Obsessive fans of Paul Thomas Anderson already know they can find the ill-fated storyline of The Worm in the published shooting script of "Magnolia," but oddly The Worm's alter ego Jones logs more time on the making of documentary than he does in the film. As part of the "Magnolia" production diaries, there's a tantalizing scene in a diner featuring The Worm, the desperate-for-cash father of Dixon, the young boy John C. Reilly's cop meets in the first act, but Jones is nowhere to be found in the final cut. As Jones told the Sunday Express in 2001, "Paul called me and said: "You're great in the movie but we're four hours." Apparently, Tom Cruise wasn't as expendable.

Andy Garcia: "Dangerous Minds"

If 2007's Hilary Swank drama "Freedom Writers" was an update of the Michelle Pfeiffer inner city school drama "Dangerous Minds," then Patrick Dempsey was the modern version of the crusading teacher's nag of a love interest as Garcia was in the 1995 film. Except Garcia's turn was even more thankless than Dempsey's, since it never saw the light of day - and it couldn't have come at a worse time for Garcia, whose days as a leading man were numbered with the release of his next film, "Steal Big Steal Little." Pfeiffer claimed to have fought for the actor in a 1995 interview with the Sunday Mail... to a point. "I argued against cutting him out," said Pfeiffer. "In the end, I can't really say whether or not it was the right choice. People seem to like (the movie)."

James Van Der Beek: "Storytelling"

Itching to break away from the clean-cut image he cultivated on "Dawson's Creek," Van Der Beek didn't blink when he signed on to star in the "Fiction" segment of Todd Solondz's fourth film as a sexually confused high school jock in the 1980s who, according to those who saw the original NC-17 cut, was a little less confused after an explicit "Brown Bunny"-esque scene with another man. Heather Matarazzo and Emmanuelle Chriqui were also casualties of the editing down of the two-and-a-half-hour film to the 87 minute, R-rated affair it became. When Van Der Beek made the rounds with "The Rules of Attraction," which finally did earn him some indie cred, he ended his self-imposed gag order about "Storytelling" on Moviehole, saying, "I remember saying to Todd [Solondz] the director, when I was doing ADR, that 'even if I get cut from this movie, I just want to say what a fabulous time I've had on this.' I will never say that to a director again!"

Jennifer Aniston wasn't the only collateral damage from the chemistry between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. As a positively flummoxed Doug Liman explains on the "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" special edition DVD, test screening audiences were so caught up with the future halves of Brangelina as dueling assassins that the film's main villains, the bosses behind the Smiths known only as Mother and Father, simply weren't necessary. Still, Liman went through two quarreling killer couples in Stamp and Bisset and David and Bassett before eliminating their performances from the film completely... well, David and Bassett's voices made it in, as did that of William Fichtner, who's never seen as the Smiths' marriage therapist.

Tobey Maguire: "Empire Records"

Like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" or "Dazed and Confused," "Empire Records" seemed to have one of those casts - this low-budget comedy about the closure of an indie record store had a quirky quorum of young actors who were destined to become movie stars. Some, including Liv Tyler and Renee Zellweger, did, while some, including Brendan Sexton III and Rory Cochrane, found steady work as character actors. But Maguire said that he felt like an "extreme outsider" on the North Carolina set of the film and suffered what he called a "kind of semi-breakdown" before asking director Allan Moyle if he could fly home to Los Angeles. Moyle agreed to cut Maguire and his character loose, though not before the actor reportedly went skinny dipping with the cast one night and wound up throwing up in the ocean in close proximity of Tyler.

Liv Tyler: "Everyone Says I Love You"

Speaking of Tyler, she spent a few days on the set of Woody Allen's musical, "Everyone Says I Love You," with nothing on celluloid to show for it. Even though the role didn't call for Tyler to use her genetically sound set of pipes, the actress was to have played what Allen called "a sexy, sensuous, hot right-wing Republican" to woo Lukas Haas' lone conservative in a family of liberals. Tyler later told The Times of London, "He wrote me a letter, which I keep on my desk and look at occasionally, saying that he was really sorry and it was nice to work with me and we would work again. But he's never asked me again. And he wouldn't even hear me sing, and I love to sing. So I guess maybe he doesn't like me so much."

Name (Required)

Email Address (Required, not displayed)

URL

Type your comments here...