Movies That Killed Careers

It seemed like Billy Zane disappeared after Titanic. His IMDB list is long but it is small roles in generally minor projects. Could it be that the two leads flourished while Billy went the other way because his character was so unpleasant along with being so poorly written?

 

Because your first sentence tried to argue that I was wrong when I said "Face/Off" wasn't a "career-killer".

 

Go to IMDB and you'll see Zane has dozens of credits post-"Titanic". I didn't count, but might be around/above 100!

Zane was never really a star. He got a few leads in movies that didn't do much but he never was able to break out, really.

But he's been able to star in 2nd - or 3rd - tier projects, so he's had a long, long career.

I think the disconnect is because Zane seemed like he should become an A-list leading man. He was tremendously handsome and he seemed suave - he had all the components of "movie star".

It just didn't happen that way, but he's still enjoyed a successful career...

 

I think the movie that sank his leading man opportunities was the period piece, THAT NIGHT. He had the sort of made-to-order male lead that agents dream of, but the movie did nothing . . . I think it had the AN OFFICER & A GENTLEMAN team on it, so expectations were high.

[I remember this long-forgotten movie because one of my employees was cast, although her lines were left on the editing room floor. It was amusing to get a phone call that she'd miss her shift because her scene was running long.]

 

I'm not sure if Looney Tunes: Back In Action was the one single movie that killed Brendan Fraser's career, but I don't remember seeing much of him after that.

 

Maybe he should have done "Derek & Clive: The Movie". ;-)

 

The love guru - Mike Myers

 

I think he said on Maron's podcast that winning the Razzie award really did it. Worst actor of the decade is pretty harsh! That's enough to make anyone stop and re evaluate what they are doing I guess.

 

Monkeybone was a bad one for Fraser. He did a few popular movies after that, but nothing that didn't have a big brand name on the title. Monkeybone could be seen as the death of his ability to sell a non-franchise movie on his name alone.

Not only that, Monkeybone put Henry Selick into director's jail for 8 years, until a moderate comeback with Coraline.

Monkeybone was also one of Bridget Fonda's last 3 movies, all 2001 releases. And its disastrous box office could be pinned partly on her more than the moderate success of Jet Li's Kiss of the Dragon that year could be credited to her. Although she officially retired, it looks like a retirement out of career frustration.

Monkeybone was also part of a one-two punch that seems to have knocked out Chris Kattan's career, along with Corky Romano the same year.

And, if that's not enough, Whoopi Goldberg's career seemed to truly level down after the one-two punch of Monkeybone and Rat Race in 2001. Her ability to get a supporting role in a respectable movie as she could in the '90s seemed to evaporate after this.

And on the subject of slapstick fantasy comedies that sent up-and-coming young actresses into early retirement, Drop Dead Fred was a death blow for Phoebe Cates. She only did a couple more movies before retirement but nothing with any potential to bounce back from that.

That seems to add up. Tower Heist had already started filming by the time he got that Razzie. His 2012 movie A Thousand Words was actually shot in 2008 and shelved. So since the Razzie his only wide theatrical release was Mr. Church 6 years later. And his only other two films are the recent streaming exclusive efforts.

 

Greg didn’t say it was a career killer, only that it was the beginning of the end, and I agree with that because it is something that I have always thought. It was the beginning of the beginning of the end. And even though his career still isn’t dead, and those movies were monetary hits, his reputation and credibility still took a hit. They were definitely turning points. With a few standout roles aside it’s been downhill in film quality ever since, and now he’s just primarily known for freaking out in crap movies.

 

Not sure I agree. However you slice it (hehe), Face/Off was a success and not a harbinger of what was to come IMO. And besides Leaving Las Vegas, what talented, praised performances was Nick Cage known for? Seems he's done rather well for a guy with limited acting chops.

 

I wasn't pinning Cage's downfall that early either. His first Razzie nom was for Wicker Man in 2007, which was really the first film that kicked off his "meme" career ("not the bees"). He was nominated for awards including an Oscar in 2003 for Adaptation, so he wasn't a total joke yet. And in 2004 he had National Treasure, his biggest hit. And he was still considered a solid lead for Ghost Rider, National Treasure 2 and Kick Ass through early 2010. So that's why I say Sorcerer's Apprentice is his turning point in 2010. Before that he still had a lot of acclaimed work and some decent hits. After that, it really all dried up. Apprentice was big-budget and named the #1 "Biggest Box Office Flops of 2010" by Parade Magazine. There's a lot on his resume after that but almost nothing noteworthy in any way. The Ghost Rider sequel is on there, but was essentially a failure. His only success after that is as a voice actor, which in the modern era is a typical sign of a fizzled out career.

