More Screen Junkies…

Still hanging around the website and found this intriguing -and humorous- little article by Penn Collins regarding roles offered, but rejected, by Al Pacino:

http://www.screenjunkies.com/movies/movie-news/al-pacino-passed-on-playing-han-solo-and-john-mcclane-in-die-hard/

I can sorta/kinda see him being considered, at the time, for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars.  I can also picture him in the Richard Gere role in Pretty Woman.  (That’s not to take away the acting by the respective parties that did work in these films…the movies clearly owed a great deal of success to the acting of Mr. Harrison and Gere)

But John McClane in Die Hard?!?

Whoa.

That’s a tough one to wrap your head around.

I’ve mentioned it before and, given the topic, it bears repeating:  One of my favorite “what if” roles is that of Dirty Harry, the movie that arguably moved Clint Eastwood from rising star to MEGAstar.  The titular role was originally being groomed for…Frank Sinatra.  He passed and other actors, from Robert Mitchum to Paul Newman to Burt Lancaster were considered for the role before Mr. Eastwood took it.

What if, indeed.