History Main / WagTheDirector

* Creator/BrandonLee requested that one character be removed from ''Film/TheCrow'' -- an Asian character from the comic who tries to steal Eric's powers -- as he felt it was a stereotype.

* Narrowly averted on Creator/AlejandroJodorowsky's ill-fated adaptation of ''Literature/{{Dune}}''. Jodorowsky wanted to recruit Creator/SalvadorDali to play the Emperor, but he had very little experience with negotiating and Dali made a number of demands, including the hiring of Creator/AmandaLear as Princess Irulan and $100,000 for ''every hour he was on set''. Jodorowsky, in a rare moment of lucidity, realized that this would bankrupt the film and rewrote Dali's role so that he would only have to be on set for one hour. This all ended up being a moot point, as Dali was ultimately fired for his pro-Franco statements.

Note that this situation is actually an ''improvement'' on how things worked for a while in Hollywood. After [[UsefulNotes/FallOfTheStudioSystem the final collapse of the studio star system]] in the late '60s, if an actor didn't like how the director was doing their job, it was completely possible for the star to get the director fired, then take over director's job themselves for the remainder of the shoot. This practice was officially stopped in 1976, after Creator/ClintEastwood had Philip Kaufman fired from ''Film/TheOutlawJoseyWales'' and took over the film himself -- the [[UsefulNotes/UnionsInHollywood Directors Guild]] subsequently made a rule which stated that whenever a film's director was fired, the replacement was not allowed to have been associated with the production in any way whatsoever. This theoretically safeguards directors from overly egotistical actors, although there are, of course, ways around it.

** During the filming of ''Film/XMen1'', she refused to wear white contacts that covered her eyes (like in the comics) and wanted more lines/scenes. By shooting time for ''Film/X2XMenUnited'', she [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAward had more clout]], and used it to give herself a bigger part in the movie, and lo, here comes her conversations with Nightcrawler and strange use of powers against the missiles.

* Creator/MikeMyers had already recorded some of his lines for ''WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}}'' when he decided that his character should have a Scottish accent. This meant not only going back and rerecording all of the lines, but also reanimating significant portions of the film which had already been completed at the time. The latter added millions of dollars to the film's budget, but Myers insisted, and the studio complied.

** Triple H was of course ''married'' to the "director", as Wrestling/StephanieMcMahon was "Head of Creative" for most of the 2000s and 2010s, and would eventually himself be named Head of Creative after Stephanie resigned from the company and chairman Wrestling/VinceMcMahon was temporarily ousted from the company after a sex scandal. Vince would later return, and sell the company to UsefulNotes/{{UFC}}'s parent company, but Triple H remained as head of creative until a second scandal would oust Vince McMahon yet again.

** Triple H was of course ''married'' to the "director", as Wrestling/StephanieMcMahon was "Head of Creative" for most of the 2000s and 2010s, and would eventually himself be named Head of Creative after Stephanie resigned from the company and chairman Wrestling/VinceMcMahon was temporarily ousted from the company after a sex scandal. Vince would later return, and sell the company to UsefulNotes/{{UFC}}'s parent company, but as of this writing Triple H is still in charge of creative.

* The music video for the Music/BeastieBoys' "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn" was originally supposed to feature [[Music/{{Slayer}} Kerry King]] (who performed the guitar solo) getting knocked offstage by a gorilla. King's response was "If there's gonna be anyone knocking anyone offstage, it'll be me knocking the gorilla", which is what subsequently happened.

* Parodied in a ''Cinema Classics'' skit on ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' where film historian Reese De'What (Kenan Thompson) analyzes a movie called "Unwanted Movie." He explains the director was blackmailed by his mistress into hiring her brother to work on the film. Said brother just happened to be a mentally-challenged taxidermist, leading to various scenes with utterly hideous stuffed animals getting a lot of focus for no reason. De'What then reveals the screenwriter had the same mistress, which led to the characters openly promoting the brother's taxidermy business when their car gets hijacked by a stuffed squirrel.

-->'''Reese De'What''': [[NotMakingItUpDisclaimer You can't write this stuff!]]

** Brando did not appear on the first day of filming ''Christopher Columbus: The Discovery''. Perhaps due to their prior experience working with Brando on ''Superman'', producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind hired an understudy of sorts to play Brando's part if he didn't show. Creator/TomSelleck, who only agreed to do the film just to work with the legendary actor, threatened to quit the film if they didn't manage to get Brando on the set. Brando came to work the next day, but ultimately threatened to walk off the movie because his demands to have the script rewritten to acknowledge Columbus' ethnic cleansing of Native Americans weren't met; [[ContractualObligationProject contractual obligations forced him to stay.]] Brando tried to take his name off the picture, but he was unsuccessful at that also (and he ended up with above-the-title billing on top of that).

* Another positive example comes from ''All the Right Moves'', where Lisa is nude during the two sex scenes she has with Stef. Creator/LeaThompson, being young at the time, was nervous and apprehensive about being nude in front of the camera, so Creator/TomCruise talked to the producers and convinced them to only have one sex scene, and was naked as well in the remaining scene to ease her worries. Thompson said in an interview in 2018 that she was still grateful to Cruise for standing up for her, even three decades after the film was shot.

* Creator/JeanneMoreau did it in Creator/FrancoisTruffaut's ''The Bride Wore Black'' enough for him to never work with her again.

** Seagal pushed to rewrite ''Out for a Kill'' to make his character a professor of archeology at Yale, despite everyone else in production believing it to be a stupid idea.
** The 2005 film ''Submerged'' was written as a horror science-fiction story about a submarine captain dealing with invading alien crab-like monsters. Seagal originally purported to like the script, but decided at the last minute he didn't like starring in a movie with monster and aliens, so he had the entire story thrown-out and rewritten into a plot about a team of mercenaries hunting down the inventor of a mind-control device. He threw in other demands like including an opera scene. The only thing preventing the movie's name from being an EarlyDraftTieIn is a short sequence where the characters hijack a submarine.
** ''Attack Force'' was originally written as an AlienInvasion movie titled ''Harvester''. For the same reason as ''Submerged'', Steven Seagal didn't like the original premise and pushed to make the story about European gangsters manufacturing a drug that give its users super-human power. The production compromised by filming the movie for both storylines, with Seagal's take eventually winning out. This shows in the movie's rather incoherent storyline and odd editing choices (TheReveal is repeated multiple times, presumably because different versions of it were filmed for the separate versions of the story, and Seagal is noticeably overdubbed at multiple points by an actor who sounds nothing like him) and it [[NoEnding concluding abruptly with no resolution]].