Why did this movie get made?
Just cuz.
shareAs one of the Monty Python guys once said: "A fair question, and one that recently has been much on my mind."
Here's the answer from Imdb trivia:
"Because Arme Glimcher was one of the most important art dealers and helped power agent Michael Ovitz with his art collection, Ovitz returned the favor by getting this movie made for him by committing his client, Sean Connery, without his consent . Eventually he got Connery to consent by waiving his commission."
Just Cause seemed way out of whack as a Sean Connery vehicle at the time...it just wasn't BIG enough, it felt.
But the Mike Ovitz/Arme Glimcher story eventually emerged. I believe this is the only movie Glimcher directed, it wasn't his thing.
Connery was reportedly furious he'd been committed, but "came around." There was some article about this in which Connery corralled a junior young Ovitz agent for a conference call, got him to admit the script was bad, and told Ovitz and Glimcher on the phone -- with the young agent on the line: "The boy here things this script is shit...and so do I."
(Can't you just hear Connery's accent?) The "boy" was mortifed; Ovitz came down hard on him.
Anyway, Connery got paid, Ovitz waived his commission, the movie got made and....I saw it, but I sure can't remember a thing about it, other than the Florida locales.
This is a lot more research than I ever expected to get from this post.
shareThis is a lot more research than I ever expected to get from this post.
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Well, when Just Cause came up trending, I flashed back to the weirdness of the movie. I saw it on release as a Sean Connery fan and I wondered: what is HE doing in THIS? It just seemed so small scale for him, without being Oscar bait indie material.
Later I read an article about Mike Ovitz, the art dealer/director Arme Glimcher, and how this movie was sort of "forced" on Connery. Pretty big ones on Ovitz to offer up Sean Connery of all people without his consent. Connery came on board -- probably didn't want to get in too much conflict with Ovitz, but interesting that Ovitz had to give up his commission to make things right with Big Sean.
I remembered some of this, but not all of this so -- off to imdb trivia where I got the whole story. But there was an article with Connery's line "The boy thinks the script is shit" that just made me laugh.
PS. Perhaps Ovitz's MAJOR career boost when he was an agent was to promise to make his marital arts instructor a movie star with a low budget film: Steven Segal. Worked for awhile. They acted like Segal was a star from the first movie on.