Making movies isn’t easy. Anyone that has been a fan of films long enough has probably read a story about one movie or another that has experienced a troubled production. Many times, this has to do with a clash between a studio and a filmmaker over creative issues. Perhaps there’s an issue between a director and an actor. Or maybe, one of the folks on set just isn’t having a good day and lets people hear it. Either way, there are a ton of examples of this sort of friction on set, and apparently, the latest film to go down in history as a troubled production is the upcoming Robert Downey, Jr. adventure movie, “Dolittle.”
Actually, maybe calling it “troubled” is a misnomer, as you’ll soon see how someone described the director of “Dolittle,” Stephen Gaghan, as “batshit” and “a fucking moron.” If this is to be believed, it sounds as if “Dolittle” was a trainwreck that Universal was barely able to salvage at the last minute.
READ MORE: ‘Dolittle’ Trailer: Robert Downey Jr. Becomes Caretaker To All Creatures Big And Small
According to a recent Twitter post, which itself is a repost of a social media thread, an unnamed worker from the set of “Dolittle” had a ton of things to say about the filming process of the family-friendly film. While we don’t know who the whistleblower is, it would appear from the context of the stories that the person worked on the extensive animation/CGI in the film.
Before we get to the nitty-gritty, it’s important to understand that “Dolittle” is the upcoming film starring Robert Downey, Jr as the titular doctor that has the innate ability to literally speak to animals. And in the film, it’s not just one or two animals that converse with the good doctor. Instead, there’s a whole menagerie of wild creatures, voiced by A-list talent, that populate the film, which is credited to director Gaghan, despite already published reports of Chris McKay coming aboard to rewrite portions of the film for reshoots that were helmed by director Jonathan Liebesman.
“It was deep in production hell last year, they started filming scenes before they had even planned where the animated animals would be standing, it was nuts,” wrote the disgruntled crewmember (syntax and spelling errors kept intact). “And then the batshit director went and got fired, which was a little too late after his insane outbursts and subsequent banning from stepping foot into both the lead concept department AND the lead Pre-visual animation department.”
The rant continued, “Then he demanded that the previsual department be fired because ‘We can figure it out on the day”, yeah Stephan, you can figure out where 5+ animated characters and Robert.D.Jr are standing when you have 30 individual camera shots to film on a monday morning, you fucking moron.”
When it was mentioned about how Liebesman and McKay were brought on to save the film, after Universal was displeased with test screenings, the crewmember admitted that they weren’t there for the reshoots, but said, “…if it’s even remotely watchable then the new guys deserve some fuckin’ medals haha.”
Adding to the laundry list of issues brought up by this crewmember is the fact that Gaghan “was literally insane, almost put a fist through a new 8k tv because the talking Goose wasn’t on screen while it was talking in one shot, even though he asked the week before for us to move the goose out of the shot…”
Now, even though these stories sound horrible, perhaps the most entertaining rant that is published by this disgruntled person is the description of Gaghan’s dog. Yes, the director’s LITERAL companion animal.
The crewmember describes the animal as “one of the most incredibly regal looking motherfucker I’ve ever seen.” However, with that regality comes a healthy dose of racism, apparently.
The dog is described as a “stone cold racist” that would “track down every human in the building with even the slightest drop of ethnic ancestry and bark.” Oof.
Look, clearly this is all hearsay and might be a whole lot of bunk. But then again, if there were examples of this all over the internet with people railing about working on troubled productions and giving specific examples, we’d likely treat it like garbage. But honestly, while we can’t say that any of this happened for sure, it’s clear that the person who penned this believes it 100% and there is already a history of “Dolittle” suffering a troubled production. So, maybe there are a couple of ounces of truth in here. Obviously, the only real way to find out is to find this dog and have it prove its racism.
“Dolittle” will arrive in theaters on January 17, 2020. You know, when studios love to showcase their best movies of the year. Eesh.
https://twitter.com/tmbryant96/status/1183193020545601536?s=21
