David Schwimmer (Wikipedia)
“Men in Black” starring Tommy Lee Jones and David Schwimmer. Sounds strange, but it could have happened. So, Will Smith doesn’t do that movie, doesn’t get to be that big a movie star and possibly does not end up slapping Chris Rock live in front of hundreds of millions of people at the Oscars.
Also, David Schwimmer would have become a huge star, not just that guy from Friends. At least if he was really offered the role like he said on the “Origins With Cush Jumbo” podcast, and was not only considered for it.
Instead, he chose to direct the movie “Since You’ve Been Gone,” which was never theatrically released.
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So, why did David Schwimmer turn down such a huge opportunity, if he ever really did?
Schwimmer said that it was “a brutal decision,” after he had just completed filming “I had just finished “The Pallbearer” with Gwyneth Paltrow. That was his first film and instead of being his breakout vehicle, it bombed badly.
“There were high expectations of that [movie] which didn’t come true,” he said. “It was kind of a bomb but there were high expectations and the studio, which was Miramax, wanted to lock me into a three-picture deal at a fixed price and I said I would do that if I got to direct my first movie.”
“We found this amazing script and we were developing it,” David Schwimmer said of the film he made instead of Men in Black.
“We started pre-production. All my best friends in the world in my theatre company quit their jobs so they could be in this film over the summer, which was going to be a six-week shoot in Chicago,” Schwimmer said. “We’re in pre-production, hired the whole crew, everything’s going and that’s when I was offered ‘Men in Black.’ It was a direct conflict with this.”
Schwimmer only had four months off for Friends’ summer break and so there was only time to film one movie. So he had to choose one over the other and as Schwimmer put it, “my theatre company and that relationship with all those people would probably have ended. I don’t think it would have recovered.”
“You have to follow your gut. You have to follow your heart,” David Schwimmer said, possibly in an attempt to reassure himself that he did not make a mistake.
“Look, I’m really aware, whatever 20 years later, maybe more, [‘Men in Black’] would have made me a movie star. If you look at the success of that film and that franchise, my career would have taken a very different trajectory.”
