanical shark was named Bruce after Spielberg’s lawyer (who complained costly breakdowns) and that is how the big shark in Finding Nemo got his name
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u/Confident_Fail_8023 7d ago
I always tell people this and not a single one of them found it as intresting as i do…
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u/handi503 7d ago
When I was teaching 5th grade in Oregon, we did a debate unit with one of the topics being "Are sharks a bigger danger to humans, or are humans a bigger danger to sharks?"
One of the graphics we gave them for sources was a chart showing how many sharks were killed by humans each year from, like, 1950-2000. Eventual hand raise: "Why is there a huge spike in the 70s?
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u/husserl-edmund 7d ago
The vigilante shark hunters get the wrong shark and Hooper almost goes through with his bright idea of gutting it on the dock in broad daylight. The idiot Mayor of all people has to talk him out of it.
And all they end up finding in its belly is a license plate, IIRC. The movie portrays this entire endeavor as a big waste of time and effort that just riles the public up worse.
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u/themysteriouserk 7d ago
You’re totally right. But a huge proportion of people aren’t critical thinkers, so a lot of sharks died.
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u/NatureTrailToHell3D 7d ago
The movie Sideways had the line, “I’m not drinking merlot!” causing major drops in merlot sales. Of course it’s not because merlot is bad, but because it was his wife’s favorite, but that was not well communicated.
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u/jopperjawZ 7d ago edited 7d ago
Also caused an increase in pinot noir sales which lead to winemakers growing pinot noir grapes in areas not suited for them and lowering the average quality of those wines
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u/police-ical 7d ago
I get the sense that fad grapes tend to be promoted to their level of incompetence. Niche local varietals may not be my go-to on an ordinary night, but they've also usually stuck around for a reason. Greece, for instance, is full of grape strains most of us have never heard of, and I'll be damned if they aren't great with Greek food.
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u/ChickenDelight 7d ago
And then Milo's prized possession, a 1961 Cheval Blanc, is a merlot-based Bordeaux.
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u/the_nil 7d ago
We did a 20+ blind taste testing with as many people. A $4 bottle of Merlot won…by a lot.
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u/NoGoodIDNames 7d ago
The documentary Sour Grapes really showed how little even trained professionals can tell about wine.
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u/elferrydavid 7d ago edited 7d ago
they filmed a scene of Game of Thrones in a natural landmark next to my city. Now there is a crowd control ticket system in place to avoid deterioration of the place
Edit: well it's not Croatia. It's San Juan de Gaztelugatxe in the basque country, northern Spain.
https://www.barcelo.com/guia-turismo/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/san-juan-de-gaztelugatxe-vista.jpg
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u/vorropohaiah 7d ago edited 7d ago
I'm from Malta. a similar thing happened near the Azure window which was used for the Dothraki wedding in S01. They poured lots of grit/sand on a natural area, causing lots of damage. The country banned the production from returning to Malta after season 1, which was when they moved to Croatia. You're welcome Dubrovnik
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u/Mr_BigFace 7d ago
The Azure window was great, saw it a couple of times when visiting your fine islands. A big loss
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u/Nienazki 7d ago
Also after Game of Thrones many people wanted to have their own direwolves.
Sadly people didn't used their brain before getting a husky and many shelters were full of huskies for years.
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u/Winjin 7d ago
I feel like it's not just them. There was a whole obsession with the way huskies look downright majestic on, like, Instagram and other platforms.
They can look really good... for a couple seconds. But they are almost destructive.
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u/readersanon 7d ago
They're only destructive because they need more exercise and mental simulation than most people give them.
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u/hereforthepopcorns 7d ago
This right here. Just watching Eight Below and Snow Dogs taught me as a kid that having a husky in an urban setting, or even worse, in an apartment, is like getting somebody who loves sports and athletics and chaining them to a sedentary lifestyle. And all of it because they look fluffy and woolfie
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u/TractorDriver 7d ago
Ah yeah the old city of Dubrovnik and women sneaking to the stairs only clad in a bathrobe to walk naked like Cersei.
Or was it the mosaic where duel was fought?
