Sean Connery Intimidated A Disney Executive While Making The Rock [Exclusive]
"The Rock" contains some of the best action scenes of director Michael Bay's entire action-laden career, and for my money, it's also one of the filmmaker's best overall movies. Ed Harris' villain is an all-timer, Bay hadn't yet fully given in to all of his compulsions as a visualist, and he's working from a terrific, tightly paced script with an excellent premise and a great ticking clock element. Plus, the film helped cement Nicolas Cage as an unlikely action star, and featured a perfectly gruff performance from the legendary Sean Connery.
By 1996, Connery knew how to wield that legendary status extremely effectively. He was fully aware that a generation of Hollywood executives had grown up watching him play James Bond, who was arguably the coolest character in movies. So when Bay needed help on "The Rock" set fending off a studio executive who was supposed to deliver some bad news about the movie's financing, he called in the big guns.
I recently spoke with producer Jerry Bruckheimer about the Daisy Ridley sports drama "Young Woman and the Sea," but at one point I asked if he could share any Sean Connery stories from his time producing "The Rock," and he launched into a memory of what happened when he, Bay, and Connery faced off against a Disney executive who came to visit that set:
"We needed a little more money to finish the movie, and the studio was coming down to tell us that we're not going to get any more money to finish the movie. And Michael goes to Sean and says, 'Look, they're coming down, the studio's coming down to shut me down on some of the stuff I want to do.' And Sean says, 'All right, let's have lunch with him.'"
Lunch! That sounds pleasant, right? Well, as you've certainly deduced from the headline of this article, the meal wasn't exactly satisfying for that studio executive.
Sean Connery used his movie star status to make The Rock better
The status Connery held in pop culture at this time can't be overstated, and Bay knew exactly how to harness that status to get what he needed. Bruckheimer continued:
"So the poor executive is coming down and here he's sitting with Michael Bay, myself and Sean Connery — and it's a young executive. The first thing Sean says is, 'I hope you're coming down here to make sure you're giving him more money to make this film. He's making a brilliant film. That's why you're here, right?' And the guy just turns white and the conversation was over. He never brought it up."
We've actually written about this incident before, when Michael Bay recalled the story in a tribute he wrote after Connery's death in 2020. Bay remembered the story slightly differently, especially the line Connery said to the executives: "In classic Sean Connery style, he belts out in his Scottish brogue: 'This boy is doing a good job, and you're living in your Disney f***ing Ivory Tower and we need more f***ing money!!' Without missing a beat, they responded. 'O.K. How much?'"
I go back and forth between thinking this movie is a spectacular standalone adventure, and sometimes thinking it's too bad Bay never got the chance to make a sequel to "The Rock," which he had ideas for but ultimately never got to execute.
You can hear the rest of our interview with Jerry Bruckheimer on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast embedded below:
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