From Jaws to Psycho, movie sets can be exhausting, tragic, and beautiful all at once — and these photos prove it.
The Tennessee Williams play was adapted by Elia Kazan, who also directed James Dean in East Of Eden.
1951. New Orleans, Louisiana.Mondadori/Getty Images
Jaws changed the summer blockbuster forever. It told studios that wide releases and genre pictures were not only viable, but enormously profitable.
1975. Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/ Getty Images
Their work on films such as Taxi Driver (seen here) have become hallmarks of 1970s cinema.
1976. Columbia Pictures/Getty Images
Seen here is the cast of Bride of Frankenstein taking a gander at the film's art direction.
1935.John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images
Stephen King, whose novel the film was based on, detested Kubrick's film.
1980. Elstree Studios, Hertfordshire, England.Murray Close/Sygma/Getty Images
1994.Mitchell Gerber/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images
Dennis Hopper's drug use, Martin Sheen binge-drinking, and Marlon Brando not learning his lines were a cakewalk compared to the logistics of helicopter sequences like this.
The subsequent documentary Hearts of Darkness is a must-watch for any casual fan of the film.
April 28, 1976. Baler, Philippines.Dirck Halstead/Liaison
The character of Maverick became somewhat of a template for the actor throughout several of his genre-oriented films.
Director Tony Scott tragically committed suicide by leaping from the Vincent Thomas Bridge in 2012.
1986.Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images
1993. Tony Savino/Sygma/Getty Images
His work with Peter Sellers also appeared with 1962's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
1963.George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images
1995.Santiago Bueno/Sygma/Getty Images
The two are extremely close friends to this day and have worked on three major movies together.
The duo is seen here on the set of Se7en, which became a gigantic success.
1995.New Line Cinema/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images
April 28, 1976. Philippines.Dirck Halstead/Getty Images
Harrison Ford and director Steven Spielberg made four Indiana Jones films together.
1981. Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images
1997.Touchstone/Getty Images
The press run of this film was rooted firmly in anti-drug discussions, as well as honoring the writer of the source material, Jim Carroll.
1994. New York, New York.Mark Peterson/Corbis/Getty Images
Farrow was served with divorce papers by her husband Frank Sinatra during the shoot. He was furious she accepted the role. He had demanded earlier she quit her career.
1968. Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images
Both Crowe and Gosling reportedly took the roles specifically to work with each other.
2015. Los Angeles, California.TSM/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
1960.Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The plot revolves around a group of institutionalized dwarfs who take over the asylum on a remote island, with mayhem ensuing.
1970.John Springer Collection/Corbis/Getty Images
Smith spent nearly two years learning about Ali, including physical training, learning his dialect, and studying his beliefs.
2001. Los Angeles, California.Peter Brandt/Getty Images
This iconic scene had a profound effect on its star actress. "I stopped taking showers and I only take baths," Leigh later revealed. "And when I’m someplace where I can only take a bath, I make sure the doors and windows of the house are locked. I also leave the bathroom door open and shower curtain open. I’m always facing the door, watching, no matter where the shower head is."
This 45-second scene used a whopping 78 camera set-ups and 52 edits.
1960. Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images
Scorcese famously opted to work with Netflix on the project, as no other studio would likely green-light the unsettling epic, especially with its $140 million budget.
2017. New York, New York. Bobby Bank/GC Images
The pair had an incompatible working relationship, as Newman wanted to keep refining the character and script, which Hitchcock found disrespectful.
"I think Hitch and I could have really hit it off, but the script kept getting in the way," Newman reportedly said afterward.
1966.John Springer Collection/CorbisGetty Images
George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid inspired directors such as David Fincher to go into filmmaking.
1969. Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
The role won DeNiro his first Oscar (for Best Supporting Actor).
1974. Paramount Pictures/Getty Images
2011. New York, New York.Ray Tamarra/Getty Images
Scott decided on this particular location when he learned that the Forestry Commission planned to remove a section of the forest — so he convinced them to let him shoot there and help with the "deforestation."
1999. Bourne Wood, England.Ken Goff/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
He also called Lee the most "rigorous" and "prepared" director he ever worked with.
