‘The Saint’ With Bill Simmons and Kyle Brandt
Episode
100 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Career Growth, Relationships, Leadership
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Kilmer's Career Arc: Kilmer peaked in 1995 with Batman Forever and Heat, not The Saint. By 1997, his reputation for being difficult on set overshadowed his talent, with directors like Joel Schumacher and John Frankenheimer publicly criticizing him. Despite being Juilliard's youngest student and delivering acclaimed performances, he never received Oscar or Golden Globe nominations throughout his entire career.
- ✓Mission Impossible Market Correction: The Saint suffered from releasing one year after Mission Impossible (1996), both Paramount productions featuring similar disguise gimmicks. The studio pressured filmmakers to reduce Kilmer's costume changes to avoid comparisons, while Tom Cruise's franchise became the template. The Saint earned $169 million on a $90 million budget but never got sequels despite profitability.
- ✓Production Reshoots Changed Everything: Test audiences rejected the original ending where Elizabeth Shue's character dies from poisoning thirty minutes before the film ends, triggering Kilmer's revenge rampage. Paramount spent $2 million on sixteen days of reshoots across December and January, transforming the finale into a romantic cottage scene that prioritized the love story over action sequences.
- ✓Casting What-Ifs Reveal Studio Uncertainty: Mel Gibson developed the project for months before passing to spend time with family post-Braveheart. Hugh Grant met with director Philip Noyce but rejected his approach. Ralph Fiennes turned down $1 million, dismissing the concept as boring retreads of Bond tropes. Director Noyce later stated he should have cast Russell Crowe instead of Kilmer.
- ✓Nineties Soundtrack Captured Electronic Music Peak: The Saint's soundtrack featured Orbital's theme song, Sneaker Pimps' "6 Underground," Moby, Underworld, Chemical Brothers, and Fluke, representing the apex of electronic music's mainstream crossover moment in 1997. This compilation introduced theatrical audiences to the genre before it evolved into different subgenres, making it a time capsule of mid-nineties club culture.
What It Covers
Bill Simmons and Kyle Brandt commemorate Val Kilmer's passing by rewatching The Saint (1997), analyzing his career trajectory, the film's production challenges, Elizabeth Shue's casting, and why this Mission Impossible competitor deserved sequels.
Key Questions Answered
- •Kilmer's Career Arc: Kilmer peaked in 1995 with Batman Forever and Heat, not The Saint. By 1997, his reputation for being difficult on set overshadowed his talent, with directors like Joel Schumacher and John Frankenheimer publicly criticizing him. Despite being Juilliard's youngest student and delivering acclaimed performances, he never received Oscar or Golden Globe nominations throughout his entire career.
- •Mission Impossible Market Correction: The Saint suffered from releasing one year after Mission Impossible (1996), both Paramount productions featuring similar disguise gimmicks. The studio pressured filmmakers to reduce Kilmer's costume changes to avoid comparisons, while Tom Cruise's franchise became the template. The Saint earned $169 million on a $90 million budget but never got sequels despite profitability.
- •Production Reshoots Changed Everything: Test audiences rejected the original ending where Elizabeth Shue's character dies from poisoning thirty minutes before the film ends, triggering Kilmer's revenge rampage. Paramount spent $2 million on sixteen days of reshoots across December and January, transforming the finale into a romantic cottage scene that prioritized the love story over action sequences.
- •Casting What-Ifs Reveal Studio Uncertainty: Mel Gibson developed the project for months before passing to spend time with family post-Braveheart. Hugh Grant met with director Philip Noyce but rejected his approach. Ralph Fiennes turned down $1 million, dismissing the concept as boring retreads of Bond tropes. Director Noyce later stated he should have cast Russell Crowe instead of Kilmer.
- •Nineties Soundtrack Captured Electronic Music Peak: The Saint's soundtrack featured Orbital's theme song, Sneaker Pimps' "6 Underground," Moby, Underworld, Chemical Brothers, and Fluke, representing the apex of electronic music's mainstream crossover moment in 1997. This compilation introduced theatrical audiences to the genre before it evolved into different subgenres, making it a time capsule of mid-nineties club culture.
Notable Moment
The hosts reveal an alternate action-heavy ending exists on YouTube (in Russian) showing Kilmer infiltrating the villain's compound with explosions and gunfights, completely contradicting the theatrical romantic conclusion. This radical reshoot decision cost millions and fundamentally changed the film's genre from spy thriller to love story.
Episode Transcript
Welcome to the brand new Zack Lowe Show. That's right. I'm back to have the same in-depth NBA conversations you're used to. We're gonna talk about the games. Yeah. The games, the x's and o's, the drama, the trades, the playoffs are coming up. And now you get to see every episode in full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're gonna love, so make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zack Lowe Show on Spotify or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by United Airlines. Here's something worth watching, the award winning United Airlines app. On every trip, you can flip through time saving travel hacks, like a personalized airport map with door to gate directions, binge watch real time flight updates, like a live calendar boarding, even if your home screen's locked, and watch it automatically move you from a middle seat to an aisle or a window if one opens up on your flight. Get it before your next trip at united.com/app. This podcast is sponsored by PayPal. Let's talk holiday shopping. Make the most of your money with PayPal. They give you the flexibility to pay in for. No fees. No interest. So whether it's the must have toy or a tiered cheeseboard, PayPal helps you make the most of your money this holiday, subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payin for PayPal Inc, n m l s nine one zero four five seven. The rewatchables brought to you by the ringer podcast network. You can get this podcast as a video on Spotify. I'd highly encourage you to do so. You can also go on the Ringer movies YouTube channel and see a bunch of old rewatchables that we've done, including ones with Kyle Brandt, who's here today. Val Kilmer passed away. We're gonna talk about one of our favorite Val Kilmer movies. Not a movie you probably expected, the saint. It's next. For an American scientist caught in a world of espionage, there is no escape. Brings her to life. And now the man who was hired to betray her. I'm in this Thomas More. The Auguste Christopher. Martin de Porres is the only one who can save her. If you wanna live, I have to leave my side. Val Kilmer, Elizabeth Shue. I love it. The saint. Starts Friday, April 4 everywhere. Alright, Kyle Brandt. You're basically you were kinda semi off this week. Kids were off from school. Wasn't really a rewatchables taping week for you, but you had to move stuff around because Val Kilmer passed away this week. People, I don't, I don't think it was a massive surprise because he'd been sick for a long time yet. It was a total surprise because Val Kilmer is no longer with us. And we were texting. We had talked about doing the Saint …
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“The Saint suffered from releasing one year after Mission Impossible (1996), both Paramount productions featuring similar disguise gimmicks”
by Sneaker Pimps
“The Saint's soundtrack featured Orbital's theme song, Sneaker Pimps' "6 Underground," Moby, Underworld, Chemical Brothers, and Fluke”
“Mel Gibson developed the project for months before passing to spend time with family post-Braveheart”
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