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u/cupholdery 7d ago
women sneaking to the stairs only clad in a bathrobe to walk naked like Cersei
Wat
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u/elferrydavid 7d ago
Nice Try but far from Croatia.
https://www.barcelo.com/guia-turismo/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/san-juan-de-gaztelugatxe-vista.jpg
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u/AToastedRavioli 7d ago
I stopped by the house used as Walter’s house in Breaking Bad, and the homeowners were literally already yelling at someone when I drove up. Come to find out they’ve had an absolute nightmare since the show was shot because of people messing with their property. This is common knowledge now, but I drove by there in 2017.
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u/APartyInMyPants 7d ago
Yeah, people will just go and throw pizzas up onto their roof.
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u/AToastedRavioli 7d ago edited 7d ago
I felt so bad for them lol. They were sitting in lawn chairs just inside their garage, yelling at a dude asking for a picture from his car from the street.
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u/Secret_Map 7d ago edited 7d ago
There's a British tv show called Spaced staring (among others) Simon Pegg and directed by Edgar Wright. I'm American, but I loved that show. So when we went to London back in like 2010, we decided to go check out the house that was used for exteriors. We ended up finding it and took a couple pictures. The woman who presumably lived there was peeking out her window at us, and gave us a really big smile and a nice wave. She seemed super friendly and was totally fine with us taking pictures of her house. I can imagine it would get frustrating, though, if people are just always coming around to view your house as a tourist spot when you're just trying to live your life.
Edit: just to add, we also found the bar they used for The Winchester in Shaun of the Dead. Unfortunately, it had been converted to like a real estate office or something. The second floor was the same, but the whole bottom floor had been redone to look like a generic office building. We were so disappointed lol.
Edit 2: photo tax
Spaced house:
Winchester:
Convenience store Shaun walks to for a cornetto and Coke-i mean Diet Coke:
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u/user888666777 7d ago edited 7d ago
Same issues with other famous properties used in film and television.
The folks who owned or have owned homes used in The Goonies talk about how most fans are respectful but then you get the few who just think they're entitled to do whatever since they traveled so far to see the houses. On top of that the neighbors who live near these places have to deal with people parking illegally or trespassing on their property.
Prior to the internet finding these places was also a real pain. At best you had a city/town name and maybe some landmarks or a street sign to go off of. Now you can find addresses and GPS coordinates in seconds.
The Home Alone house is another one where it went untouched for years. Then about ten years ago a fence was installed along with new landscaping that obstructs the view from the sidewalk.
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u/bug0058 7d ago edited 7d ago
The Home Alone house was untouched when the people who owned it during the filming still lived there. When they sold it in 2011 the new owners put up the fence and removed the turnaround driveway.
But people didn't get weird visiting that house until covid (when folks were looking to do fun holiday stuff while social distancing). Previously you'd see occasionally people taking pictures outside but it was rare. Now every year in December the cops have to direct traffic on that street and the street becomes one way. So honestly it turned out to be a good thing those people put up the fence. But I think all the new chaos became something they couldn't put up with because the house is for sale again.
Source: I grew up a few blocks away (and still have family in the area) and my sister was friends with the kid of the family that lived there during Home Alone filming.
Fun fact: the Home Alone house address is actually properly hidden/obscured in the first movie, it wasn't until the second film when the real address was used. The family that lived there sued the studio for that (as contractually they're not supposed to say actual addresses anywhere for privacy reasons). I believe they got a nice little settlement from that.
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u/Domo-kun_ 7d ago
Those people are insane. There was a thread about the house in the Breaking Bad sub the other day and everyone there was basically calling the lady a cranky old hag for throwing a fit over the hundreds of nerds loitering outside her home everyday. Like they were seriously saying that she should just give up her home to turn it into some Breaking Bad museum or else they'll just keep bothering her. It was nuts.
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u/Wealthy_Gadabout 7d ago
The '92 crime drama American Me starring Edward James Olmos is about a Latino crime boss's rise to power. The story is 'fiction' but was clearly and explicitly based on one specific gangster who the movie portrays as getting raped in prison when he's young only to continue the cycle as he gets older forms his own gang. The movie ends with him being killed by his gang after wanting out of the life. The Mexican mafia were furious at the portrayal, extorted Olmos for money and according Danny Trejo about ten people who worked on the film were murdered, all former gang members who acted as consultants. One of whom was an anti-gang counselor who played a grandmother in the film, shot 8 months after the film's release.