 

Off topic but I thought that was just awesome news. They may never find it but the fact that someone is out there still looking after all these years is just great. The Welles mystique continues.

I agree too - some of these folks were just bad actors and some went to the well way too often with the same kind of pandering crap over and over again and that's why their careers died. It's complicated.

Nic Cage gets maligned but I think he is very representative of a certain type of 'working actor', especially in the Exploitation arena. He is enough of a draw and has enough of a fan base that people will keep financing his movies and seeking him out as a name, and he clearly likes to work. His ratio is still pretty good too. Mandy and Color Out of Space were both good movies to me.

I think the most interesting scenarios are where directors decide to shoot the moon and fail for whatever reason. Does that mean they shouldn't try? Michael Powell may have ruined his career with Peeping Tom, but it's a fascinating movie and I am glad it exists. It's an interesting 'art vs. commerce' dilemma.

 

"Better a spectacular failure than a benign success."

Never heard of Peeping Tom, but now I'm intrigued: "Karlheinz Böhm later remembered that after the film's premiere, nobody from the audience went to shake the hand of him or Michael Powell." (Wikipedia)

 

I'm sure a lot of these are more a case of "I've made enough money and I'm not that money crazy so screw it if A list projects don't come my way. I'll just do some easy projects that take up one month of the year that pay my bills!"

Not everyone is Tom Cruise.

 

Speaking of shooting for the moon...

Francis Ford Coppola - One from the Heart - Drove Coppola into debt for the rest of the 1980s and his studio eventually went bankrupt in 1990. Most of his other 1980s films also lost money. He stated this financial predicament is the only reason he agreed to make Godfather 3. So we have a classic case of a failing career, returning to old franchises. That was a hit as was his 1992 Dracula film, giving him a bit of a comeback, although not to the kind of critical acclaim he had in the '70s. His 1996 movie Jack was his lowest point critically and he never bounced back again after that. But he had huge success with a movie he didn't make, Pinocchio, winning $80 million from Warner Bros. in 1998 in "the largest civil financial verdict ever against a Hollywood studio" just on the basis of his development work on the film. Coppola is supposedly worth in the low hundreds of millions today, so I'm not quite sure how he earned all that money after his studio went bankrupt in 1990, or if he had the money to bail it out then but didn't want to do it.

 

He's been bankrupt three times, but the last filing was 1992, IIRC. He's probably made more money from his wines, wineries and resorts than from his movies. His winery/restaurant up in Geyserville, CA, is wonderful.

 

It isn’t so much his skill as an actor as which roles he chose to take on. Mid 90s he seemed to switch to whatever made him the most money at the expense of artistic integrity. In effect, “selling out” although personally I hate that term. That said, he made a lot of great movies before then in quirky roles without somehow becoming the joke he has devolved into (Valley Girl, Birdy, Moonstruck, Raising Arizona, Wild At Heart, Peggy Sue Got Married, Vampire’s Kiss, for starters).

 

Coppola himself has stated that he has made more money from his winery and associated wine brand than he ever earned in the film business.

 

Every character in Titanic was poorly written, IMO.

 

I think The Phantom was Billy Zane's shot at the big time and its failure killed his shot at being a leading man. It was trouble for others too. Simon Wincer hadn't gone more than 3 years without directing since 1979 but he didn't direct again after that until Crocodile Dundee 3, 5 years later, and barely any more since then. It was Jeffrey Boam's last screenwriting credit after a very solid run of films and creating one TV series, although he passed away 4 years later.

 

There was a time when a Jim Carrey film could be guaranteed to make big box office returns. Then he hit a bump in the road with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which turned out to be a very unique and imaginative film. And from there he went on to make The Number 23 (a darkish and bizarre noir thriller) and his film career has suffered ever since.

 

Dennis Hopper - The Last Movie (1971).

Dennis was the Hollywood golden boy of 1969 when his directorial debut Easy Rider grossed $60 million on a $400,000 budget (oh yeah, and changed the world of cinema too). So Universal gave Hopper a million bucks to shoot the follow-up down in Peru with his buddies. The Last Movie was released in 1971 to harshly negative reviews and non-existent ticket sales. This, along with his spiraling drug problems, made Hopper's name lower than mud in Hollywood for over a decade.

The film is actually kind of cool, if not exactly ... erm, accessible.

Lots of juicy details here:

The Last Movie - Wikipedia

 

Home video and his winery.

 

Shia LeBeouf after Indiana Jones, it destroyed him