Lou Diamond Phillips on Supernova

http://uk.movies.ign.com/articles/423/423729p3.html

IGNFF: Tell me a little bit about Supernova...

PHILLIPS: Speaking of far too much studio involvement... that one, I actually turned down a few times, when it came to me. Then Walter Hill came aboard, who is one of my favorite all-time directors, and Walter called me up personally and said, "Are you going to do this movie?" And I said, "Walter, there's nothing on the page for me..." and he immediately faxed me 40 pages of his rewrite. But the problem was – and it's the most expensive film I've ever been involved with – but the problem was we had Angela Bassett and James Spader and Robert Forster, just a beautiful cast, and they were already in the hole because they had fired the original director. Walter came on and tried his damnedest to make a good film, but would spend hours – literally, when we were on set – doing rewrites with studio execs. The film never got a chance to have a clear vision, yet all this money was being spent. Some of the sequences that were in the script that Walter created, that would have made it a more special film, got axed because they were too expensive. So now all of a sudden – after having blown millions of dollars – they started pinching pennies....

IGNFF: But that's Hollywood...

PHILLIPS: Yeah. And the film became a watered-down version of what it could have been.

IGNFF: But at least you can say, in a roundabout way, that you worked with Coppola...

PHILLIPS: Exactly! And the funniest thing is – and I'm amazed that you know that – but the funniest thing is that every member of the cast... they were going to shelf this $70 million movie – which, quite honestly, was probably closer to $100 million – but they were going to shelf it and take a bath on it, and Coppola became a board member at MGM, saw the film, and donated his services. He wrote us all this lovely letter saying, "All of your work in this film is quite good. It has its problems. I'm going to recut it, hopefully in the spirit of what Walter Hill wanted." Ultimately, Walter took his name off the film, and Coppola was never credited – but at least Coppola was able to cut it into a watchable movie. I mean, it's not a bad film, but it's not the film that it should have been.