Big Trouble (1986)

User Rating:

4.9/10   

Director:

John Cassavetes

Writer:

Andrew Bergman (writer)

Release Date:

30 May 1986 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

Insurance agent plots with client to kill her nutty husband. |

Plot Keywords:

Remake

Cast

Peter Falk	...	Steve Rickey
Alan Arkin	...	Leonard Hoffman
Beverly D'Angelo	...	Blanche Rickey
Charles Durning	...	O'Mara
Robert Stack	...	Winslow
Paul Dooley	...	Noozel
Valerie Curtin	...	Arlene Hoffman
Richard Libertini	...	Dr. Lopez
Steve Alterman	...	Peter Hoffman
Jerry Pavlon	...	Michael Hoffman
Paul La Greca	...	Joshua Hoffman
John Finnegan	...	Det. Murphy
Karl Lukas	...	Police captain
Maryedith Burrell	...	Gail
Edith Fields	...	Doris

Runtime:

93 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

UK:15 | USA:R | West Germany:12 | Singapore:PG | Iceland:L | Finland:K-12

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

John Cassavetes' last film as director

Movie Connections:

References The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)

Soundtrack:

Eine kleine Nachatmusik

Clearing up the Directorship Issue

I worked on this film in 1986, in a scene that was ultimately left on the cutting room floor. When I auditioned for the film, I met with the director, who was in fact, Andrew Bergman (credited solely as the writer). Several weeks went by before I actually worked, and by that time, Bergman had been replaced by John Cassevetes. What I was told at the time, was that Bergman had been fired, and that Falk, a friend of Cassevetes, recommended that Cassevetes come in to finish the job. I don't know how much of the film was already in the can at that point, but I know that Cassevetes changed the script a bit. In the scene I was involved in, Falk and Arkin go into a hardware store to buy dynamite to blow up a building (An insurance office, as I recall). I played the Hardware store clerk. I remember the script being pretty much thrown out the window, and improvising much of the dialog, which included Falk explaining that the dynamite was need for a luau. "My Wife," he said, "makes a suckling pig, that'll knock your eye out. First you baste it––" "With clarified butter," Arkin chimes in. "Then blast the sh*t of it with dynamite." As the clerk, I apologize that the store doesn't carry dynamite, and end up selling them a hundred pounds of charcoal briquettes instead.

Funny.

And you will likely never see this scene.

Ah well.