2002. New York, New York.Tom Kingston/WireImage
The shoot was plagued by regular 108 degree Fahrenheit heat and the crumbling of Monroe and husband Arthur Miller's marriage. On top of that, Miller was revising the script throughout.
1960. Reno, Nevada.Ernst Haas/Getty Images
The Omaha Beach landing scenes cost $12 million and employed more than 1,000 extras. 20 to 30 amputees were used for some of the more gruesome sequences.
1998.Paramount Pictures/Fotos International/Getty Images
1979. Philippines.Dirck Halstead/Getty Images
Their relationship became so iconic that the alliteration of "Bogie and Bacall" was commonly uttered by a whole generation.
1948. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
1979. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images
When Warner Bros. chairman Terry Semel suggested Eastwood direct the film due to so many others dropping out, Eastwood replied, "Give me 24 hours."
He then took a Warner's jet to Madison County, inspected some locations for the shoot, and told the studio head, "Yeah, I'll do it."
1995. Madison County, Iowa.Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images
The Scotsman is seen here on the set of the fourth film,Thunderball, having a laugh while shooting a scene at a casino, in classic Bond tradition.
1965. London, England.Mario De Biasi/Mondadori/Getty Images
Little did they know that it would become one of the most profitable franchises in the history of medium.
1977. Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images
1973.Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty Images
Here he is on the set of Giant, having a smoke break between takes.
1955.Richard C. Miller/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images
The scene of her skirt getting blown up by the subterranean gusts of subway wind has since been parodied to death.
An estimated 1,500 New Yorkers stayed awake to congregate and watch this scene from The Seven-Year Itch get shot.
1954. New York, New York.Bettmann/Getty Images
It was entirely unclear at the time whether or not Cruise and director Brian De Palma's gamble on reviving the television series as a movie franchise would pay off. Obviously, it did.
1996.Murray Close/Getty Images
The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and confirmed Tarantino was a filmmaker to watch.
1994.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
His son, Max Brooks, wrote the hugely successful World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which was adapted into a film of its own right.
1976. Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty Images
1986. Bob Penn/Sygma/Getty Images
It was the first film she made under a new contract, and one she learned the Ozark accent for.
1956. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
1956.Warner Brothers/Getty Images
1973.Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty Images
1976. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Getty Images
1956.Frank Worth, Courtesy of Capital Art/Getty Images
2002. Detroit, Michigan.Universal Pictures
When filmmakers speak of movie magic, they're not exactly joking. For some successful directors, their final products often seemed like impossible goals to reach at first. This is especially true for productions that were plagued with difficulties during the filming process.
Some of the most revered movies, from Apocalypse Now to The Shining to Jaws, are often linked to the brilliance of their directors. However, filmmaking is a collective process. Every single movie set experience chronicled below makes that abundantly clear, for better or for worse.
According to The Roanoake Times, for instance, Steven Spielberg believed he was finished as a director upon concluding the seemingly disastrous Jaws.
"I thought my career as a filmmaker was over," he said. "I heard rumors...that I would never work again because no one had ever taken a film 100 days over schedule."
Of course, Jaws later turned out to be a massive success. But it's not the only movie that seemed like it was doomed before it hit the theaters.
From The Wizard of Oz to The Avengers, mundanity on set turned to magic on the screen. It just goes to show that sometimes a challenging journey can lead to a glorious destination — and one hell of a story.
Steven Spielberg Wrangles Jaws
Before Spielberg's horror classic hit the scene, summers without major blockbusters were commonplace. Jaws changed that for good.
It was the first movie to cross the $100 million box-office mark — though it nearly sank before production had even wrapped.
Centered around a seaside community plagued by a vengeful shark, it was vital for the fake great white to seem like a real animal. The then-27-year-old director quickly found that his mechanical terror — named Bruce after Spielberg's real-life lawyer — didn't even work properly.
"Every single day the shark was put in the water, something went wrong," said line producer Bill Gilmore. "Our own crew sarcastically referred to the title of the movie as Flaws."
The young filmmaker knew he had to adapt or drown. So that's exactly what he and his crew did.
