Trivia Night: the Takin' Over The Asylum Edition
So after finishing up with my previous post on a never-before revealed DT project during his drama school years, I went back through some of my old Twitter threads to see if there were any I missed posting here. I found quite a few of them, so I figured over the course of the next few weeks I ought to go ahead and post the rest of them here, too! Tonight we'll talk about a fan favorite -- Takin' Over The Asylum.
A month or so back, I was collating some theatre reviews and other tidbits about years which don't fit into my podcast years of c1987-c1992, and I ran across a few things of interest.
The first thing of interest was that Takin' Over The Asylum was rebroadcast on BBC2 in the summer of 1996. I'd always been under the impression it had only run in its entirety in 1994.
See?
from the Sutton Coldfield Observer · Friday, July 12, 1996
Did you know the series also ran in Canada in March of 1997, and in the US in October 2000 on BBC America?
That's cool enough, but it was the other thing which really piqued my interest. It was something really weird.
Did you know there were once plans to remake Takin' Over The Asylum into a major Hollywood movie? Well, I sure didn't! But it certainly appears to be true. By late October 1997, MGM Studios announced they had purchased the rights to make the film. They renamed it Fool On The Hill and plans were made for filming to begin in April of 1998. In this interesting interview in early 1998, David talked about the possible film. He said he would have played Campbell again "like a shot" if they'd offered it to him, and he thought if they did it right, it "could be a fantastic movie." But he wasn't considered.
So who WAS rumored to be cast? Oh, boy. Jim Carrey as Ready Eddie. Julia Ormond was being considered as Francine. .......and, um....Kevin Spacey as....um....who knows?
I say "who knows" because - in true Hollywood style - they started messing with the script. They rewrote it and rewrote it, moving it to an American setting. In this version, the main character remained fairly true to the original, as he was a window and aluminum siding salesman. However, in this rewrite, he isn't our familiar has-been radio DJ, but merely has a passion for radio. This fellow somehow discovers a defunct radio station in a small town mental institution and starts his own broadcasts, in the process "transforming the lives of the institution’s patients as well as those of the town’s more ordinary residents."
These rewrites apparently took so much time they caused delays in the filming schedule, so they ended up unable to start filming in April 1998. And by the time it was ready, Carrey wasn't available. So it sat on a desk.
Now if you'll recall, I mentioned David had been interviewed about the possible movie project in 1998. At that time, David said Campbell had been rewritten as a "black kid from the ghetto" (THEIR words, not mine). And - of course - David said he was not that character.
In 2001 - when they announced Spacey's possible casting - it appears the script must have been rewritten even more. Because here's the thing. In the 2001 version of the script, Spacey was supposed to be "a hospital administration officer who befriends the new 'inmate' in a bid to bring laughter to his patients." Which isn't at all what David has said in the 1998 interview.
To be fair, all of these descriptions are a bit unclear to me. They don't name the character who Spacey was supposed to play. So if Spacey was supposed to be hospital administration, was he a new character in addition to whoever played Campbell, or was Spacey supposed to replace Campbell? If the former, so be it....but if it was the latter I give out a hearty WTF and a double helping of ewwwww. That means Campbell's character had either been written out of the script or had been relegated to a less important role. And can you imagine any version of Takin' Over The Asylum without Campbell? Luckily all of this became a moot point because due to a myriad of issues the the film never got made. My personal opinion is THANK THE HEAVENS. It would've been a disaster, right? An absolute stinker. Because the only proper Takin' Over The Asylum is our Takin' Over The Asylum. With Campbell! Also, you all do know that Takin' Over The Asylum's original working title was Making Waves, right? It sure was! When I interviewed David Blair, the director of Takin' Over The Asylum, he told me so. Here's more proof:
I should point out the filming dates listed in the first blurb aren't completely correct. While I've no idea when filming started, Mr. Blair's given me a photo of the clapperboard for the last day of filming (which I won't publish, as he hasn't given his permission.) The clapperboard reads 29 October 1993.
Anyway, it's really cool that - even after years of doing research, it's fun and ridiculous and remarkable to learn things that are news to me. It's one of the most exciting things about doing this research!
