Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [120]
Steve knew Schaffner from way back, from when they both worked on the TV show “The Defender.” He felt comfortable around him and knew he wouldn’t be challenged every step of the way, as he had been with Peckinpah. And with no producing responsibilities, he could concentrate on developing what he knew would be his most complicated character.
Production began in February 1973, without a completed shooting script. Schaffner had hired the writing team of Robert Benton and David Newton, who’d won Oscars for Bonnie and Clyde, to convert the ponderous novel—it had no in-depth character development, no action, inadequate descriptions, and a certain flair for the dramatic that played fast and easy with some of the facts of the story—into a mainstream entertainment film. Their price for a first draft was $500,000, and as far as Schaffner was concerned, what they produced was worthless. He tossed it out just days before the entire cast and crew were to arrive in Jamaica.
Schaffner then turned to William Goldman, who did several script revisions before he was replaced by Dalton Trumbo, who had to travel with the production to Jamaica to keep writing pages ahead of filming. Because of the unusual way the script was written, and for practical purposes, Papillon had to be shot in sequence. That made everything far more expensive because of the nature of film economics, which dictates that all scenes using the same setup of lights and scenery be shot together, and which includes daylight and other factors. Soon enough, not surprisingly, the film quickly ran into serious money problems. Per diems had to be suspended, along with “voluntary” weekly paychecks for those members of the production on salary. When Steve heard about this, he refused to work until every penny owed to the cast and crew was paid. After a five-day work stoppage led by Steve, Allied Artists coughed up $250,000 to get the cameras rolling again.
Into all of this came Ali MacGraw. She had decided to fly down to Jamaica to be with Steve, who was understandably distracted by the film’s financial troubles and his increasingly frustrating attempts to try to explain to fellow Method neurotic Dustin Hoffman how to play a believable Frenchman. Steve, always looking for something physical he could use to build his character, remembered Eli Wallach’s gold tooth in The Magnificent Seven and had one made for himself to wear. His struggle to let it shine through his smile paralleled his quest to find the interior jewel in the roughness of his portrayal of Papillon.
Moreover, since being in Jamaica, he had gained some visible weight and his ego was bruised by it (though not enough to stop him from drinking a dozen bottles of beer a day and staying constantly stoned on Jamaican ganja), especially when he was forced to wear oversized prison garb to hide his girth while playing a man who was being starved to death by his captors. Hoffman, on the other hand, lived on half a coconut a day during the entire shoot.
Hoffman and Steve did not get along especially well. In the scenes they had together each was concerned the other was stealing it. During the course of the production they fought verbally over some relatively petty incidents that permanently damaged whatever friendship