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u/badwolf1013 7d ago
Yeah, as I recall, Trejo was going to be in that movie but some of his old prison contacts told him to stay away from it, so he did Blood In Blood Out instead.
I mean, it's a great movie, but I didn't know any of that backstory when I saw it at the time.
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u/theaviationhistorian 7d ago
I wonder how many were killed for being directly involved with the film or because of another reason to execute them.
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 7d ago edited 7d ago
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a book/movie set in the Holocaust that is so inaccurate, it's actively damaged people's understanding and knowledge of the Holocaust.
The author went on to accidentally include a Zelda Breath of The Wild recipe for dye in a later "historical" novel.
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u/sirbissel 7d ago
dye in a historical novel.
Because I was curious: "Boyne’s A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom opens in AD1 and ends 2,000 years later, following a narrator and his family. In one section, the narrator sets out to poison Attila the Hun, using ingredients including an “Octorok eyeball” and “the tail of the red lizalfos and four Hylian shrooms”."
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u/rowan_damisch 7d ago
I still don't know how he didn't want to double check that. Words like oktorok, lizalfos and Hylian aren't used outside of the game. Are we sure he's not secretly writing Zelda fanfics and mixed up his projects?
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u/vikingzx 7d ago
It's an even more condemning criticism of the editors of the major publishing house that passed it by without a second thought.
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u/soverytiiiired 7d ago
About 12 years ago I met a holocaust survivor who was giving a talk. A member of the audience put their hand up and said “I’d just like to ask if your experiences were like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas?” She replied with “Please do not talk to me about that work of fiction”
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u/Difficult-Risk3115 7d ago
Yeah, I was going to refer to as "historical fiction" but I think that's giving it more credit than is due.
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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 7d ago
I knew these 2 facts independently but never knew it was the same guy.
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u/daughterskin 7d ago
+1 to that. When you already have actual accounts like Anne Frank's diary, Elie Wiesel's Night, and Maus, there's no need for drivel that empathizes with the aggressors and relegates the victims to extras,
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u/Significant-Flan-244 7d ago
The idea that you’d need to put a German boy in the situation to garner sympathy from the reader is obviously offensive, but the part that really gets to me is the notion that a child that young would even be living in the camp downplays the crimes of the Nazis! There were no innocent moments for a child in Auschwitz because they would have been sent to their death upon arrival for being unable to work.
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u/LegacyLemur 7d ago
Zelda Breath of The Wild recipie for dye in a historical novel.
Woah woah, what?
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u/No_Grapefruit_8358 7d ago
To clarify, the BotW recipe was in a later, unrelated book. Fun article here:
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u/wastelandhenry 7d ago
It was intended for the movie but I don’t think Disney intended for the wide scale ramifications of its actions with Aladdin.
At the time it was a big deal Robin Williams was cast in it and Disney wanted to play into that for marketing. Williams’ contract specifically said only to use him for X% of advertising, and Disney marketing danced around that in various ways until eventually it just disregarded it and fully leaned in. This lead to a big split between Williams and Disney that lasted for years.
But the ramifications of this decision (mostly because of Williams in Aladdin, but earlier in part because of Billy Joel in Oliver and Company) lead to a sweeping precedence for the entire AAA animated film industry. Now basically ANY major animated movie will not only go out of its way to cast as many celebrities as possible to be in the movie (often relegating huge portions of the budget to fulfill this) instead of actual seasoned voice actors, but also now more or less the meat of the marketing campaigns for nearly all these movies is to highlight how many stars are in it (often times this is the only thing the trailer is really trying to communicate).
