While now considered a cult classic, one of John Cusack's more underrated movies nearly ended in disaster, as recalled by his co-star in it. The Golden Globe nominee first broke out in the world of coming-of-age films in the '80s, featuring in everything from John Hughes' Sixteen Candles to his breakout leading turn in the teen romantic dramedy Say Anything.... The years since have seen Cusack expand his talents to a wide variety of genres, including the Nicolas Cage-co-starring action thriller Con Air, the 1408 and the blockbuster disaster thriller 2012.

In addition to this on-screen work, Cusack has often been a key figure behind the camera on his movies, including co-writing and producing a number of his projects. Some of his more notable include the 2000 film adaptation of High Fidelity, which earned him his Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor — Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, and Hot Tub Time Machine. His first time out as a writer and producer, though, proved to be one of his most fraught.

Grosse Pointe Blank Nearly Collapsed Due To The Movie's Script

Cusack Pulled Some Strings In Order To Get The Hitman Comedy On Track

Having similarly found himself a decade gone from the world of high school stories, Cusack found himself presented with a twist on the genre in Grosse Pointe Blank. Cusack led the cast as Martin Blank, a disillusioned hitman who returns to his hometown for his 10-year high school reunion, where he reconnects with his high school sweetheart, all while determining what to do with his life. Also starring Minnie Driver, Dan Aykroyd and Alan Arkin, Grosse Pointe Blank did garner largely positive reviews from critics, and was a modest box office success, gaining a cult following in the years since.

During a recent appearance on This Life of Mine...with James Corden, Driver reflected on her time working on Grosse Pointe Blank. The star began by recalling how she was hooked by "this great idea" of the hitman going back for his high school reunion, though she, Cusack and many others felt the "script isn't really that good", presenting a problem going into filming:

So now we're making [Grosse Pointe Blank] and the script isn't really that good, and everyone knows the script isn't really that good (really). It's kind of this great idea. Hitman goes back to his 10-year high school reunion, reconnects with the girl he dumped when he disappeared to become a hitman. And we needed to shoot the film, so we shot a couple of days, and I it wasn't really that it was disastrous, but it just wasn't funny. And it wasn't working in the way that I think [John Cusack] knew it could.

Driver goes on to reveal that Cusack, in the hopes of salvaging the movie, turned to then-Disney studio chief Joe Roth with the idea to instead improvise a week's worth of filming and see if that approach would work better, which director George Armitage was "forced to kind of go along with". She went on to share how Cusack, D.V. DeVincentis and Steve Pink gathered with her in order to start "bouncing ideas" around about how to improve the script, particularly Martin and Debi's early scenes:

So he went to Joe Roth, who was then head of Disney, and said, “Can we just improvise? Will you just give us like a week and watch the dailies and tell me if you don't think that it's great?” And George Armitage, who was the director, bless his heart, was kind of, I think, forced to kind of go along with it. So then, we all were either in Venice, at New Crime, or in a hotel in Pasadena, and it was D.V. DeVincentis and Steve Pink, who were John's co-writers on Grosse Pointe Blank, and me. We sat there bouncing ideas, going, “Okay, this is what's going to happen. This is the beginning of the scene. Martin Blank comes to Debbie's house. We need to show that there is this history between these two, and she's got to not make it easy for him, and it's got to be hot. So what does that look like?” We improvved the whole thing.

Driver would go on to wrap up her reflection with the recollection that there were many days of production in which they were working off of script pages "hot off the press", but that in spite of the hurdles, she felt part of "a revolution of the way in which you make films", referencing a few other indie movies from the era in which creative teams had to figure out putting together their stories on the fly. Check out the rest of what Driver shared in the quote and video below:

There would be these pages that were still sort of hot off the press that we'd go [do] the next day, and there was this immediacy and this piracy about the way in which we were doing it. It felt like we were going to go up in flames every single day, but we didn't. And it got funnier and funnier and more and more sort of rooted in the insanity of the story. I'd made Sleepers, and I'd made Big Night, and I'd made Circle Of Friends before this. This was sort of a revolution of the way in which you make films. And I knew that this was in a bubble, and I probably wasn't going to make a film like this again because it was like a runaway train. It was amazing.

Our Take On Grosse Pointe Blank's Production Hurdles

Cusack Stepping In Was The Right Call

While an actor asserting creative control over one of their projects doesn't always work out, Cusack doing so for Grosse Pointe Blank actually proved to be beneficial for the movie. The concept is one that requires a pretty deft hand in balancing its comedy with its drama, and Driver's note that the original script wasn't that funny really could've led to its demise. However, considering Grosse Pointe Blank often sits high on many lists of Cusack's best movies, including my own, and was a critical hit at the time, he and his creative team clearly did a great job at salvaging the great idea.

Source: This Life of Mine...with James Corden