Trivia / Last Man Standing (1996)

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $67 million. Box office, $47 million. At the time of release, it was the biggest flop in the history of New Line Cinema. The film's failure, along with the failure of The Long Kiss Goodnight, led to a number of firings at the studio.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: New Line Cinema wanted to remake Yojimbo as a sci-fi film in the vein of Mad Max and Escape from New York, but Walter Hill insisted on setting it in Depression-era Texas, seeing the rustic landscape as more fitting of his experience directing Westerns.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: A pretty notable aversion. While A Fistful of Dollars was an unauthorized remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo (which led to a lawsuit, its North American release delayed by three years and Kurosawa's production company being the one that released Fistful on Japan), this movie was officially authorized by Kurosawa's company and given an "adapted from" credit.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Elmer Bernstein was originally hired to compose the music, but he was fired by Walter Hill, after writing half of the score, on the basis that it wasn't what he was looking for.
  • James Remar was Hill's original choice for the role of Hickey, but the studio chose Christopher Walken for the part.
  • Originally, Smith's confrontation with Doyle and Hickey was going to take place in front of the Alamo Hotel (where Smith hangs a tommy gun off of the machete on the post). Smith was going to shoot Doyle in the crotch (as revenge for raping and enslaving Felina) and then blow his brains out. He would then slowly shoot down Hickey. A portion of this scene is included in the theatrical trailer which shows Hickey clutching his tommy gun and staggering as he croaks, "I'll see you in hell."
• Working Title: Titles considered during post-production were Gundown and Jericho.

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