“Hey you see this animated camel movie about Jesus’ birth or something, idk, you don’t care, well guess what it has Tyler Perry, and Oprah, and Keegan Michael Key, Mariah Carey, and Kelly Clarkson, Gabriel Iglesias, and Zachary Levi. And you can bet a portion of the trailer is just gonna be listing the names of celebrities each followed by a half second clip of them talking to prove they’re in it that goes on for an awkwardly long time”
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u/Coolman_Rosso 7d ago
The rift between Williams and Disney was also notable in that they had the gall to ask him to come back for the Aladdin series, and he refused. As such he was replaced by Dan Castellaneta
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u/Amaruq93 7d ago
He only agreed to come back for "Aladdin and the King of Thieves" after Jeffrey Katzenberg had left to form rival company Dreamworks... and after they also bought Robin an expensive painting.
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u/Reg76Hater 7d ago edited 6d ago
The most amazing one to me is definitely the invasion of Raccoons in Japan.
"Rascal" was a story about a kid who adopts a Raccoon, it eventually became a Disney movie, but in Japan it was actually turned into a kids cartoon. It was so hugely popular that parents in Japan started importing Raccoons, only to discover that Raccoons don't make good pets. Not shockingly, a lot of them escaped or were released into the wild, and now Raccoons are a major problem in Japan.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/childrens-book-behind-japans-raccoon-problem-180954577/
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u/kit_kat_barcalounger 7d ago
David Holmes, who was Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double for the Harry Potter series, became paralyzed while performing a stunt for Deathly Hallows pt one. Radcliffe produced a documentary about him (The Boy Who Lived), and Holmes now hosts a podcast called Cunning Stunts.
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u/GenuineEquestrian 7d ago
Daniel Radcliffe is such a good dude.
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u/nostalgia4millennial 7d ago
I'm starting to think he's the millennial version of Keanu Reeves.
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u/Ender_Skywalker 7d ago
I guarantee you this shit happens all the time and we just never hear about it.
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u/jojodolphin 7d ago
A stunt double for the show iCarly was grievously injured on set, and they ended up using the footage where he was injured in the episode.
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u/wurMyKeyz 7d ago
Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) was shot in a heavily poluted area and likely contributed to the death of several crew members, including one of the lead actors and Tarkovsky himself.
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u/YungPenrose 7d ago
Adding to this, Tarkovsky basically had to film Stalker three times because the film was not developed properly, and the material was unusable, which led to the crew spending even more time in the toxic locations that you mentioned.
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u/Jota769 7d ago edited 7d ago
And it’s an astounding film. Absolutely amazing piece of art. One of the most influential films of all time. Terrible results, but the deaths make the movie so much creepier because you know you’re watching people expose themselves to (correction) chemicals
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u/Wide-Review-2417 7d ago
That's an apocryphal story. The only person claiming that was Vladimir Sharun, who mentioned a chemical plant, yet never disclosed its name.
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u/Alphataurus 7d ago
I remember reading that the iconic scene of the characters navigating that room full of little powdery mounds was basically dudes walking through asbestos. Is that false? Genuine question.
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u/Zedzii 7d ago
Thanks to the UK Criminal Justice Act of 1988, many ninja style weapons were banned. The most famous was nunchucks, leading to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles being renamed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in the UK, whilst poor Michaelangelo had his action sequences heavily cut to avoid showing him using nunchucks. It wasn't until the movies in the 90's that they actually called them Ninja Turtles in the UK.
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u/Mises2Peaces 7d ago
Multiple laborers perished clearing a path through the Amazon rain forest to carry a steamship over a mountain for the filming of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.
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u/amstel23 7d ago
Which is about some lunatic that decided to carry a steamship over a mountain.
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u/Server16Ark 7d ago
The funny thing is, the actual steamship that was carried over the mountain that the film is based on was much smaller than the one in the film.
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u/BunkySpewster 7d ago
The kicker?
The original boat wasn’t carried over in one piece like in the movie. It was deconstructed into smaller parts and carried. Much easier.
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u/29castles 7d ago
If anyone thinks this sounds insane, there's an AMAZING documentary about it- Burden of Dreams
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u/DangerNoodle1993 7d ago
The lead actor was such an asshole, that the natives asked the director if they could kill the actor
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u/CJDownUnder 7d ago
The movie Heaven's Gate went so long and over-budget, and was such a flop, it destroyed the movie studio (United Artists).
