Three days before we were meant to start shooting, our lead actor called to say he had taken another role that shot the same week. I want to describe how I reacted calmly and professionally. I did not.
The forty-eight hours that followed
We recast twice in two days. The first replacement was wrong for the part in a way we didn’t have language for until we saw the chemistry read. The second was a risk — younger than the character as written, with none of the theatre credits our first choice had.
The film we made is better than the film we planned. I still don’t recommend the method.
I am not writing this to recommend chaos as a production strategy. I am writing it because every producer I know has a version of this story, and almost none of us talk about it until years later, over a drink, once the film is safely finished.
