The film’s most damaging conflict came after principal photography. Once 8 Million Ways to Die had been completed, the Producers Sales Organization fired both Hal Ashby and editor Robert Lawrence, then hired Stuart H. Pappe to supervise post-production without the director or his original editor participating. Pappe’s version drastically altered the movie: important scenes involving Rosanna Arquette were removed, new dialogue was recorded and dubbed over Jeff Bridges’s performance, and composer James Newton Howard was ordered to replace his score with music modeled more closely on the fashionable sound of Miami Vice. Ashby appealed to the Directors Guild of America, seeking arbitration over the loss of control of his final film, but the appeal was rejected. The resulting picture was savaged by critics, earned a 0% positive score from the small number of reviews recorded by Rotten Tomatoes, and was later described by novelist Lawrence Block as a terrible movie made on what he had heard was an unhappy set. The production’s history left Ashby’s final directorial effort remembered less as a comeback than as a studio-controlled reconstruction of a film he no longer had the power to finish.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
The Studio Recut 8 Million Ways to Die Without Its Director
Hal Ashby and 8 Million Ways to Die / 1980s
The film’s most damaging conflict came after principal photography. Once 8 Million Ways to Die had been completed, the Producers Sales Organization fired both Hal Ashby and editor Robert Lawrence, then hired Stuart H. Pappe to supervise post-production without the director or his original editor participating. Pappe’s version drastically altered the movie: important scenes involving Rosanna Arquette were removed, new dialogue was recorded and dubbed over Jeff Bridges’s performance, and composer James Newton Howard was ordered to replace his score with music modeled more closely on the fashionable sound of Miami Vice. Ashby appealed to the Directors Guild of America, seeking arbitration over the loss of control of his final film, but the appeal was rejected. The resulting picture was savaged by critics, earned a 0% positive score from the small number of reviews recorded by Rotten Tomatoes, and was later described by novelist Lawrence Block as a terrible movie made on what he had heard was an unhappy set. The production’s history left Ashby’s final directorial effort remembered less as a comeback than as a studio-controlled reconstruction of a film he no longer had the power to finish.
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