10 Insane Ways Movies Got Sabotaged
1. Peter Sellers Spent The Whole Shoot Trolling The Director - Ghost In The Noonday Sun
1974's Brit comedy Ghost in the Noonday Sun had an incredibly fraught production, enough that Columbia eventually decided that it wasn't worthy of a theatrical release, instead choosing to dump it on home video over a decade later in 1985.
The primary source of the tension during shooting was star Peter Sellers, who seemingly went out of his way to make suffering director Peter Medak's life harder at every turn.
Sellers, who was reeling from his breakup with Liza Minnelli, quickly lost confidence in the film during shooting, and even after the script was revised to his apparent satisfaction, his inconsistent presence on set forced Medak to film around him.
After unsuccessfully attempting to get the production shut down, Sellers became more overtly uncooperative, feigning illness to avoid filming, including staging a heart attack only to be photographed at dinner with Princess Margaret in London two days later.
Sellers also fired his handpicked cinematographer, Larry Pizer, shortly after shooting began, and fought with co-star Tony Franciosa.
The end result was a disaster that was buried by Columbia, but the experience of the shoot evidently stayed with director Medak, who in 2018 released an acclaimed documentary on the subject, The Ghost of Peter Sellers.
In an interview for a Sellers biography, Medak said of the shoot:
"As an artist, he was a genius... As a person, he was insane. He was depressed in real life, like the typical comedian who under the surface is suicidal... He was incredibly manipulative. He created situations where there was tremendous confusion and then he'd gain the upper hand. He destroyed the whole film... On a good day he was sensational but his moods changed. He couldn't remember what he'd said to you days before."