How the film "Romancing the Stone" was filmed: footage from the filming and 18 interesting facts about the film (22 photos)

This is a cool adventure film with Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito.





1. It's hard to believe, but the film "Romancing the Stone" appeared thanks to an ordinary waitress from a Mexican restaurant, Diane Thomas. In her free time, Diane was busy writing a script for a film about adventures in the jungle.



Diane Thomas

It took Diane approximately 1 year to work on this script. She didn’t even hope that they would buy it, but she still decided to send it to various studios.

As a result, this script fell into the hands of Michael Douglas himself. The actor and producer liked the script so much that he offered Diane a whopping $250,000 for it.





Many colleagues criticized Michael for giving such a huge amount of money to an unknown screenwriter. To which Douglas replied that he did not care whether this was the screenwriter’s first work or not. The main thing is that the script was simply great.

And after the film's release and its success, Michael Douglas helped introduce Diane to Steven Spielberg, who hired her as a screenwriter for his film "Always." In addition, a grateful Michael Douglas gave Diane a Porsche Carrera.

Unfortunately, in 1985, Diane Thomas died in the very car that Douglas gave her. The same Porsche that Diane's boyfriend was driving crashed into a power pole.

The film "The Pearl of the Nile" ("Romancing the Stone 2") was dedicated, among other things, to the memory of Diane Thomas.



2. After the script was approved, Michael Douglas began to assemble a team. He offered the director's chair to the little-known director Robert Zemeckis, who at that time had directed only two films, namely "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Used Cars."



Robert Zemeckis

Used Cars was a flop, but Michael Douglas liked it so much that he decided that Zemeckis should direct his new film.



It's funny that just a year later, Robert Zemeckis will shoot one of the most iconic films about time travel, Back to the Future, which will glorify his name. And who knows, "Back to the Future" would have been born if not for the success of the film "Romancing the Stone."

3. Initially, the main role of Jack Colton was offered to such actors as Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone and Jack Nicholson. But they all refused the offer.



True, Stallone later regretted that he refused the role in the film “Romancing the Stone” in favor of the failed film “Rhinestone.”

Michael Douglas himself at that time had little acting experience, since he was mainly involved in producing. For those who didn't know, he was the producer of the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, for which he even received an Oscar.



However, he decided that since he could not find a normal actor for the main role, then he himself would play Jack Colton. True, according to him, this role was not easy for him.



4. Bob Hoskins was originally invited to play the role of a dealer in stolen antiques named Ralph, but he turned it down. But a few years later, Zemeckis managed to work with Hoskins on the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Then Michael Douglas nominated his friend Danny DeVito, with whom he lived in the same dorm room in his youth. Well, as you already know, Danny DeVito agreed to this role.



5. By the way, initially Ralph was supposed to appear in the film much less often, but after seeing how incomparably Danny DeVito plays, the filmmakers decided to expand his role.



6. Initially, filming was supposed to take place in Colombia, but after Douglas andColleagues learned that kidnappings were a thing in Colombia, and it was decided to move the filming to Mexico. By the way, filming in Mexico cost the studio even less.

7. Arriving for filming in Mexico, the film crew ended up in “Hell”. The fact is that almost the entire filming process was accompanied by downpours, there was mud everywhere, and constant landslides also prevented the film from being filmed normally.



After finishing filming the film, Robert Zemeckis said that if he was once again offered to make a film where the jungle, night and rainstorms would be mentioned, he would not even open it.

8. The actors had to perform almost all the stunts and even the most dangerous scenes themselves. Because of this, actress Kathleen Turner suffered such a deep abrasion that she had to get stitches.



9. But this is not all the horror that Kathleen Turner experienced during the filming of the film “Romancing the Stone.” She personally had to walk through swamps with live alligators.

As the actress herself said, the trainer told her to step on the alligator’s head if it opened its mouth. Having overcome her fear, the actress did the impossible for herself and actually stepped on the alligator’s head. But during editing, this scene was simply cut out, which caused wild indignation among the actress.



10. During the filming of a scene where Michael Douglas is holding a crocodile by the tail, the dangerous animal hit the actor in the face with its tail and then broke free.



11. To prevent the crocodiles from biting off anything to anyone, trainers secured their powerful jaws with wire. True, this did not help much, because one of the crocodiles managed to unclench his jaws, after which he grabbed the trainer’s hand and began to drag him under the water.

Another trainer rushed to the aid of his colleague, who began to unclench the crocodile’s jaws in order to pull his friend out of the mouth of the dangerous reptile. As a result of this, the trainer lost a lot of blood, so he was immediately taken to the hospital.



Moreover, as it turned out later, the crocodile grabbed the Rolex watch that was on the trainer’s hand with its teeth. And if it weren’t for this very watch, then perhaps the trainer would have lost his arm or even died.

Later, crew members found the watch in the water, and Michael Douglas joked that it was simply the best advertisement for Rolex watches.

12. Kathleen Turner admitted that she fell in love with Michael Douglas during filming. She knew that he was in the process of divorce, so she felt that she should not interfere with someone else’s family. True, when Douglas’s then-wife appeared on the doorstep, he sharply told the actress that he would not give up Michael, and that he was still her husband, after which Turner abandoned the idea of starting an affair with the actor.



13. Michael Douglas almost died during the filming of the film. Having seen them brought to the set, the cool Douglas decided to take one of them in his hands. But the snake dodged so cleverly that it bit the actor’s hand.

At that very moment, Danny DeVito arrived to help Douglas, who, without a second of delay, began sucking the poison out of his friend’s hand, spitting it in different directions.



Danny DeVito later joked that if a snake had bitten Douglas in an intimate place, he would definitely have died.

True, Michael Douglas himself claimed that Danny DeVito made up this story. and nothing of the kind actually happened.

14. With a budget of $10 million, Romancing the Stone grossed $86.5 million worldwide. Thanks to this success, the decision was made to film the second part of the film called “The Pearl of the Nile.” True, the script for the film was written by a completely different person, and the director was no longer Robert Zemeckis, but Lewis Teague.



15. The studio bosses didn't like the first version of the film, so they had to shoot additional materials.

Also, the bosses didn’t like that director Robert Zemeckis and Michael Douglas himself were getting very out of control. They believed that Romancing the Stone would fail at the box office because of this, so Zemeckis was removed as director for the film he was to direct, Cocoon.



True, when the film became a success and collected a decent box office, the bosses invited Zemeckis to return to the post of director of the film "Cocoon". But the director himself was already offended by them, so he refused to film this film.

16. In fact, the title "Romancing the Stone" does not literally translate as "Romancing the Stone." This is a well-established term among jewelers, which means the preparation of precious stones for jewelry.



17. After the release of the second part of the film, Michael Douglas started thinking about filming the third part, for which the title “The Scarlet Eagle” was invented. However, in the end the film was never made.

18. In the cave scene, Ralph (Danny DeVito) mentions Batman. Funnily enough, a few years later Danny DeVito would play Batman's nemesis "The Penguin" in Batman Returns (1992).