The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996 Film) - Production

Production

Original director Richard Stanley spent four years developing the project before getting the green-light from New Line Cinema. The first sign of trouble appeared when Kilmer suddenly decided - for reasons of his own - that he wanted his role cut by 40%. Stanley knew that it was impossible to cut the role of UN diplomat Edward Prendick (later changed to Edward Douglas) by such a drastic amount, but he wanted to keep Kilmer on board, so he hit on the idea of switching him to the role of Dr. Montgomery, Moreau's assistant on the island. Kilmer agreed to this proposal, so the part of Prendick was given to Rob Morrow. The chosen location for the film were the rain forests outside Cairns in North Queensland, Australia.

Three days into filming, New Line fired Stanley. The reasons for Stanley's dismissal were not made clear, but it is likely because of difficulties with Kilmer, who was known to be difficult on sets and was going through a divorce at the time. During the first days' shooting, Kilmer would not deliver the dialogue as scripted, and the footage was deemed unusable. The studio seems to have blamed the director for not getting Kilmer under control.

New Line brought in veteran director John Frankenheimer, who, like virtually every member of the cast and crew, came on board because he wanted the opportunity to work with Brando. Frankenheimer's vision was very different from Stanley's, and he and Brando decided to have the then-current script by Richard Stanley, Michael Herr and Walon Green rewritten by Frankenheimer's previous collaborator Ron Hutchinson. When Morrow also decided to leave the production, Frankenheimer needed to find a new lead actor and brought in David Thewlis to play Douglas. The whole production was shut down for a week and a half while these changes were implemented.

Once shooting resumed, however, the problems did not dissipate. New pages were turned in only a few days before they were shot. Frankenheimer and Kilmer had an argument on-set, which reportedly got so heated, Frankenheimer stated afterwards, "I don't like Val Kilmer, I don't like his work ethic, and I don't want to be associated with him ever again". Because of this, there were two famous phrases Frankenheimer was quoted as saying to the press in reference to Val Kilmer. The first was, "There are two things I will never ever do in my whole life. The first is that I will never climb Mt. Everest. The second is that I will never work with Val Kilmer ever again." The second, more tongue-in-cheek phrase was, "Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer." Frankenheimer also reportedly clashed with Brando and the studio, as they were concerned with the direction he was taking the film.

According to Thewlis, "we all had different ideas of where it should go. I even ended up improvising some of the main scenes with Marlon." Thewlis went on to rewrite his character personally. The constant rewrites also got to Brando's nerves and having no motivation to keep rehearsing new lines, he was equipped with a small radio receiver - a technique he'd used on earlier films. Thewlis recollects: " be in the middle of a scene and suddenly he'd be picking up police messages and would repeat, 'There's a robbery at Woolworth's.'" Even Brando clashed with Kilmer, who didn't make any new friends with his continuously erratic behavior. According to Film Threat magazine, Brando pointed out to him: "You're confusing your talents with the size of your paycheck".

Kilmer has stated that the time filming on-set was "crazy." He was served with divorce papers from his then-wife Joanne Whalley, Brando was dealing with the suicide of his daughter Cheyenne, as well as the implications of a French nuclear test near the atoll he owned. Upon completion of Kilmer's final scene, Frankenheimer said to the crew "Now get that bastard off my set".

As a joke, Stanley reportedly told the production designer to burn the set down; security was tightened in case he was actually trying to sabotage the project. One rumor surfaced (promoted by Stanley) that he did however manage to sneak back on the set in full costume as one of the many human-animal hybrids. Another reports that he also showed up at the film's wrap party where he ran into Kilmer, who was said to have apologized profusely for Stanley's removal from the film.

Thewlis skipped the film's premiere by choice.