I remember that. Cheech basically said Chong needed to grow up and play a character other than the one he’d played for (then) 30+ years and Chong was calling Cheech a sellout and made comments about how he’d been offered a reunion vehicle but Cheech’s character was Hispanic and he doubted Cheech could remember how to play one. (Don’t remember the exact words but it was pretty cold- basically saying Cheech was too busy being a rich white guy now.)
Now they reunited occasionally for what they call their “FELIMONY” tour. The name’s a contraction of ‘felony’ and ‘alimony’; Cheech lost a big chunk of his wealth due to legal fees and lost engagements during his incarceration (which- and I’m not a pot smoker- was one of the most ridiculous sentences in judicial history) and Chong (like Cleese) lost a big chunk of change when he divorced so this is an attempt to recoup.
This made me think of yet another “Live From New York” SNL anecdote. Apparently during the 1980 season produced by Jean Doumanian (an infamously bad year in which the show was close to being cancelled), Eddie Murphy was hired as a writer, but not an actual performer. One of the associate producers noticed that Murphy was a genius comedian and kept lobbying to put him on camera. Doumanian kept refusing because (actual quote) “We’ve already got a black guy.”
Any way, back on topic - the classic “Doctor Who” had a few quarrelsome tiffs backstage.
During the serial “the Myth Makers” (a very early serial from '66 that hasn’t survived), one of the major guest roles was played by an actor who was both jewish & openly gay. Apparently William Hartnell (Doctor #1) made it pretty clear that he detested both jews and gays.
Tom Baker (Doctor #4) was repuited to be a nightmare to work with, and had a succession of companion co-stars who came & went quickly because they found him intolerable - Louise Jameson (Leela), Mary Tamm (Romana I), and Lalla Ward (Romana II). Sarah Sutton (Nyssa) admitted she was afraid of him, and Janet Fielding (Tegan) was introduced to him and he basically said “If it was up to me, I never would’ve hired you.”
Lalla Ward was the most interesting, because Baker & Ward were actually lovers, but had ferocious spats on set. The “State of Decay” DVD has an extra video interview with the director who described some of their bad rows. The two actors of course got married, but it lasted barely six months. Ward also said Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) was “a pain” and basically described him as being a snotty little punk.
I saw a Dr. Who documentary and an actor was interviewed who worked with Hartnell. The actor himself was Jewish but didn’t openly identify himself/didn’t have a Jewish name or features so Hartnell didn’t know. The actor (whose name I don’t remember) was laughing as he told the story- Hartnell was talking to him off set and motioned to one of the actors on the set and whispered to this guy in greatest confidence “He’s one of the Jews, you know”, as if The Jews were a motorcycle gang. It sounded almost like a character from a Python sketch.
Besser also was opposed to all the slaps and eye-pokes, although he takes a few. Larry wound up getting most of Moe’s pounding in the Besser shorts. Luckily, Larry was a sweetheart, and thoroughly used to Moe’s punishment by then. I don’t think Moe and Larry so much disliked Joe Besser as they liked Curly, Shemp, and Curly Joe more. Sure, there were family ties, but the Stooges were one of the closest acts in show biz.
I’ve heard that the two at first felt animosity simply from the competition to be “Chicago’s number one film critic” as they worked at Chicago’s two main rival newspapers. Once they got to working on the program At the Movies, they became friends, but kept up the rivalry for appearance’s sake. They certainly appeared on a lot of stuff besides their show together. It seems a little farfetched that they could do that for so long and be stark enemies.
Designing Women had such tension on the set that it bled through the screen into the episodes in the last few seasons. Delta Burke’s fights with the producers were weekly tabloid fodder, Dixie Carter got increasingly tired of having liberal dialogue when she was a conservative in real life (she supposedly struck a deal where she got to sing on the show once for every time Julia made a liberal rant), Jean Smart left when Delta Burke got fired because she couldn’t take it anymore, Julia Duffy (who replaced Delta Burke) never meshed with the rest of the cast and then they brought in Judith Ivey as an unrealistic billionaire character and by that time, even with Jan Hooks (who was capable) the show was dead and waiting for its eyes to be closed.
