- Maxwell Caulfield, Grease 2, 1981. Hutton, Shaun Cassidy, Greg Evigan, Bee Gee Andy Gibb, Rick Springfield were in the loop for Cool Rider, the Aussie student at Rydell High for the totally unnecessary (and awful) sequel. Before the premiere, Caulfield was hailed as a new John Travolta. When it flopped, “nobody would touch me. It felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown in my face. It took me 10 years to get over Grease.” Londoner Caulfield – in high school at 22! – has been wed to Hayley Mills’ sister, Juliet, since 1980.
- Tom Cruise, Risky Business, 1982. Brooklyn’s still unknown Brian Backer, Nicolas Cage, Michael J Fox and Tom Hanks were in the Joel Goodsen loop before it came down to Taps finds Cruise and Timothy. Tim fell out, preferring Sidney Lumet’s Daniel, so Tom was born! “All my agents and manager said I was crazy,” Hutton recalled. “But I asked myself: What’s the experience going to be like? What will I learn?’ And looking back at myself at 23, being able to work with Sidney Lumet and EL Doctorow, I have absolutely no regrets. I learned stuff that will stay with me forever.”
- Daniel McDonald, Where the Boys Are, 1983. OK, so he turned Grease into a 1978 global smash. But Allan Carr also made too many Ann-Margret “specials,” Grease 2, Can’t Stop the Music and this waste of space – neither re-make or sequel to the 1968 title. Just ‘80s college girls following the Spring Break path of their 60’s forebears to Fort Lauderdale. Never had sun, sea and sex been so boring!
- Tom Hulce, Amadeus, 1984. When Burt Reynolds was supposed to be Salieri..!
- Zeljko Ivanek, Mass Appeal, 1984. To be opposite Jack Lemmon in the film of Bill Davis’ Broadway play.
- Brad Pitt, Johnny Suede, 1991. Before shooting his directing debut, ex-cameraman Tom DiCillo insisted on the unknown Pitt, while his producer voted Hutton. During shooting, DiCillo was seriously pissed with Pitt’s Suede being “slow” or “stupid” instead of merely childish. However, the legend that Brad was the model for the Chad Palomino in DiCillo’s next film, Living In Oblivion, 1995. is totally false. Pitt was, in fact, due for the role until offered Legends of the Fall, 1994. And his replacement, James LeGros, said he used quite another actor, one he had lately worked with, for Chad’s buffoonery mannerisms.
- Eric Roberts, Doctor Who (The Movie), TV, 1996.
- Vince Vaughn, Psycho, 1997.
By 1990, Anthony Perkins had played Norman Bates four times. So why should anyone else play him? It’s been (over)done. It’s a classic. And by The Master. Why re-make Hitchcock? Ah, beg pardon, Gus Van Sant called it a reproduction. A bizarre (lazy!) notion of copying – the Psycho script, word for word, action for action, move for move, shock for shock (except the shocks were too famous to shock anymore). “Just shoot it in color and have, for instance, Jack Nicholson play the detective and Timothy Hutton play Norman Bates,” he suggested. “Universal wanted to rope me in, and I said: “Here’s the idea: don’t change anything! It’s never been done before. Isn’t that a great reason to try it?” Not really! What had he said about re-makes? “The essence is missing. You might as well make an original movie.”Right! “One guy in particular has an extreme Tony Perkins quality – Robert Sean Leonard,” Van Sant told Movieline’s Stephen Rebello. “ So do… Henry Thomas and Jeremy Davies. [Indeed, Thomas was the teenage Bates in Psycho IV: The Beginning, 1989]. I think of Matt Damon for everything I do… But he’s one of those under-30 guys who just didn’t get it. Leonardo would have been fantastic. I knew he knew that he could step into it. But I also knew he didn’t really want to do it. I seriously considered Joaquin Phoenix. He was interested… but busy. So, it was either wait or forge ahead and we forged ahead. Vince was not even in my imagination… But he had a really interesting quality I wasn’t expecting.”The UK’s fast-rising Christian Bale and DiCaprio pal, Tobey Maguire, were also short-listed.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 8