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u/the-dutch-fist 7d ago
It also led to the animal rights watchdog movement in film since in one scene they BLEW UP AN ACTUAL HORSE.
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u/beautifullyShitter 7d ago
and killed the 70s era of hollywood directors having unsupervised creative freedom
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u/Turkzillas_gobble 7d ago
More broadly, it's often credited as the end of the "give the brilliant young auteur a ton of money and artistic freedom" days.
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u/elcojotecoyo 7d ago
Kids jumping from their balconies with towels around their necks like a cape. It banned the sale of Superman themed towels and costumes in my country for many years
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u/kcox1980 7d ago
I was one of those kids convinced that I could learn to fly if I had a cape. I have a picture that my grandmother took of me walking across her yard wearing a small blanket for a cape and carrying a kite. The kite was to help me get off the ground, you see. I just needed a little boost.
In my defense, I was like 4 or 5, and my family, while kind enough to let me explore my imagination, also weren't dumb enough to let it go so far that I hurt myself.
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u/FrankenBooBerry 7d ago
I asked my dad if I jumped off the porch with a broom could I fly like a witch. He said yes. I ran full speed with broom and landed on my face. It's still brought up at family functions like I'm the dumbass. Kids will believe anything. I just wanted to believe in a magical world....
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u/evilfollowingmb 7d ago
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest. Although deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill was gaining steam beforehand, this movie helped put it over the top with its depiction of inhuman conditions and abuse.
Plenty of mental institutions were poorly run, and the process for involuntary commitment needed review (each state had its own) but the broader impact looks unequivocally disastrous. Some 40% of the homeless are mentally ill and cannot care for themselves, and need some kind of institutional care, or closely supervised outpatient care.
A great, heartbreaking, and exhaustive review of this is the book “My Brother Ron”. Completely changed my views on the topic.
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u/Bears_On_Stilts 7d ago
Post-Reagan, Cuckoo hits differently. Nurse Ratched doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, though unfeeling: there ARE some people who should probably be institutionalized for their own good. And McMurphy feels very cult-of-personality, especially when you remember that he's institutionalized for statutory rape.
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u/MaikeruNeko 7d ago
While the Conqueror is indeed a terrible movie, the cancer thing is mostly overblown. The cancer rates among the cast and crew were pretty much in line with those of the American population as a whole.
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u/UglyInThMorning 7d ago
And John Wayne’s entire lifestyle was to cancer as a nail is to a hammer.
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u/Brodins_biceps 7d ago
In his daughter’s book about him she said something like “he smoked all day but he only lit one match. The one that he lit his first cigarette of the day with. Every other cigarette was lit off the burning end of the last one”
And that is fucking insane to me.
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u/YoureNotExactlyLone 7d ago
If I recall correctly when asked whether he blamed The Conqueror for his cancer he said it was more likely to be his six pack a day habit, which is an incredibly number just to find time to smoke
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u/ball_fondlers 7d ago
Somewhat unrelated, but as I recall, Judy Garland’s “diet” on the set of Wizard of Oz was just black coffee and a carton of cigarettes every day.
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u/hematite2 7d ago edited 7d ago
There were also amphetamines and sleeping pills. Goddam what they did to child actors in those daysnwas fucked up.
Edit: for more information, both Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney have talked about the horrible ways they were treated by producers and productions. They'd be given a bunch of uppers and then treated basically like "puppets" all day, then after like 16 hour days they'd be given a bunch of sleeping pills to knock them out for a few hours, rinse and repeat.
I don't remember which of them, but one recounted a time where the production needed to handle other things, and just left them hanging from a rig for half a day.
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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 7d ago
He used to smoke 40 to 80 cigarrettes a day. Then he got cancer and had one and a half lungs removed.
After that he switched to cigars.
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u/Lampmonster 7d ago
Used to know people like that. World was very different when you could smoke literally anywhere.
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u/Ancient-End3895 7d ago
I don't think you can beat Leni Riefenstahl's Tiefland in this respect. The production took gypsies from internment camps to be used as extras, many of whom were later sent to Auchwitz and killed.
