The Peter Weir years. Jonathan and JP dig into the two-film stretch that makes the strongest case for Harrison Ford as a serious actor — and the one that proves audiences weren't ready to follow him there.
First, Witness. The film every major studio passed on, that John Badham dismissed as "just another cop movie," that Sylvester Stallone turned down and later called one of the worst decisions of his career. The film that got Ford his only Oscar nomination, that Roger Ebert called a thriller Hitchcock would have been proud of, and that Peter Weir shot with the same cinematographer, composer, and editor he'd bring to the very next film. The barn-raising sequence. The dance to Wonderful World. The final porch scene with no dialogue at all. The big question: is this the best performance Ford ever gave?
Then The Mosquito Coast. The film Weir had been trying to make since 1981, the one Jack Nicholson left over salary, the one Paul Schrader wrote, the one River Phoenix made at 15 years old before Stand By Me had even come out. Ford playing Allie Fox — brilliant, volatile, increasingly unhinged, dragging his family into the jungle on the conviction that America is finished and he can build something better from scratch. A character so far from Han Solo and John Book that audiences simply didn't show up. $14.3 million on a $25 million budget. Zero Oscar nominations. A genuine financial disaster.
And underneath both films, the same question: Weir and Ford missed the Witness Oscar ceremony because they were already in Belize shooting Mosquito Coast. The film they skipped the ceremony for then flopped. Ford went back toward safer, more commercial roles. Indiana Jones. Patriot Games. The rest of the career we all know.
Did the failure of Mosquito Coast close a door? And if audiences had embraced it — what kind of actor does Harrison Ford become?
Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör
Mostly Film. Innehållet i podden är skapat av Mostly Film och inte av,
eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.
