Reshoots were once again in order, but there was one problem: Four days after wrapping the film, Palin had left on an 10-month trip around the Pacific Rim to shoot a BBC/PBS documentary. Universal suggested shooting a new ending without Palin, but Cleese refused and the project was put on hold. During the downtime, screenwriters Cleese and Johnstone worked on a new ending with William Goldman, the veteran script doctor who owns a penthouse in the same Manhattan building as Cleese.
By the time Palin returned from his journey, director Young had started work on a new version of Jane Eyre. So Cleese enlisted Fred Schepisi (Roxanne), who was already set to direct him and Robin Williams in Don Quixote. "It's cruel to say it doesn't matter who directs it," admits Curtis, "but on some level, it doesn't." Adds Kline: "Whoever the directors were, they were an addition to a party that had started eight years before." (Young and Schepisi share screen credit.)
Last August, Schepisi and the cast did three weeks of reshoots in London, adding approximately $7 million to the movie's $18 million budget. In addition to the new ending--in which only one Kline character dies--Schepisi shot a new opener and replaced a more serious love scene between Cleese and Curtis with a double-entendre-laced encounter.
The additional material meant some original scenes ended up on the cutting-room floor. Among them: Palin and Robert Lindsay dressed in a tiger suit ("There isn't even a picture of it on my wall," Palin regrets) and Kline in a third role as his own mother ("I looked weird but strangely attractive," he says). Kline's flashing was also excised.
When the new version was submitted to test audiences last fall, the response was far more encouraging. The new Fierce posted test scores nearly identical to Fish's, according to Cleese. "The main criticism of the movie is that it's not as mean-spirited as Wanda," he says.
Fierce's mellow tone owes much to the Curtis-Cleese romance. "They kept telling me I was the heart of the film, which basically means I'm not funny," says Curtis. "I dropped subtle hints that I expected a four-carat heart diamond from Tiffany's." She never got one, although Kline did give her a suitable wrap present. "It was a necklace with a pair of ceramic breasts with perky little nipples and a heart," Curtis reports, "because I satisfied those elements of the movie."
Cleese doesn't expect critics to take Fierce to their hearts, especially in England: "If Jesus Christ came back, the British press would say his sandals were old-fashioned and his hair wasn't clean. If they can't carp, they don't think they're doing good journalism." He did get one bit of good news from Europe, though: "The French distributor thinks it will take quite a lot more money than Wanda in France. But then, they are French--they love Jerry Lewis."
Twenty months after filming began, Cleese, Palin, Curtis, and Kline have reconvened yet again--this time in New York City, to promote the movie at a press junket. Sitting down together for a lunch break, they discover some unfinished business. Should the movie be called a sequel to Wanda or not?
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