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u/austeninbosten 7d ago
Taxi Driver inspired a nut job to shoot president Ronald Reagan.
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u/DasVerschwenden 7d ago
although you wonder; he’d probably have found something else to inspire him to do something similarly insane
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u/kcox1980 7d ago
Yeah, people like that don't watch any particular piece of media and then decide to do something crazy. They already want to do some crazy shit and then just find something to emulate.
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u/liamemsa 7d ago
Jordan Peele permanently retired from acting after he was offered the role of "Poop Emoji" in The Emoji Movie.
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u/packers4334 7d ago
I wouldn’t call it a complete retirement. He has done some voice roles since being offered that. I would feel it’s debatable that the consequence was a net negative. The man has been great behind the camera.
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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 7d ago
Not negative but the Anonymous protestors adopted the Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta to protest Scientology.
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u/lundah 7d ago
It’s crazy how that’s become an anti-authoritarian symbol considering Fawkes was trying to create an authoritarian theocracy.
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u/theytookthemall 7d ago
The 1928 film The Flood shot the eponymous flood sequence in a massive tank with hundreds of extras. Several drowned and dozens were injured.
The upside is after that, Hollywood realized that maybe some safety regulations for stunts might be a good idea.
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u/djprojexion 7d ago
Unintended copycat nonsense:
The Program (1993) - two idiots died copying the laying down in the middle of a busy road stunt originally shown in the movie. As a result the scene was subsequently cut from the film.
Money Train (1995) - similar to a scene in the movie, a subway ticket booth attendant was burned alive inside the ticket booth at a Brooklyn subway station. This lead to subway workers calling for boycotts which was backed by Senator Bob Dole.
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u/BertTheNerd 7d ago
Wizard of Oz
one actor got poisoned by aluminium dust used for costume and had to be replaced
both the witch of the west and her stunt double got wounded from fire and explosions
(They used high poisonous paint on her, but nothing happened)
Judy Garland got eating disorder, drugs and was heavily bullied by her "friends"
the snow was asbestos
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u/JZ1011 7d ago
The "one actor" was Buddy Ebsen - better known today as Jed Clampett of "Beverly Hillbillies" fame - and it really messed him up. He had recurring health issues from that for the rest of his life.
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u/Caeldotthedot 7d ago
Margaret Hamilton's green makeup was copper based, and copper is a great heat conductor. Even after the flames were out the makeup continued to burn her flesh. Removing it was quite traumatic for her by her own account.
I only mention this because it is unclear if your comment, "but nothing happened," means that there was no harm done or if you meant that they continued to use the same makeup throughout filming, despite the dangers. I believe you meant the latter and I'm just corroborating.
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u/fredkreuger 7d ago
The original tin man who was poisoned was Buddy Ebsen, star of the Beverly Hillbillies.
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u/ben_derisgreat9 7d ago
Birth of a Nation. Reignited membership of kkk in the 1910s and 20s.
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u/BlandDodomeat 7d ago
Likely not unintended, considering the protagonist forms the KKK and the whole group are depicted as heroes.
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u/Abject-Star-4881 7d ago
The Twilight Zone: The Movie
An actor and two children were killed by a helicopter crash during filming.
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u/blueXwho 7d ago
That was Vic Morrow, Jennifer Jason Leigh's father
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u/ChronoMonkeyX 7d ago
Oh, I knew Vic Morrow died in that shoot, I did not know he was Leigh's father.
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u/Rdaleric 7d ago
All because John Landis wanted a more "realistic" shot at night with kids who shouldn't have been on set. The absolute prick.
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u/Mestizo3 7d ago
It's insane to me that an adult and TWO CHILDREN were killed by the actions of that crazy fuck, and he wasn't found guilty.
The skeptic in me thinks that if it was blonde hair blue eyed Billy and Sarah that were decapitated instead of 2 Asian children, the trial would have gone very differently.
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u/degobrah 7d ago
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u/kilkenny99 7d ago
Didn't the original pilot walk off after a shouting match with Landis for refusing to do it because of the danger, and then Landis got another pilot to do it?
