Funny story about the film and Seagel from actor Tobolowsky

From an interview with the avnclub with Stephen Tobolowsky:

The Glimmer Man (1996)—“Christopher Maynard”
AVC: So trauma, terror, and beauty. I’m not sure which of these apply to this one.

ST: [Pause, then laughter.] Let’s put in trauma and terror. Let’s scratch beauty, put in confusion. I had to audition for Steven Seagal. I was playing the serial killer in the movie. John Gray was the director, who I’d worked with before. I first met John Gray right after Mississippi Burning, in a yogurt shop. And he came up to me and said, “I really loved you in Mississippi Burning.” And I said, “Well, thank you, sir.” And he said, “Well, actually, I’m a director. John Gray. Hopefully we’ll be able to work someday.” And we did, on a TV movie called The Marla Hanson Story. She was a model who got cut with glass by her boyfriend. It was terrible, but it was a TV movie at the time, and John… Great director. Very accomplished guy. He called me and said that I had to audition for Steven for the part of the serial killer.

So I show up at Steven’s home on Stone Canyon Road. My audition was at 10 a.m. And I sat in his living room, which was filled with saddles. Saddles. All over the place. Like, ornate saddles. And I waited until 12:30. Steven came downstairs. He had been asleep. And at that point, I was kind of… What do you call it? You know, when waiting to do an audition, you develop a certain amount of stress. Like athletes who build up lactic acid in their body. At that time, I was still with lactic acid. Or whatever. My body became a toxic-waste dump. So I really don’t remember the audition too much, because I was so traumatized—there’s the trauma—I was traumatized by waiting to audition. They wanted me to shoot one of the first days of shooting. They called me at 7 in the morning, which I’m used to, but the crew call was 9. So I came in two hours early. The reason they wanted me two hours early was that they wanted to discuss hair with the hairdresser. But because I was bald, the hairdresser didn’t come in, so I was stuck waiting in the parking lot for someone to show up for two hours.

When, finally, people showed up, John Gray came in and told me in a panic that Steven Seagal wanted to rewrite the script. He decided it was bad for his karma to constantly be killing people in movies, so he didn’t want to kill me anymore. And I said, “Well, it’s important in the script that he kills me, because I’m, like, a serial killer.” And he said, “Don’t get into it with him. He believes it hurts his karmic development if he were to kill people.” And Warner Brothers is furious, because they told Steven, “Steven, we hired you because you’re good at killing people. And you know, you dance with who brung you. We’re not casting you to do a peace-loving cop, we’re casting you to murder people.”

So we got in to rehearse our scene, and Steven says, “You wanna go over the lines?” And I go, “Sure.” “By the way, I should mention I think we should change the end, because I shouldn’t kill you.” And John Gray is standing behind us doing the ix-nay sign, with his finger going across his throat, like, “Don’t talk, don’t talk, don’t talk. Don’t say anything.” I said, “Steven, that is an amazing argument. I never really thought of that before. But coming from my character’s perspective, I am trapped in hell, being a serial killer. It is the worst thing that I could imagine. So if you were to kill me, you would actually be freeing me to come back in a reincarnational form as something better, and I would be able to atone for my sins here on Earth. So I think you would be doing me a huge favor.” And Steven said, “I never thought of it that way.” So we shot the scene where he shoots me. We put in the prosthetics where my whole chest explodes when he shoots me, and then he walks up with the gun smoking, and looks down at me. We do this whole scene where I hold a priest hostage. He looks down at me, smoking, and John patted me on the back, and he said, “Thank you, Stephen, for getting us out of that one.”

Fade out. Fade in. Two and a half months later, I get a phone call from John Gray. He said, “Oh, dear. We’re in trouble. Steven Seagal started ad-libbing in another scene about, “Thank God I didn’t kill the guy in the church.” So we have to find some way to add some lines to indicate that you’re not dead. So can you come in and look at the scene and see if we can put something into the film to indicate that you are still alive?” So I’m watching the film. Keenen Ivory Wayans walks in to watch the scene. We do the whole scene where I’m holding the priest, Steven shoots me, my chest explodes in slow-motion! I mean, the entire chest cavity goes! I fall out of frame, Steven walks up with the smoking gun. And John Gray said, “Maybe you can add a line off-camera here.” And I said, “Like what? What would I add? Like, ‘You missed me!’ or, ‘Thank God it’s just a flesh wound,’ or ‘Oh no! I’m injured!’” I mean, my whole chest exploded. Keenen Ivory Wayans just rolls his eyes and walks out of the room. So I added, off-camera, [Short, deep breaths.] “Finish me. Finish me off, you son of a bitch! Finish me!” [Laughs.] It’s ludicrous! And I don’t know what they ended up showing. I don’t know if they ended up cutting that entirely, cutting me getting shot, cutting what I said, but I knew we were in the area of high comedy at that point.