MovieChat Forums > Boom (1968) Discussion > What were they thinking?

What were they thinking?


I wonder what Burton and Taylor when thinking (or drinking) they agreed to star in this? I mean, they were megastars at the time, surely they were offered better material than this?


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It is true that they were drinking a lot when this was made,but it`s easy to see why they were interested.Losey was a very trendy director at the time and there would have been a big critical buzz surrounding his every film,while every adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play was considered a worthwhile project.

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Tennessee Williams had a long history of bringing truly great films to the screen based on his screenplays: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Night of the Iguana and several others. Burton and Taylor highly esteemed him. And both were drinking so heavily by this point that their reasoning powers were tremendously compromised. Their ridiculously ostentatious lifestyle demanded million dollar salaries for them both and they agreed to a series of hideous turkeys to fuel their jewels, yacht and entourage.

It's sad and almost tragic to watch Boom and realize it was only 2 years removed from the magnificent Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

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For really bad Taylor & Burton check out "Hammersmith Is Out".
Both made another film with Losey: Taylor starred in "Secret Ceremony", an enigmatic but haunting movie which is similar in some aspects to Losey's masterpiece "The Servant". Burton appeared in "The Assassination Of Trotsky", a surprisingly mainstream (for Losey) historical account of Trotsky's last days.

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