Arrive Alive

‘Arrive Alive’ went into production on the 12th of April 1990. On paper it had all the elements in place to be a perfectly acceptable knockabout comedy.

The cast was headed up by Willem Defoe, who had just broken into the Hollywood A-list with a string of hits, including ‘Platoon’ (1986), ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ (1988) and ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ (1989) and Joan Cusack, who was an alumni of ‘Saturday Night Live’ and had just enjoyed a number of strong comedic roles in films such as ‘Broadcast News’ (1987) ‘Married to the Mob’ and ‘Working Girl’ (1988).

The director, Jeremiah S. Chechik, had just worked on ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’ (1989) and the producer, Art Linson, was a veteran of such films as ‘Car Wash’ (1976), ‘The Untouchables’ (1987) and ‘Scrooged’ (1988).

The plot of the film was to involve Defoe as a hotel manager and Cusack as his girlfriend getting involved in various scams.

However, after a single weeks filming it became apparent that the script was simply not funny enough to produce a decent comedy film.

The producers decided then to take the brave step of cancelling the rest of the shoot and writing off the $7 million they had already invested in the production...