When you’ve got nearly $100 million in budget riding on your movie, things can get pretty tense. Add to that that more than half of the budget would go to unique special effects that the entire movie hinges on and you’re not only in a risky position but a potentially silly one. And that’s exactly what happened to Josh Brolin while making 2000’s Hollow Man for Paul Verhoeven.
While Brolin did note that he respected Verhoeven as a director, he revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he did indeed clash with him, suggesting Verhoeven didn’t have a full grasp on what he was making and calling him out for how he treated extras while making Hollow Man. “I just want to know if you don’t have a solid vision, then I probably will be a little surly…Oliver [Stone] and I almost got into it in the beginning [of making 2008’s W.] cause I wanted to look at the monitor or something just so I could see if we were on or not. Oliver and I got along great. Verhoeven and I fought in a big way for good reason, I thought. You know, yelled at a couple extras and I didn’t like that. But, you know, all for stuff I would talk about now.”
While he had The Goonies and a number of other credits to his name, Josh Brolin was still trying to make a true name for himself in Hollywood. With that, to him, Hollow Man was so ridiculous to make that he’s confident that he only got the job was because everybody else must have turned it down. “But that f*cking movie, dude…Seven months of that sh*t…So we’re doing that movie, and we have these goggles on with like this red film on it to make it look like they’re x-ray or whatever. And then we’re watching invisible monkeys pass us. And we finish the scene and Kevin [Bacon] looks at me and goes, ‘You got some chops.’ I was like, ‘What the f*ck? We’re watching invisible monkeys pass us. What do you mean chops?’”
Are you a fan of Hollow Man? What are your memories of seeing it upon release?
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