Los Angeles, Nov 22 Director Chris Columbus, who is best known for directing the first two films of the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise, speaking on the 30th anniversary of his widely acclaimed comedy film ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’, recounted his time with actor-comedian Robin Williams, as well as the planned sequel to the film which unfortunately never happened.
Remembering the legendary comedian, Columbus spoke of his penchant for constant improvisation which led to several retakes, and many surprises as Williams would often deviate from the script to do his own thing.
“We shot almost 2 million feet of film on that picture. Early on in the process, he went to me, ‘Hey boss, the way I like to work, if you’re up for it, is I’ll give you three or four scripted takes, and then let’s play,” the ‘Home Alone’ director told Business Insider as per Deadline.
“Robin would change every take. So Robin would go to a place where he couldn’t remember much of what he said. We would go to the script supervisor and ask her and sometimes she didn’t even get it all. Often, he would literally give us a completely different take than what we did doing the written takes", the director added.
The film’s director said that the only time that Williams would ever stop improvising was when they were out of film.
Detailing this point, he added: “It got to the point that I had to shoot the entire movie with four cameras to keep up with him. None of us knew what he was going to say when he got going and so I wanted a camera on the other actors to get their reactions. For Pierce Brosnan and Sally Field, it was quite difficult for them not to break character.”
As ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ was a massive success and has today become an iconic comedy film, both Columbus and the ‘Dead Poets Society’ actor were interested in doing a sequel to the film, and indeed it was already in the works.
As they had an in-development script which was looking good, ‘The Help’ director said that it was looking “really strong.” When he approached the ‘Aladdin’ actor regarding the script, he gave a rather humorous response and simply said: “‘Boss, do I have to be in the suit as much this time?'”
This marked Williams being more than open to another film, but work commitments, conflicting work schedules, as well as the actor’s own depression made the once promising looking prospects of a ‘Mrs. Doubtfire 2’ a pipe dream.
“So we talked about it and I think he was hoping in the rewrite we would cut back on the Doubtfire character,” Columbus said. “But then Robin passed away so there will never be a sequel to ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’.”
As there is plenty of unused footage from the original 1993 film, the ‘Home Alone 2’ director has opened up on directing a documentary, showcasing the process of creating the iconic character and how Williams improvised on it.
He added: “We want to show Robin’s process. There is something special and magical about how he went about his work and I think it would be fun to delve into it. I mean, there’s 2 million feet of film in that warehouse so there could be something we can do with all of that.”
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