Thursday, April 12, 2012

Drunks On The Set

As long as actors stay sober on the set, movie studios will generally put up with their off screen behavior. Colin Farell often showed up at six in the morning to work on Swat (2003) so hung over from an all night bender that his bodyguards would carry the nearly unconscious Irishman into his trailer. His co-star Sam Jackson was constantly amazed that the young actor was on time, knew all his lines and was totally professional.

In earlier days before drug testing made it difficult for studios to insure actors like Robert Downey Jr.( known to be just as professional on movie sets as Farrel) the film industry had more tolerance for drunkards. During the making of Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Director Charles Barton put up with Costello's antics which included starting a pie fight with Dracula (Bela Lugosi), putting a leash around the Werewolf (Lon Chaney Jr.) and walking him around Universal Studios, and pelting ad-libs at Frankenstein's Monster (Glenn Strange) so the creature kept laughing and ruining takes. A bigger concern was Bud Abbott who would get so sloshed by 2pm that he was incapable of shooting for the rest of the day. Abbott later explained that when he was young, a doctor told him that if he didn't stop drinking he'd be dead by the age of thirty. The straight man was so worried about the diagnosis he stayed drunk for the next forty years.

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