Janeane Garofalo

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

  1. Courteney Cox, Friends, TV, 1994-2004.      
  2. Tea Leoni, Flirting With Disaster, 1996.     Having missed out on his Spanking The Monkey, Miramax bully Harvey Weinstein pulled out the stops for David O Russell’s next comedy. Except, as writer Peter Biskind phrased it, Garofalo to Weinstein was “about as glamorous as a bowl of cold oatmeal.” Russell said they had to move fast… and Harvey bellowed down the hall to his brother, “Bob, sell the company! We can’t get Janeane Garofolo.” He then told Russell: “I don’t give a shit if we can’t get Janeane Garofalo.” That’s helping, bully boy style.
  3. Courteney Cox, Scream, 1996.     “I didn’t want to be in a movie where a teen girl was disemboweled. I didn’t know it turned out so good and it was a funny movie.” And Cox won again. Not just a role but a franchise – and a husband, David Arquette. While Janeane chose a flop called Sweethearts.  Could explain why her combine is called: I Hate Myself Productions.
  4. Renée Zellweger, Jerry Maguire, 1996.     “You had me at Hello…” Once Tom Hanks passed and Tom Cruise breathed a sigh of relief, auteur Cameron Crowe started searching for The Girl: Dorothy Boyd. Patricia Arquette, Cameron Diaz, Bridget Fonda, Janeane Garofalo (the part was hers if she lost weight), Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lopez, Courtney Love, Parker Posey, Molly Ringwald, Winona Ryder, Mira Sorvino, Marisa Tomei, Uma Thurman, even Zellweger, came and went. Recommended by Edward Burns (one of the Jerry possibles), Connie Britton made a good test with Cruise and she was Dorothy – depending on Zellweger’s call back meeting with him. “We have video of that because I was filming,” Crowe told Mike Fleming Jr for Deadline Hollywood’s 20-years-later feature in 2017, “and you just see something happen when Tom sees her. He lights up… As Jerry discovers Dorothy, we discover Renée. That was a very personal thing for me and the way I feel about movies.”
  5. Helena Bonham Carter, The Flight Club, 1998. Director David Fincher looked everywhere for his Marla Singer.  Sarah Michelle Gellar, Winona Ryder, Kyra Sedgewick, Renee Zellweger.  Plus two great Brits: supermodel Vanessa Angel (71 screen roles since 1985), and Anna Friel. After seeing her Wings of the Dove, Fincher wanted HBC, the suits wanted the better known Reese Witherspoon, and Reese wanted out – ‘too dark!”  Courtney Love claimed the film’s star, Brad Pitt, had her dropped  because she wouldn’t let him play her late husband in a  Kurt Cobain biopic.  Team Pitt said “You cannot be fired for a job you didn’t get..” And, anyway, directors select actors, not actors…  and yet co-star Edward Norton vetoed any idea of New Jersey comic Janeane Garofalo as she “didn’t have the chops to do it.” HBC modelled Marla on the final years of Judy Garland.  Fincher even called her Judy on-set get her back in her mindset.
  6. Linda Fiorentino, Dogma, 1999.     Said Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers: Thou shalt not stop laughing… “Wish I’d given Bethany to Janeane,” said New Jersey’s askew auteur Kevin Smith. She became Liz, while Fiorentino refused to even talk to Smith on certain days. He’d also seen Gillian Anderson, Shannen Doherty and singer Alanis Morissette, who opened a window in her world tour to play… God.
  7. Sarah Paulson, Held Up, 1999. The tepid – so slow! – comedy was Inconvenienced for Rob Schneider, Lisa Kudrow and Janeane Garofalo  in 1995  until Rob simply quit four days before the start.  He’d finally read it, perhaps.  Robert Downey passed and the project imploded – only to be revived for Foxx and Nia Long. But as the Austin Chronicle put it: “nowhere near clever enough to be a satire and not broad enough to be a farce.”
  8. Cameron Diaz, Shrek, 2000.    Following the shock ODeath of Chris Farley (while playing Shrek), poor Janeane was dropped as Princess Flavia. And she still does not know why…
  9. Melissa Errico, Ed, TV, 2000-2004.   The funny and always ill-used Janeane was Ed’s ex-wife, Liz in  the CBS pilot. When it became an NBC series, Errico took over… For one episode only as the show concentrated for the next 83 episodes on Thomas Cavanagh’s Ed  wooing Julie Bowen.
  10. Linda Cardellini, Scooby-Doo, 2001.    When Mike Myers was keen on the project, his pal Janeane was named as being Velma Dinkley. Didn’t get it. Is that why her company is called: I Hate Myself Productions.   Also in the mix: Sara Gilbert, Carla Gugino, Alyssa Milano, Christina Ricci.

 

 

 

 

 

 Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls:  10