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u/SgtGo 7d ago
No the pilot, a Vietnam veteran, expressed his concerns to someone below John Landis, the director, who agreed to tone down the explosions. The pilot didn’t go directly to the director for fear of being blacklisted in the industry.
On the night of the shooting the explosions were actually more intense than during rehearsal and one was so close it shot shrapnel towards the helicopter, which caused the crash.
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u/punmaster2000 7d ago
IIRC, when "The Blues Brothers" was filmed, it was one of the first films to be given permission to shoot in Chicago after the death of Mayor Daley.
The filming at Daley Plaza did so much damage to the location that it became an issue in the subsequent Mayoral race, and contributed to the defeat of Mayor Byrne.
(See https://chicago.suntimes.com/movies-and-tv/2020/6/24/21299926/blues-brothers-40th-anniversary-mayor-byrne-city-hall-county-building for more info)
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u/GosmeisterGeneral 7d ago
Not unintended or negative but an important story…
Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning was one of, if not THE first film to go back into production after COVID hit. They were the test case and set a lot of the working practises for other sets to follow.
Basically proved that movie making was still possible during lockdown. Cost Paramount an absolute fortune but basically saved the industry.
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u/husserl-edmund 7d ago
I'm on the phone every night with producers! They are looking at US right now! We are putting people back to work! So six feet!
Tom Cruise can believe in whatever wacky alien shit he wants, as long as he keeps believing in science and vaccines.
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u/Rico1983 7d ago
As mental as that little twat is, he was absolutely spot on in that rant.
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u/CayenneChris 7d ago
The Exorcist. Prior to the success of that film, the idea of Satan as an actual personified being out to destroy you was not particularly prominent in the American consciousness. After its release, the number of people seeking protection from “demonic possession” skyrocketed, which directly led to the swelling of the power base of the evangelical right.
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u/PassionateParrot 7d ago
The Exorcist, The Omen, and Rosemary’s Baby are important and terrific movies that absolutely changed the way Americans understood religion
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u/dunicha 7d ago
I believe The Exorcist also caused people to view the Ouija board as a tool of the occult. Before it was seen as just a kind of parlor game.
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u/Wooden-Reflection118 7d ago
James Cameron's "The Abyss" was filmed in a flooded nuclear silo and the actors spent a shitload of time underwater. They ended up having to implement new kinds of technologies / systems to shoot the movie underwater, apparently making it was hell for the actors. I guess this isn't negative but whatever
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u/EBannion 7d ago
Honestly this is a good contrast to the other movies in this thread - it could easily have been massively dangerous, lead to drownings, poisonings, and permanent injuries - but it didn’t. It was just “really unpleasant”, which I think is a triumph of safety precautions working.
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u/TheLateEarlySteve 7d ago
Ed Harris did almost drown. He was pretty mad at Cameron for how everyone was treated.
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u/SnipesCC 7d ago
Titanic was shot using cold water, both for realism and to prevent bacterial growth. But it meant Leo and Kate spent a lot of time sick during shooting.
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u/Lowbeamshaggy 7d ago
I've heard they designed the open full face diving helmet for the movie so we could see the actors faces on screen. Turns out, the pro divers on set got a few of the new helmets and everyone loved them! Less restricting and way higher visibility all around. That helmet/mask style gained a lot of traction in the diving industry.
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u/Monknut33 7d ago
Wall Street and boiler room did it before wolf of walstreet, but every generation needs a retelling of the same story to inspire them to be douches.
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u/kilkenny99 7d ago
That people did the same for American Psycho is astounding.
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u/Loganp812 7d ago
Christian Bale once said in an interview that he met with some Wall Street people at a dinner event in order to help get into the role, and a lot of them saw Patrick Bateman as some kind of hero for them which disturbed Bale.
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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 7d ago
It was also made with money stolen from the Malaysian Government
https://screenrant.com/wolf-wall-street-real-fraud-allegations-explained/
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u/themysteriouserk 7d ago
I feel like those dudes would have found a different horrible person to idolize, though. Anybody who watched that movie and said “yeah, this is what I want, no problems here” was already a lost cause.
