For anyone who has seen The Hunt for Red October, you know it is a great film with fine performances from both its leads, Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin, respectively.
You probably also know that this was the first entry in the Jack Ryan film series which marked Alec Baldwin's only stint as the hero from the Tom Clancy novels. Harrison Ford replaced Baldwin in the subsequent two films, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, along with Phillip Noyce replacing original director John McTiernan.
For years it's been pondered why Baldwin never reprised the role as the actor has remained coy about why exactly he gave up the chance to play arguably one of the best roles of his career.
Finally, on the twenty year anniversary of the release of Red October, Baldwin has finally spoken up about what exactly happened...and his answer might surprise you.
In his recent entry for his blog with the Huffington Post, Baldwin writes:
People often ask me why I never continued in the role of Jack Ryan in the movies based on Tom Clancy's great novels. Usually, I have given a half truth as an answer, something about scheduling conflicts and so forth. But the truth is the studio cut my throat. Or, more specifically, an executive at the studio named David Kirkpatrick who was, as studio executives are on their way both up and down the ladder, eager to prove he had that special quality that studio executives are eager to display. That quality is an utter lack of sentimentality while transacting deals around a business built on sentimentality.
The run of events in 1991 went like this. John McTiernan, who directed The Hunt For Red October, called me repeatedly over a period of a few days and that got my attention because John was not someone who did that. I knew it must be something important. I had been traveling to Syracuse to see my mother who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. I had lost my dad in 1983 to lung cancer when he was fifty-five and the idea of being an orphan, technically speaking, at the age of 33 weighed heavily on me. It took a few rounds before John and I connected.
On the phone, John told me that during the period of the previous few months, he had been negotiating to do a film with a very famous movie star who had dropped out of his film days before so that he could go star in the sequels to The Hunt For Red October. John further told me that Paramount owed the actor a large sum of money for a greenlit film that fell apart prior to this, and pushing me aside would help to alleviate that debt and put someone with much greater strength at the box office than mine in the role. I sat there mildly stunned because not only was I in an active negotiation with Paramount, but for them to negotiate simultaneously with another actor was against the law. My mother was about to have a double mastectomy. I asked John if he was sure about all of this and he said yes, he had talked with the famous actor directly who confirmed the story. All of this served to explain why the studio would not close my deal over what I thought were some relatively arbitrary issues surrounding the dates of production.
I got a call from Mace Neufeld, the film's producer who I had worked with on Hunt. The call resembled that final scene in Sorry, Wrong Number (great film), where Burt Lancaster exhorts Barbara Stanwyck to get out of bed and scream for help lest she be killed by emissaries of Lancaster himself. Neufeld told me to sign whatever deal they were offering and "the rest would take care of itself."
I flew from Syracuse to Long Island to attend to some business. I drove to a friend's home where I was to have dinner and was informed by my assistant that I should call David Kirkpatrick right away. Kirkpatrick was a beady-eyed, untalented tool who had seemed like he was up to something throughout my sequel negotiation. Now, he became vividly clear. I had to decide if I would agree to an open-ended clause relating to dates for the first sequel and thus completely give up the chance to do one of the greatest dramas in the American theatre, or he would rescind my offer. They had the other guy all lined up, and they were looking for a way to gut me. I thought he wasn't serious at first. Then, when I realized he was, I chose A Streetcar Named Desire.
Wow. What a dam shame for Alec Baldwin. The guy is a hell of an actor, and it's unfortunate sleazy studio execs like this can screw people over so easily.
Ironically, just as I'm writing this story mid-sentence, that sleazy studio exec (David Kirkpatrick) has responded to Baldwin's comments, stating this on his blog:
Fundamentally, the reason that Alec Baldwin and I ended our relationship over the character of the Jack Ryan franchise was an issue of trust. We did not trust one another to continue in the enterprise. The negotiations to continue as Jack Ryan had drawn out for almost a year and he was nervous over controls, as he was the man on camera and he had a right to be; yet, I had a responsibility, working for a publicly-traded company to keep the franchise alive.
Alec Baldwin withdrew from the project, Patriot Games, over an issue of script approval: I wanted him to approve a script and he refused.
Not sure what to make of all this, but I must say, with all the backstabbing that goes on in Hollywood, I'm with Baldwin 100%.
He got screwed.
Tue, March 15, 2011 
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