Director Tony Goldwyn admits the shoot was one of the toughest he has ever experienced and he was glad when it was over – only to discover days later he and his cast and crew had to do it all over again.
He tells WENN, “We had just completed the four most difficult prison scenes and we had a limited time to shoot them all, so it was the toughest day and an 18-hour day. We were all hugging each other thinking the work was so great.
“The next day we were shooting in downtown Detroit and my producer, Andy Sugarman, comes up to me and says, ‘We may have a problem. The film on it’s way to the lab at the airport was X-Rayed by Northwest Airlines. I was like, ‘All over the film canister it says DO NOT X-RAY, and we paid an exorbitant amount of money to have a special courier, and it was X-Rayed!’
“A few hours later Andy said, ‘We got a bad lab report and the film was destroyed.’ I go into Hilary’s trailer and call a meeting… Hilary went to the bathroom and Sam (Rockwell) is all excited: ‘So, how does it look? You know there was a scene in the prison where I think maybe I could’ve done it differently.’
“I said, ‘You know, that’s a really interesting idea!’ I break the news to them and Hilary just starts streaming in tears and Sam is rolling on the floor groaning. So we re-shot the whole day in 12 hours and it was better than the first time.”
Rockwell adds, “The last day was a really important day. We lost the film and we had to go back into the prison and re-shoot it. It was very tough. It was kind of that groundhog day kind of thing where the same thing happens every day. It’s obviously a thousand times worse for someone who’s actually there.”
