Contract Killers II
Yet more weird things it's hard to believe anyone Hollywood star would sign up for and/or any major studio agree to.
They're very different people, but Robert Redford, Sylvester Stallone and Barbra Streisand are united by the fact that they've each signed deals that specify the side of the fact from which they prefer to be filmed.
John Wayne's star power allowed his desire not to start work until he'd successfully passed a bowel movement both legal and binding.
Emotionally stunted loner Peter Sellers' list of special stipulations was a veritable catalogue of crazy. Besides insisting that his hotel beds to be positioned facing east to west, he refused to use dressing rooms decorated in purple since director Vittorio De Sica told him that purple was ‘the colour of death’.
Sean Connery asked that his fee for The Hunt For Red October (1990) be enhanced to compensate for the dollar's weakness against the pound. With super agent Michael Ovitz in Connery's corner, the studio swiftly conceded.
Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman, Frankie & Johnny) loved to play basketball in his lunch hour. And if the execs refused to provide him with a full-sized court and shower facilities, he'd walk off the set.
The financial lunacy that characterised the making of The Bonfire Of The Vanities kicked off with director Brian De Palma convincing Warners to add a clause to his contract that would pay him $250,000 provided he didn't direct another movie while the script was being finalised.
Drug testing's commonplace these days. However, back in the 1950s, Peter Lorre signed a contract with Warner Bros that prohibited the studio doctors from examining him. This was presumably to cover up his heroic cocaine consumption.
Remember Benji, the cute little mongrel that stormed the box office charts in the 1970s? Producer Joe Camp does, since the prize mutt's special contract cost him a fortune in first class air travel.