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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
You think too highly of yourself. The film was optioned by Willard Huyck (of "Howard the Duck" fame) and starred Pauly Shoreas you in his first "serious" role. The little girl was morphed into Tea Leoni, and the entire mess was released straight to video.
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Pauly Shore? That's even better ... I could see him playing me. Imagine a James Cameron/Pauly Shore collaboration. I think we'd have a hit. Willard Huyck couldn't option anything by 1999 ...
But hey, since the whole thing is fantasy I figured why not go for the gold?
Originally, I wanted David Duchovny, but he was busy with X-Files at the time and couldn't fit it in his schedule. This was before James Cameron jumped on board and demanded that Bruce Willis be given first dibs. I don't know why exactly ... Bruce had started his descent into "comedy" just after "The Sixth Sense."
But this gave James a great idea to have my story be told as a "dark comedy" and he figured that Bruce would be perfect. Unfortunately, as I said, Bruce couldn't commit either. After a long and drawn-out audition process which included Kevin Spacey, Emo Phillips, Vin Diesel, Wil Wheaton, Carrot Top, and for some reason Micky Rooney, we settled on Pauly Shore. There was something in him that reminded me of me and I demanded that he get the part. James Cameron balked at this idea naturally, so I threatened him with my gun until he saw it my way. Just like Phil Spector.
Anyway, the whole project was shelved after Pauly Shore demanded that I be barred from the set because of creative differences. In reality, I kept referring to him as "the mongoose" and it pissed him off because everyone knows he's "the weasel." I retained the publishing rights to the story and since TriStar couldn't usurp control and the only agreement we could come to was to call Pauly "Mr. ferret" we decided to scrap it.
This lead to TriStar only releasing three films that year.