A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

AND THEN TRAVOLTA WOULD HAVE BECOME A COBBLER: So, I've been reading Sharon Waxman's Rebels on the Backlot recently, which is a sequel of sorts to Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes, taking the latter's focus on independent directors of the 1980s into the next decade.

And Waxman doesn't have a lot to say about the craft of making movies in her focus on such people as Tarantino, Fincher, Jonze and Soderbergh, but she sure does have a lot of great additions to my list of Most Interesting Hollywood Paths Not Followed, including:

• Daniel Day-Lewis and Bruce Willis both wanted the Travolta role in Pulp Fiction, Meg Ryan, Holly Hunter and Michelle Pfeiffer angled to play Mrs. Mia Wallace, and Matt Dillon was Roger Avary's first choice to play Butch, the boxer;
• Cameron Crowe passed on directing Out of Sight;
• David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) was offered Erin Brockovich before Jersey Films finally turned to Soderbergh, and Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) was considered for directing Fight Club, with Russell Crowe as Tyler Durden, and either Winona Ryder or Reese Witherspoon in the Helena Bonham Carter role;
• David O. Russell turning to Dustin Hoffman, Mel Gibson, Nicolas Cage and Clint Eastwood to play the lead in Three Kings -- anything to avoid having to work with tv star George Clooney in his Gulf War film; and
• Paul Thomas Anderson wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to play Dirk Diggler; better still, Warren Beatty was under consideration for the Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) role, until Anderson realized that Beatty actually wanted to be considered for Diggler.

I'll pass along more details as I learn them. It's not a great book, but it's an interesting one.