The Program

Every actor has a story of a role they turned down. A friend told me that they were shooting two films in SC. One was called "something Gump". I asked him what that was about. He said it was about the South in the '50's and '60's. I asked who was in it. The only name person cast so far was Sally Field. I thought, "Great, another redneck 'Smokey and the Bandit' movie". I said no thanks. I asked what the other one was, and he said "The Program". I asked who was in that, and he said Craig Sheffer and James Caan. What was it about? College football and steroids. That sounded much more interesting, so I took "The Program". I was in the football stands in several scenes. It was very cold, so we all wore coats. This film was terrible. The continuity problems were the worst. They had filmed an actual USC/TN game to get a lot of people cheering, and they cut that into our scenes to make it look like a lot of people were there. One problem was that the day the filmed that game, it was warm and folks were in shorts. When they filmed our scenes, it was cold, and we had on heavy coats. So, one side of the stadium was shorts, and the other side was heavy coats. Plus, none of the teams were wearing orange, so a lot of the TN fans apparently went to the wrong game, based on the film. Halle Berry was in it. She took 22 tries to say one line, and it took all afternoon. We had to come back the next day, after we lost the light. So, what would I had done if I had been in "something Gump"? The guy who sat on the park bench with Tom Hanks and then said "You're Bubba Gump!" I turned that down. Oh well.