20 Things You Didn’t Know About Galaxy Quest
14. Allen Nearly Didn't Get The Part, Though
Harold Ramis was originally tasked to direct the film when the screenplay laboured under the title ‘Captain Sunshine’. However, Ramis wanted Kevin Kline, Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin to play Jason Nesmith, which led to a memorably awkward meeting with Allen when Ramis, a lovely man, tried his best to imply that he didn’t want to cast Allen without actually saying the words outright.
When Disney insisted on casting Allen, Ramis dropped out of the project as the movie wasn’t what he wanted to make - an action movie that was funny, rather than a comedy with some action - but he was kind enough to admit that he’d been wrong after seeing Allen in the finished product.
Mark Johnson is pretty dismissive of the screenplay at that point anyway:
"The original David Howard draft of “Captain Starshine” – very few people have ever read that. The original concept was brilliant, but we needed someone like a Bob Gordon to take it from there."
Amazingly, Bob Gordon wasn’t one of the people who’d read the ‘Captain Starshine’ version of the script.
"I didn’t read it until after the film was made. I heard the logline from my agent. I thought that it could be a great idea or it could be a terrible idea. I didn’t take the job at first because I thought it was too hard, but I would go in with a scene like, “Tommy takes the ship out of the dock and scratches it on the side.” They would say, “That’s great, you should write it,” and I’d say, “Uh, I don’t have it yet.” Only when I nailed the scene where the Captain has to admit he's a fraud, then I said “I've got it.”"