American Gigolo was originally cast with John Travolta, who ended up bowing out due to his girlfriend’s losing battle with cancer. (Early film posters for the movie actually have him in the role.) So that’s how Richard Gere got his breakout role.
I thought it also had to do with the fact Travolta flopped so badly with **Moment by Moment **that Hollywood conventional wisdom pegged him as a flash-in-the-pan whose 15 minutes had just expired so he was dumped in favor of Gere.
I can imagine Martin Short. Nobody but nobody plays a manic man-child like “Clifford.” People can say whatever they want to say about that movie but I think his performance was nothing “short” of genius. It was bizarre and insane and surreal and I haven’t ever seen anything like it before or since.
For what it’s worth, though, I wasn’t just mentioning Hamill because I happened to think he’d be an interesting choice for the role; it’s that Hamill had already played the role on Broadway when he auditioned for the movie.