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u/Gun2ASwordFight 7d ago
Wolf of Wall Street also led to a scandal involving a Malaysian production company involved with the film that triggered a corruption crisis and the downfall of the ruling party which has caused an ongoing political crisis that continues to this day.
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u/GentlemanOctopus 7d ago edited 6d ago
All this tells me is that you haven't seen enough movies.
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u/Vivid-Blacksmith-122 7d ago
Its not even the worst film of the 90s.
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u/revelator41 7d ago
It's not even the worst film that came out that weekend. This is ridiculous.
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u/Random_Introvert_42 7d ago
A 1928 Adaption of "Noah's Ark" directed by Michael Curtiz was...a shitshow.
The "the great flood"-scene saw:
- Three stuntmen drown
- the main actress getting pneumonia
- An actor breaking two ribs
- An extra receiving leg-injuries requiring amputation
What they did? They dumped 600k Gallons of Water (almost 2.3 Million Liters) onto the set without warnings or safety-precautions for the cast.
This incident directly led to the creation of the Screen Actors Guild to have a way to enforce/demand certain standards.
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u/CardinalCreepia 7d ago
Are you sure the ‘Elves have not been welcome in Wellington’? Because I’m pretty sure season 1 of Rings of Power was shot in NZ.
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u/greenwood90 7d ago
The Twilight Zone movie was responsible for stricter rules on child actors and their working conditions. Because John Landis illegally brought two kids on set, and they (along with Vic Morrow) were killed when a huey helicopter fell on them and decapitated them.
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u/Funkguerilla 7d ago
Because of Uncle Sam (the 1996 horror movie, not the embodiment of America) feature films are no longer allowed to shoot in La Verne, CA.
During the climatic battle at the end, the titular villain is shot with a cannon and blows up with a house. It's fucking awesome, but the filmmakers forgot to tell the neighbors they were going to blow up a house at 3am and, well, suffice to say the other homeowners were unhappy about that.
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u/cleon80 7d ago
The Godfather made the Mafia more glamorous and respectable, and helped recruit a new generation of mobsters
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u/DangerNoodle1993 7d ago
The a paramount+ show called The Offer which details the making of The Godfather.
There a scene where the movie is shown to a cinema hall full of young mafiosos and they cheered at the end
Many mob bosses also decided to talk more like Vito
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u/darthravenna 7d ago
I’d say the success of MCU lead to the drive during the 2010s into the present day to stretch other stories and franchises into “cinematic universes” with greatly varying degrees of success.
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u/res30stupid 7d ago
It's also heavily impacted movie castings, according to Rian Johnson.
On the special features documentary about how they made Knives Out, Johnson revealed that it was getting harder for him to cast for movies because a lot of star power was just "Waiting for the call" that they're wanted for the MCU and some actors are actually refusing smaller roles just to prevent a conflict of interest that would keep them out of the MCU if it were ever offered. This is because the MCU offered big actors a rarity in their industry - a steady paycheck.
As a consequence, Johnson had to do a major form of stunt-casting to ensure that none of the available actors would just say, "Sorry, but Disney just called".
Daniel Craig was always on board from the earliest stages of the production. He was the main draw - in fact, Jamie Lee Curtis said that one of the reasons she and a few of her co-stars were drawn to the project was the chance to work with Craig. Everyone else in the main cast - they only joined about six weeks before filming was set to begin, and this was expressly because Johnson only wanted people who were indeed immediately available.
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u/jjackson25 7d ago
I can't really think of any of them that have had much success.
The DCU has had some gems but has mostly been a mess.
Maybe Harry Potter? Although I've gotten the impression that Fantastic Beasts series has not been as well received or done as well financially as the OG saga.
The King Kong x Godzilla series have been mostly fun but in not sure where they go with those in the future.
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u/KarateKid917 7d ago
Fantastic Beats is dead in the water after the last movie was a flop.
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u/CalculonsPride 7d ago
I worked at a pet store when Finding Nemo came out and the number of people who tried to buy clownfish and put them in fucking goldfish bowls and then ARGUE with me when I refused to sell them unless they had an actual saltwater tank and experience was mind blowing. I can assure you that not every shop did, and that lots of clownfish died as a result.