Bandit’s Speedbump: Reynolds, Turner Feud Over ‘Switching Channels’

“Working with Burt Reynolds was terrible. The first day Burt came in he made me cry. He said something about not taking second place to a woman. His behavior was shocking. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t someone’s equal. I left the room sobbing. I called my husband and said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ He said, ‘You just do the job.’ It got to be very hostile because the crew began taking sides. But as for the performance, I was able to put the negativity aside. I’m not convinced Burt was.”—Actress Kathleen Turner, interviewed by David Marchese, “In Conversation: Kathleen Turner,” New York Magazine, Aug. 20, 2018

Don't let this cozy photo fool you. The stars--two of the most charismatic of their time--looked daggers at age each in their one chance working together, and they continued lobbing spitballs at each other in the 30 years since.

Burt Reynolds’ death a few days ago reminded me of Kathleen Turner’s scathing comments on him in New York a few weeks ago. I doubt if the ‘70s Smokey and the Bandit box-office king was bothered by them in these last few weeks—he may have even precipitated them, since, not too long before, when asked by Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live who was the most overrated actor of the Seventies and Eighties, he had responded with two words: “Kathleen Turner.” 

It was like this for the past three decades, as Reynolds gave as good as he got—especially when it came to Switching Channels, a misbegotten reworking of The Front Page and His Girl Friday for the cable news era that fell catastrophically short of its classic inspirations.

Amazingly, Reynolds was only one of the actors that Turner tore apart in her sit-down with David Marchese—and, despite what you might think about the quote I used here, he might not have come off the worst of the entertainers at the receiving end of her cutting tongue. 

Also lying in the ditch with their reputations shriveled were Elizabeth Taylor (“She has a bad voice, badly used”), Michael Douglas, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty (the trio competed to see who would bed her first), Nicolas Cage (“very difficult”), William Hurt (“very odd…God, you did not want to get Bill talking too much”), and the entire cast of Friends (“I didn’t feel very welcomed”).

No wonder, when asked what she felt “f------g angry” about, Turner answered simply, “Everything.”

The temptation, as Marchese seemed to do, is to ascribe much of her—your choice—outspoken or burn-all-bridges style to the rheumatoid arthritis that afflicted Turner after 1992—leaving her unable to work for long stretches, swelling her face because of the drugs prescribed for the condition, and spurring false rumors that her altered state resulted from alcoholism.

But it was one thing for Turner to express annoyance at colleagues who made her job difficult. It was another to insult someone who did her no harm. During her marriage to real estate entrepreneur Jay Weiss in the late Eighties and early Nineties, she occasionally sang back-up in his side gig fronting a rock ‘n’ roll band. When pop music writer Deborah Wilker, for instance, likened her to Linda McCartney, Kat got catty: ``No. There`s a difference. I can sing.``

Keep that in mind as you read the following:

In her 2008 memoir, Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles, Turner referred to Switching Channels as “my most unhappy film experience.” It all began as a dream project, then devolved into a shotgun wedding that all concerned wished had turned into a quickie divorce.

If prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, then acting may be the most insecure one. Anxiety and fraught nerves played an outsized role on the set of Switching Channels. It started with a woman—Turner—looking to continue her streak as one of the sexiest, successful movie queens of the Eighties. It worsened with a man--Reynolds--struggling to recover his wobbly foothold in Hollywood.

In her next project, Turner planned to play a hard-charging cable news reporter, the modern answer to Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht’s prototypical scoop-chaser, Hildy Johnson. Her wily boss—and ex-husband—would be Michael Caine, fresh off his triumph in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters.  The interplay between the two called for the kind of rapid-fire dialogue characteristic of screwball comedies, and Turner and Caine had rehearsed it carefully before shooting began.

But with production delays involving wayward mechanical sharks, Caine couldn’t complete shooting of the infamous Jaws: The Revenge in time for Switching Channels. At that point, Turner had her own impending deadline: the birth of her first baby with Weiss. The producers decided to substitute Reynolds for Caine.

In the peculiar dynamics of Hollywood at the time, it might have seemed an inspired idea. By the late ‘70s, Reynolds’ nonchalant style had made him #1 at the box office, and he had delivered an unusually restrained but assured performance at the end of the decade in James L. Brooks’ Starting Over. 

Nearly a decade later, though, after going to the well once too often with a sequel (Cannonball Run II) or a variation of his good-ol’-boy persona (Stroker Ace), Reynolds had seen his box-office clout diminish. Moreover, an accident on location while shooting City Heat had left him looking so unhealthy that false AIDS rumors spread about him.  

The producers of Switching Channels probably figured they could snag Reynolds on the cheap, and the film was his first in over a decade when he didn’t receive top billing. He was acutely aware of his lost mojo, which he registered, in the most awkward way possible, when he told Turner that he had never taken second place before to a woman. 

Stung by a statement that seemed like male chauvinism but that in retrospect looks like a cry of wounded male vanity, Turner had a crying fit. Matters didn’t improve when it became clear that Reynolds would be unable to replicate Caine’s mastery of the rapid repartee he had developed with Turner.

At this point, it might have been better for everyone concerned if the producers had simply bought Reynolds out. Instead, they decided to muddle through, using the film’s third star, Christopher Reeve (himself chagrined over not being able to work again with his Deathtrap co-star Caine) as the reluctant and uneasy mediator between Turner and Reynolds.

None of it worked. Switching Channels not only did not make anyone forget The Front Page or His Girl Friday, but also underperformed at the box office. (It surely didn’t help its critical and popular reception that another movie with a similar setting and characters, James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News, had been released several months before.)

What may have fueled Turner’s anger was not just Reynolds’ sexist behavior, but the fact that he appears to better advantage than she did. While she comes off manic and forced as the ambitious reporter, Reynolds looks more relaxed. She may have cared about her work more than he did, but she tried too hard, and the effort shows.

In later years, Reynolds would appear on one talk show after another and claim that, every day during filming, Turner had tried to get him fired. The actress, while never exactly denying it, made clear that his sexism and inability to measure up to the role more than justified any measures she took.

(Before feeling too sorry for Reynolds, it might be good to remember that he was not above throwing his weight around, too, even before achieving full stardom. In a post last week for The Daily Beast, journalist Christopher Dickey contended that during the filming of Deliverance,  the actor, feeling threatened by Dickey’s father James, had influenced director John Boorman to toss the poet-novelist off the set of the film made from his work.)

One wishes that, years later, Reynolds and Turner had tried to talk through their differences rather than continue sniping, for they might have found some intriguing commonalities. Both had created their screen personas by carefully cultivating their physical sides in a breakthrough role: Reynolds in Deliverance, Turner in Body Heat. Both used their acute body awareness to ride box-office waves; and both saw their careers collapse at least partly because of mysterious illness.   

Finally, an honest talk might have led each to realize how ambition and anxiety put them at cross-purposes. both would have realized, in middle age, how shabbily Hollywood could act toward stars once considered the hottest thing on the block. If the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have made any difference in desirability as the principal criterion in casting leads, it hasn’t become apparent yet. 

What also wasn't apparent, on the set of Switching Channels, was an elusive quality in casting that is absolutely essential to making romantic comedies: chemistry. Screwball comedy especially depends exquisitely on timing and the comfort level that romantic leads feel with each other. Good chemistry between the leads produces a magical, enduring element onscreen: It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The More the Merrier, Adam’s Rib. Bad chemistry, as seen in Switching Channels, produces explosions and destruction, with wreckage and recriminations for years afterward.