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When Gibson finished Ransom, he turned his attention to developing a remake of Fahrenheit 451. But Silver, desperate for Gibson — "It was written for him," the producer says stubbornly — wasn't dissuaded. With Helgeland and Donner in tow, he stomped into Gibson's office on the Warner Bros. lot without an appointment.

"It was a little frightening. They were looking at me like carnivores," Gibson recalls. "And Joel said he'd contemplated bringing over a set carpenter to nail the door shut until I said yes." After an hour and a half, "I found the situation so bizarre and funny that I said, 'Yeah, let's go.'"

2. Conspiracy Theory exists because Gwyneth had a thing for Brad, Robin had a thing for Sean, and Winona had a thing for Aliens:

Roberts was the costar of choice for all involved, but with Gibson on board for $20 million and Donner reportedly getting another $5 million, Warner Bros. became squeamish about Roberts' $12 million asking price. The script was sent to her anyway on the Chicago set of My Best Friend's Wedding, and after reading it in one evening, she expressed interest. "But of course, as soon as she did, they didn't have the money," says someone involved with the project. "I think in the beginning everyone wanted Julia, but it was, 'If only we can get Julia cheaper.'"

Silver set out to convince Warner Bros. co-CEO Terry Semel that Roberts was a solid investment, despite her recent track record. "I kept saying to Terry 'My Best Friend's Wedding is going to be a hit,'" Silver recalls. "It's such a strange, weird world we live in — I'm selling them on a TriStar movie so they'll put her in ours." Semel ultimately agreed, but by the time the studio got back to Roberts, "the bloom was off the rose," a source says, and the exhausted actress announced that when she wrapped My Best Friend's Wedding, she was going on vacation.

With a start date set for October 1996, Silver had to find Gibson a costar, but he wasn't about to let go of Roberts. He began courting Roberts' agent, ICM's Elaine Goldsmith, as well as anybody connected with the actress (bottles of champagne mysteriously appeared on the desks of Roberts' assistants).

"To Joel's credit, no doesn't mean no, it means try harder," Goldsmith says. "Joel harassed me so much between work and home that one Sunday night my husband looked at me and said, 'Why hasn't Joel called today?'"

While Gibson placed a pleading call to Roberts' answering machine, other actresses came and went. According to a source close to the production, Gwyneth Paltrow expressed interest, then decided she'd rather make a movie (since shelved) with her father and accompany boyfriend Brad Pitt (also since shelved) to Argentina on the set of Seven Years in Tibet. So did Robin Wright, who then didn't want to go to New York on location, leaving husband Sean Penn and children behind in L.A. Winona Ryder agreed to play the part but was unable to get out of a commitment to make Alien Resurrection.


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