Best casting

[notjosh]

The original film poster didn't have his face on it (only the Nakatomi Plaza), and they only relented when the film became successful.

I'd never seen it, but you're right!

[Dex Sawash]

Shitpost that is also correct

Spoiler alert

[close]

[AliasTheCat]

Oh God yeah, Robert Shaw as Quint is just perfect.

It's surprisingly difficult to think of examples I'm finding, though when they come they seem so blindingly obvious: R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (though pretty much that entire film is perfectly cast), Daniel Day Lewis in There Will be Blood and Gene Hackman in The French Connection.

[non capisco]

The original choice for Die Hard was Frank Sinatra which is pretty funny.

"Doobie doobie doo, motherfucker."

[Keebleman]

I first saw Jaws in 1979 and thought the contrast between Shaw's acting style and that of everyone else was jarring.  He didn't seem to belong to the same film as them.  Maybe to today's viewers it isn't so obvious.

I wish they had landed Sterling Haydn or Lee Marvin for Quint.

[Dr Rock]

[AliasTheCat]

That's really interesting- to me that abrasive, shit-stirring persona he has that exists purely to please himself- I've known people just like that- that then falls away (but never quite disappears, instead showing itself to be the scaffolding that holds him together) when he talks about the trauma behind it is magnificent. I think that monologue is one of the best bits of writing, delivered in the best way, in a mainstream film like this ever, and definitely the best in any shark film.

[studpuppet]

I'd never seen it, but you're right!

I'd read it somewhere, but never seen the poster, so thanks notjosh!

Thnotjosh.

[dead-ced-dead]

I read somewhere that Tom Selleck was first cast as John McClane but had to drop out for scheduling conflicts.

[studpuppet]

I read somewhere that Tom Selleck was first cast as John McClane but had to drop out for scheduling conflicts.

I can't give props because I've searched and can't find the original thread this was on, but it was someone from this parish:

The studio had bought a German screenplay called Die Heiligabend Heißt (which in German means "Christmas Eve Is Called" or very roughly, 'The Meaning Of Christmas'), about a working-class dad trying to reconnect with his wife after getting a cross-country train on Christmas Eve. A sort of a Teutonic Trains, Planes and Automobiles.

Some studo exec saw the title and thought it was a Christmas crime caper, and when he found out it wasn't, he demanded rewrites to accommodate that.

Meanwhile the studio already had a film in production based on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever, itself a sequel to the book The Detective, which had been made into a film with Frank Sinatra in the 1960s. Contractually they had to offer it to Sinatra, who was in his 70s at the time, and with that in mind, a decision was made to incorporate it into "The Christmas Eve Heist" (which was only a working title) due to its lighter, festive tone.

The German robbers were flipped into into being the villains rather than the anti-heroes (eventually they would be made into a multi-ethnic gang with only Alan Rickman's character and the two Aryan brothers keeping their Teutonic backgrounds). In the novel, the book's protagonist is Joseph Leland, not John McClane, who was already retired from the police force and trying to visit his daughter.

The original German script's protagonist had become what we would later know as villain Hans Gruber, so his original story - about trying to get to his wife - was given to Leland, but his estranged wife was made into his estranged daughter to fit the existing "Nothing Lasts Forever" screenplay.

Of course, Sinatra turned it down and young(ish) buck Bruce Willis was cast in the role, and as the script was shopped around younger actors (including Arnold Schwarzenegger!). It was revamped with a harder edge, the villains made more malicious - but ironically McClane (nee Leland) was once more visiting his wife, restoring one of the last tendrils of the original German story! Much of the off-kilter humour and tone also comes from both the original Die Heiligabend Heißt screenplay and the intermediate Christmas Eve Heist version.

As a final nod to one of the film's origins, the writers called it Die Hard - prefiguring The Simpsons' later "The Bart, The" joke.