9 Classic Movie Scenes That Were Awful To Film

This indulgent project by the late author and provocateur Norman Mailer was likely unpleasant to work on in general, but one particular scene takes the biscuit. Hostile work environments are a dime a dozen, but it’s not often a co-star attempts to bash the director’s head in with a hammer - and even more rare that the scene stays in the picture.

Rip Torn, the wildman and sometime actor who passed away this year, plays Raoul O'Houlihan. His role in the film is none too important - the key detail is that, towards the end of the shoot, Torn deemed it necessary to kill Mailer’s character Norman Kingsley (but not Mailer himself - how he intended to make the distinction was unclear).

Going off book, he attacked Mailer with a hammer. The director fought back, biting Torn’s ear, and eventually Mailer’s wife split the pair up. Rather than fire the actor or start legal proceedings, Mailer decided that the incident would make the perfect ending to his muddled picture.

In the end, it was probably the right decision. The film is remembered by few, but the scrap itself has gone down in Hollywood folklore. In today’s more professional industry, they don’t make men like Mailer and Torn anymore, which is a shame, but also probably for the best.