Troubled Production/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Troubled Productions shown in Film include:

  • Tropic Thunder parodies this phenomenon, with specific jabs at Apocalypse Now.
  • A fictional example can be found in Werner Herzog's Incident at Loch Ness. To give any details would be ruining it.
  • Living In Oblivion is a nineties independent flick in which Steve Buscemi plays the role of a director in a nineties independent flick where everything goes wrong. The movie itself is supposedly based on the director's experience while working on a Brad Pitt movie called Johnny Suede.
  • The film within the film for Singin' in the Rain (The Dueling Cavalier) experienced severe troubled production due to the transition from silent to talkie pictures; the crew was too inexperienced to realize that every sound could be recorded, and the actors were unable to adjust to the idea of speaking into microphones, leading the film to be laughed off by audiences at its first screening. This lead to the film being retooled into a campy musical called The Dancing Cavalier and a complete dub of the female lead's voice.
  • At one point in Walk Hard, Dewey Cox (under the influence of a number of drugs) attempts to create his bizarre masterpiece "Black Sheep" (a clear parody of the Brian Wilson song "Smile" mentioned in the Music subpage), which leads to the band and his wife to break up with him and his inevitable drug fueled rampage through the city in nothing but his underwear.

I need ten thousand didgeridoos!

  • Shadow of the Vampire fictionalizes the production of Nosferatu highlighting the disagreements between stars and producers, director and crew, and an actual vampire cast in the titular role.
  • Irreconcilable Differences is mainly about young Drew Barrymore divorcing her parents, but the best parts involve Ryan O'Neal's hilariously overblown Gone with the Wind clone spinning out of control.
  • The film-within-a-film of Scream 3, based on the 'real-life' Woodsboro murders, is quickly shut down when Ghostface starts targeting the cast.