Casting What-Ifs
Fishburne and Snipes's role swap; James Russo as Jimmy Jump; James Remar and Harvey Keitel as Frank White
In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:33:08Read transcript
- As told on air, Fishburne was first cast as Flanagan, the Snipes part; Russo turned down Jimmy Jump; Fishburne switched roles, and Caruso, who had done a TV pilot with Snipes, begged the director to give Snipes Fishburne's old part.
- Snipes's performance reads as Diet Coke Snipes until the end; his one Black cop among white cops is called a purposeful inversion of Walken's white boss with a Black gang.
- The account given: Russo, a Ferrara regular since China Girl, was written Jimmy Jump and Caruso the cop to exploit their rivalry from that film, but Russo turned it down rather than let Caruso spit in his face.
- Russo is said to have later admitted on Django that turning down the part was idiotic; Fishburne licks the spit and wins that scene.
- Casting what-ifs is said to be done already, but more stories are being saved.
- Per the account given, four years earlier Ferrara planned the film with James Remar as Frank White after The Cotton Club; later at Live it was to be Harvey Keitel, who backed out to do Bad Lieutenant instead, and then the part went to Walken.
- It has to be Walken, with a distancing quality Keitel lacks; it is called the best Walken part of all time, and the whole-movie contest is a three-way dogfight among The Deer Hunter, King of New York and The Funeral.