Ironically Bloodworth-Thomason later hired Delta Burke to reprise the Suzanne role for another series years after they fired her, but the series- very deservedly- flopped. Jean Smart became the rare “non bombshell actress who leaves a successful series” who went on to better things: I had no idea how great an actress she is until I started seeing her play a wide variety of comedic and dramatic characters after DW.
According to Robert Evans himself, everyone hated the shit outta him when they were filming The Sun Also Rises, and even lobbied to get him fired. Unfortunately, producer Daryl Zanuck thought he was perfect and told everyone, infamously, “the kid stays in the picture”.
Upon release, Zanuck was proven to be 100% wrong about Evans’ talents as an actor.
Just want to take another opportunity to mention that I have friends who worked with Sammy Davis, Jr. in Las Vegas and have never heard a bad word about him. He is, among those people I know, universally regarded as one the best human beings they have ever met; a truly gracious and graceful man.
Actually, you have them reversed. Tommy Chong spent nine months in prison from the sting operation involving his son’s business, and Cheech is the one whose wife divorced him and is collecting alimony. But yeah, I agree that Tommy’s treatment in the affair was bogus.
Lennon characterized their relationship in 1980 in a “Playboy” interview as “we are neither the best of friends nor are we the worst of enemies. But it has been a while since I talked, I mean really talked, to him.” He also said they had spent so much time together in Germany and elsewhere in the early days that some kind of blow up was inevitable.
I remember a Lee Marvin interview in the 1970s where he was complaining about Spencer Tracy while making “Bad Day at Black Rock”. Tracy didn’t care much for Marvin’s “method” acting of trying to find his character and said crossly to just say his line, he was too wealthy to stand there all day.
The World War II submarine film “Run Silent, Run Deep” supposedly had friction between Burt Lancaster, an investor in the film, and Clark Gable, who believed going home at 5PM. Although in later years, Lancaster denied it, calling Gable a professional.
Sarah Michelle Gellar and her “TV mother” on “All My Children” Susan Lucci didn’t like
each other. Interesting Lucci once said one of his best friends on the show was Julie Barr, who played Erica’s bitter enemy Brooke English. Lucci said they were about the same age as were their children, so they always talked about them during down time.
Mostly attributable to the fact that he was a world-class (and nasty) drunk at the time. Once he stopped drinking (just after (or perhaps just before) his marriage to his current wife, Sue Jerrard in 1986), he apparently became a much more pleasant fellow to be around. (He says he quit mostly because he realized he was on the verge of doing to his relationship with Jerrard what he did to his marriage with Ward.)
The other actor in the Hartnell story was Max Adrian, who played Priam in the story.
I’ve heard rumors that Sarah Michelle Geller was jealous of Alyson Hannigan in the later seasons of Buffy (after Hannigan hit the big time in American Pie) and also had some bad blood with Joss Whedon, the show’s creator. I have a DVD of the Buffy reunion panel and it’s funny to watch. Someone in the crowd asks about a Buffy TV movie or similar and everyone cheers and applauds. The whole cast is raring to go… except poor Smidge who weakly swallows her pride and hesitantly nods that yes, she would be on board (because she knows it’ll never happen).
That’d be this, which included Idle, Palin, Jones, Gilliam, Cleveland, Innes and a few others from the Python days such as Andre Jacquemin - everybody* but Cleese, who apparently has said that he is happy everyone loves the show but he’s done with it. Cleese was also the first to leave the television show, although obviously the films came later.
I can’t believe this thread has gone four pages without someone mentioning Fitzcarraldo.
and me! I was there too! On stage! With four of the five surviving Pythons! Yay me!
It should be noted (though not really germane to the thread topic), that the 1967 Casino Royale (which featured the three men in question) was not the very first James Bond movie. That would be, depending on your definition of ‘movie’, the 1954 television production (an episode of the series Climax!) of Casino Royale (with Barry Nelson as the American Jimmy Bond), or the 1962 theatrical release of Dr No (with Sean Connery as the properly British James bond).
4 of Connery’s films (Dr No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball) all came out well before CR, and his fifth (You Only Live Twice) the same year. His 6th, and last proper instalment, was the only Connery from after CR. (It also, interestingly enough, came after Lazenby’s sole film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.)