R10 "Frank Oz was hired after Halstrom left. Cher publicly bad-mouthed them both: (...) Lasse Hallstrom was nuts and Frank Oz is an idiot. Just because director is behind their name doesn’t mean that everything that comes out of their mouth is etched in stone."
From 1973 (Ring, Ring) to 1982 (When All is Said and Done) Hallstrom directed all of ABBA's music videos (and ABBA-THE MOVIE, 1977). I wonder what Lasse Halstrom thought about Cher's expressionless performance in MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN or about her ABBA auto-tuned horror album. He directed Johnny Depp twice, DiCaprio got his first Oscar nomination for WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE and Michael Caine won another Oscar for CIDER HOUSE RULES. But the star of CHASTITY thinks he was nuts? Never heard anything bad about Frank Oz either. But at least Cher's pain-in-the-ass phase didn't last long and she avoided to become another Madonna. Sad she didn't get along with those directors. And a few more...
From the 'Los Angeles Times' 1991 about what happened after MOONSTRUCK (1987):
She spent the next three years turning down roles, including “The War of the Roses” and the role played by Charles Grodin in “Midnight Run.” She did not get the part she wanted, playing opposite Streep in Susan Seidelman’s “She-Devil.” (Roseanne Barr got the role.) It wasn’t until 1990 that she settled on her post-Oscar film, “Mermaids,” a controversy-beset Orion project that chewed through two directors, Lasse Hallstrom and Frank Oz, before Richard Benjamin was brought on board to just wrap the whole thing up.
Q: Are you rejecting a lot of roles? You turned down “Thelma & Louise.”
A: If you look at the climate of films right now, there aren’t a lot of good films being made. Would I want to be in “Kindergarten Cop”? No. There is one movie I would have liked to have a part in--"Dances With Wolves"--but I wouldn’t want to be in most others. “Moonstruck” was kind of a fluke. You don’t see many Frank Capra kind of films. If you look at what’s been released lately, there are not a lot of great women’s roles. Except for “Thelma & Louise,” and I turned that down.
Q: Why did you?
A: It was a much rougher script when I got it. It probably would have been a good movie to do. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I’m glad Susan (Sarandon) did it.
Q: In terms of roles and opportunities, you complained a lot about the treatment you and Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon received during the filming of “Witches of Eastwick.” Has that changed?
A: That was like Jack (Nicholson) was the jewel and we were the prongs of the setting. We all did our job well, but the movie wasn’t about us, it was about him.
I’ve always worked uphill. I loved working with Mike Nichols (“Silkwood”) and Robert Altman (“Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean”). I really loved working with Richard Benjamin. I didn’t like Peter Yates (“Suspect”) or George Miller (“The Witches of Eastwick”)--there was no real connection there. I didn’t like Frank Oz, and I didn’t like Peter Bogdanovich (“Mask”). So only two directors I disliked intensely, two I had no connection with and three that I really loved. My average is OK.
I chose to do “Mermaids” against, what the hell was that movie (yawning), you know the one about divorce with Michael Douglas. . .
Q: “War of the Roses”?
A: Yeah. I knew that was going to be a hit and I thought it was a great script but I just thought it was too mean and I don’t have to do movies that I don’t believe in.
