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Was Richard Dreyfuss Even Offered The Sequel???

posted 18 years ago by jersey-3
9 replies | jump to latest

A couple of questions:

1) Was Richard Dreyfuss offered to reprise the role and denied? Or was he not offered at all? I always assumed Dreyfuss turned them down. He's always seemed to be more of an artsy-kind-of-actor...plus since the original, he had huge success in both "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" so probably figured "why do I need this 'bad' sequel"???

2) I assume the money was really good to get back most of the cast While most weren't big stars (so why skip a pay day)...both Cindy Williams and Ron Howard were on HUGE hit shows at the time....surprised they went.

3) Assuming that Harrison Ford did the cameo as the police officer (never really established if it is supposed to be Bob Falfa in this one) as a favor to George Lucas. After huge "Star Wars" success, it doesn't help to help the hand that fed you. Stuff like this helps when a character like "Indiana Jones" pops up a couple of years later and Lucas' first choice of "Tom Selleck" has to drop out. "Hmmmm...who should we use??? Oh year, Harrison Ford, he was a good guy and team player!"

[–] Michaelnlori 17 years ago

It is established that the police officer is Bob Falfa in his scene. Debbie says she's going to report him and he says something like, "I'll help you-the name is falfa F-A-L-F-A".

[–] jrs-8 17 years ago

Dreyfuss WAS offered the sequel but he had just completed "The Big Fix" and, as producer, was supervising the post-production. After that he accepted the role of Joe Gideon in Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz." I remember Dreyfuss saying in an interview that the money was too good to pass up and that the part (which I would later read was replaced by Candy Clark's story) wasn't bad but needed work. Whatever Curt Henderson's story would have been here I have never found out. Dreyfuss asked them to wait but Lucas was determined to have the film in theaters for the summer of 79. He felt it would have gotten lost in the Christmas crunch which included "Star Trek," "The Jerk" and his buddy Speilberg's "1941." Interestingly none of them turned out to be as big as originally thought. Anyway, Lucas didn't want the film for summer of 1980 because he didn't want it to go up against "The Empire Strikes Back." So it was decided to pass on Dreyfuss who, incidentally, would end up quitting "All That Jazz."

[–] jporter-6 17 years ago

Very interesting story. Had never read it before.
Thanks for posting it.

[–] PretoriaDZ 15 years ago

You can either give Dreyfuss the benefit of the doubt and say he had scheduling conflicts or you can believe that he was too in love with himself at the time to do this type of picture. That's one thing I always loved about Ron Howard. He came back for the Mayberry reunion, the Happy Days reunion, and this reunion even though the scripts were only about 50-60% of the originals. And he certainly didn't need the money or exposure of any of these but was being a team player.

[–] ANDREWEHUNT 14 years ago

The movie really suffered without Dreyfuss. He was such an important character in the original. He was really the main character. Strange to have a sequel without him.

"You can dish it out, but you got so you can't take it no more." - Caesar Enrico Bandello

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] dwarol 13 years ago

Even if he had been available, what would have been his story line? We know he wound up in Canada, the obvious reason in this anti Vietnam war movie would be to avoid the draft. That aspect of the war, from the point of view of antiwar protests and draft card burnings, was already covered in the Howard/Williams story. I don't know that Curt's story would have been all that interesting.

Though I like to think that in this fictional world Curt Henderson the author was the one who wrote the "Stand By Me" story, the movie of which is narrated by Dreyfuss. ;-)

(Yeah, I know Stephen King actually wrote "Stand By Me").

[–] kamdan11-207-500612 13 years ago

I'm willing to bet that the script had the Curt in the role that would be taken over by Andy. When Dreyfuss turned it down, they simply rewrote it. It's a shame he didn't return, because I really can't stand Will Seltzer, the actor who played Andy.

[–] collin-reid 13 years ago

My guess that a lot of actors tend to use "scheduling conflicts" as a way of saying 'no' without coming right out and saying so to the press or to producers. Also, considering what a complete diaster this movie turned out to be (as well as how lame Jaws 2) who can blame Richard for his casting choices. He just had big hits and Academy Awards so he now had a choice of roles and I certainly would have picked All That Jazz over More American Graffiti. (Considering what happened he was probably wise not to do All That Jazz.)

Although replacing Andy with Curt probably hurt the movie but it would have been a mess. Georgre Lucas vision would have been hard to pull off.