1979 CAPTAIN AMERICA Director Says Movie Was So Bad He Was Lucky to Get Another Job in Hollywood
Decades before the name Captain America was synonymous with the actor Chris Evans, and the MCU had not yet been conceived, the world actually did have the chance to be introduced to the superhero via film, but it was a pretty bad rendition. The 1979 TV movie Captain America was a ridiculous version of the origin story we all know and love. It starred actor Reb Brown as Steve Rogers, the titular hero, and it was as cheesy and generic as an ‘80s TV movie could possibly be.
The director, Rod Holcomb, was a newcomer on the scene when he got the gig, having only directed a few episodes of the two series The Six Million Dollar Man and The American Girls previously. He didn’t have a clear vision, or really any input when making the movie, and he still looks back on it as a bummer of an experience. He explained in an interview:
"I did a very, very bad job on this. It was directed badly, it was written badly, it was shot badly, it was acted badly, it was edited badly, they were talking about trying to fire me and the studio at the time, you know, 'cause I had worked with them, said, 'No, let's not break this kid. Let's you know,' and CBS wanted me off of the show. And oh god, it went on and on and on ... I failed, crying at night. It was devastating, people wanted to fire me, I never, I shot it for the studio, I shot it for the network, I shot it for my friend who gave me the job. I never once shot any one frame for myself. Never one frame for myself."
The director explained that, luckily, the networks didn’t dismiss him moving forward as a filmmaker based on this one project, and CBS gave him another chance to work again. Holcomb would move on to have a long and fruitful career directing episodes of series like the original Battlestar Galactica, Fantasy Island, ER, The West Wing, and Lost.
And not only did Holcomb get to move forward in Hollywood, but for some reason, despite the film's failure, Universal released a sequel to Captain America the same year, titled Captain America II: Death Too Soon, this time directed by Ivan Nagy.
via: /Film