"We shot anything and everything in the movie that didn't have a shark in it," Gilmore said.
With the original 55-day schedule extending to a whopping 159 days, it's no surprise that Spielberg thought his career was over. The budget, too, spiked from $3.5 to $10 million, which certainly didn't boost anyone's confidence.
Ultimately, no one could've predicted that the new minimalistic approach would improve, rather than ruin the film. With John Williams' terrifying score underpinning the tension, the director had a hit on his hands.
"The film went from a Japanese Saturday matinee horror flick to more of a Hitchcock, the less-you-see-the-more-you-get thriller," Spielberg said.
After an audience member at a Jaws test screening ran out of the theater to vomit — before ultimately returning to his seat, Spielberg finally knew for sure that his film hadn't failed.
The Hearts Of Darkness: The War Of Apocalypse Now, One Battle At A Time
According to Peter Cowie's Coppola, the renowned director Francis Coppola told screenwriter John Milius to "write every scene you ever wanted to go into that movie." The result was 10 drafts and over a thousand pages.
Though based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness about the imperialist horrors in the Congo, Milius wanted to use the source material as "a sort of allegory. It would have been too simple to have followed the book completely."
With simplicity out the window, Apocalypse Now became a Vietnam War movie that ran six weeks behind schedule and $2 million over budget.
"My greatest fear is to make a really sh-tty, embarrassing, pompous film on an important subject, and I am doing it," he said in the making-of documentary, Hearts of Darkness. "And I confront it. I acknowledge, I will tell you right straight from... the most sincere depths of my heart, the film will not be good."
Filming in the Philippines — with a typhoon wrecking an entire set — the production became infamous for being disastrous. Coppola was forced to personally cover some $16 million of the film's $30.5 million budget, in the end offering all that his Godfather successes had purchased as collateral.
Realizing that a lead character isn't working, of course, only complicated matters. Martin Sheen replaced Harvey Keitel as the star, only to suffer a heart attack during the shoot. When Marlon Brando showed up on set an estimated 90 pounds overweight, Coppola was at the end of his wits.
"There is only about a 20 percent chance I can pull the film off," Coppola reportedly told his wife.
While initial screenings seemed to confirm his fears, post-production on the audio, tinkering with the voiceover, and substantially editing large portions of the film turned it into a masterpiece. Only perseverance and fighting the right battles led Coppola to glory.
His efforts on that set inspire filmmakers to this day.
The Shining: An Overlooked Production Hell
Stanley Kubrick was arguably the most notorious perfectionist in the history of American cinema. According to a ZFOnline interview with Joe Turkel, the seemingly simple "bar scene" wherein Jack Nicholson's character meets Lloyd the bartender took a whopping six weeks — to rehearse.
He then claimed that the same scene took nearly half a day to actually shoot, leaving him drenched in sweat by the time all was said and done. He also admitted that it was his favorite scene in the movie — lending some credence to Kubrick's methods.
Not unlike Apocalypse Now, the arduous production of this movie was later chronicled in a documentary. Perhaps most indicative of the stress on set were the scenes starring Shelley Duvall, who was routinely berated for her acting and eventually fell ill from stress for months.
The famous baseball bat scene between a crazed Nicholson and a hysterical Duvall, for instance, took a reported 127 takes, according to Rolling Stone.
"Going through day after day of excruciating work was almost unbearable," Duvall said. "Jack Nicholson's character had to be crazy and angry all the time. And in my character I had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight, five or six days a week."
She added, "I was there a year and a month, and there must be something to Primal Scream therapy, because after the day was over and I'd cried for my 12 hours... After all that work, hardly anyone even criticized my performance in it, even to mention it, it seemed like. The reviews were all about Kubrick, like I wasn't there."
On top of all this was Kubrick's insistence on using the Steadicam, which had only been developed a few years earlier and was relatively new technology at the time.
In the end, however, all the work and no play involved in the filming resulted in one of the greatest movies of all time.
After checking out these 50 mesmerizing photos from movie sets, learn the harsh truth behind 11 historical movies. Then, check out these 13 true stories behind Hollywood's scariest horror movies.
