An Unexpected Birthday Present Caused Chaos On The Set Of A Robert De Niro Sports Thriller

Lots of people dream of making a studio movie, but in the midst of their reverie, they don't always take into account just what a grueling process it can be. People work long hours and are expected to be at their sharpest every day so that the project doesn't fall behind schedule or go over budget. From the director on down, the pressure to deliver is immense. So every now and then, a little levity is in order. This occasionally results in on-set pranks, which sometimes get a tad out of control.

Consider the case of 1996's "The Fan." Tony Scott's thriller about a die-hard San Francisco Giants fan (Robert De Niro) who begins stalking his favorite baseball player (Wesley Snipes) was a high-profile production for Sony. The studio poured $55 million into the movie, and hoped it would be a late-summer, adult-skewing smash à la "The Fugitive" or "Unforgiven." Scott was red hot coming off the success of 1995's "Crimson Tide," and had turned down "The Rock" to make this film; he was a demanding director who worked with top-tier crews every time out. Working for Scott paid exceptionally well, so people worked their butts off with an eye toward getting hired for the next gig.

That said, they weren't above pulling a practical joke here and there to keep things loose for everyone. Alas, one gag wound up creating a massive headache for a studio executive, and resulted in a new practice that had to be applied to every Sony production going forward.

According to an exclusive oral history on the making of "The Mask of Zorro" from /Film's Ben Pearson, Sony's then physical production executive Ray Zimmerman, who was a young man at the time and eager to make an impression, would wake up brutally early and hit the Angel Stadium set of "The Fan" in Anaheim at three in the morning to make sure things were running efficiently budget-wise. One element that became a minor issue involved Scott's use of extras, who were still on set after the director had shot them out. Given that this was before filmmakers could add computer-generated extras to make the stadium appear packed, there were quite a few extras on hand. Zimmerman convinced Scott to release them, which likely saved him some grief from his superiors.

All was evidently running smoothly until a couple of weeks later, when Zimmerman got a panicked call from Sony's head of legal. A prank had gone horribly wrong, and the studio was suddenly in hot water with the Screen Actors Guild.

As Zimmerman told /Film:

"I'm back in my office and I get this phone call and it's the head of legal. He's going, 'Ray, Ray, we got to get down on the set right away.' I went, 'What's going on?' He goes, 'I've got SAG calling.' Apparently, they had the Jumbotron out and they cut for lunch and it was [first assistant director Jim Skotchdopole's] birthday and the second AD hired a stripper to come and dress as a cop. And we had brought in all these church groups with little ladies to staff the extras."

Zimmerman had to do some lightning-fast damage control, which wound up being quite the learning process for him.

The solution wound up being to make the entire incident literally go away. Per Zimmerman, "The first thing the head of legal goes is, 'Who's got the tape of that?' Bury the evidence. That's the first thing that a good lawyer's going to do."

This apparently squared everything with SAG, and kept Sony from having to fire one or two of the top people in their particular profession. Having dodged that bullet, the studio made it mandatory that Zimmerman had to visit every movie set at the outset of every production and give what he called "the sexual harassment spiel."

Unfortunately, sexual harassment (and worse) is still an issue in Hollywood, even after the conviction of disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein. Legendary screenwriter William Goldman once quipped that in the film industry, "Nobody knows anything." Evidently, nobody learns anything either.