Earlier than it re-emerged as an Oscar night time punchline — and a prelude to a slap that is nonetheless reverberating in Hollywood — G.I. Jane‘s main popular culture legacy was a career-defining showcase for Demi Moore. Launched 25 years in the past on Aug. 22, 1997, the Ridley Scott-directed navy drama featured the Ghost star fully revamping her display picture, bulking up her physique and shaving her head to play Lt. Jordan O’Neil, a navy analyst who turns into the primary feminine candidate to undergo intensive fundamental coaching to hitch a Navy SEAL-like particular ops group.
Though the film itself acquired combined opinions, Moore’s intense efficiency was largely praised. It additionally proved to be her final star flip for a while: The actress took a multi-year hiatus after G.I. Jane‘s launch, shifting her focus to elevating her three daughters with then-husband, Bruce Willis. She did not seem in one other mainstream studio film till Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle six years later.
“It is the efficiency of her profession,” G.I. Jane screenwriter, David Twohy, tells Yahoo Leisure now. “The film rises or falls on her efficiency, and that required her to have a complete, unflinching dedication to that half. And she or he had that dedication — I believe she f***ing nailed it.”
In Twohy’s superb world, G.I. Jane‘s solely connection to the Oscars would have been a Finest Actress nomination for Moore 1 / 4 century in the past. As an alternative, the movie is now a part of a second that is enshrined in Oscar infamy. On the 94th Academy Awards in March, comic Chris Rock launched the nominees for Finest Documentary, and took the chance to deal with Finest Actor nominee Will Smith and his spouse, Jada Pinkett Smith. “Jada, I really like ya. G.I. Jane 2 — cannot wait to see it, all proper?” the comic stated, referencing the actress’s bald head. (Pinkett Smith suffers from alopecia and has overtly mentioned her struggles with hair loss.) Smith then walked onstage and slapped Rock on digicam.
“It was a G.I Jane joke,” the comedian stated after the King Richard star returned to his seat. “Hold my spouse’s title out your f***ing mouth,” the actor responded. Smith remained in his seat for the remainder of the telecast, and later accepted his Finest Actor statue, declining to apologize to Rock. (Smith issued an apology the next day, and launched one other apology on July 29. He additionally resigned from the Academy, which later voted to ban him from attending the Oscars and different occasions for 10 years.)
“To me, the joke was kind of a non-joke that was adopted by some testosterone-fueled over reactionary bulls***,” Twohy says of the Oscar fracas throughout which G.I. Jane turned collateral injury. “I personally assume that Jada ought to have flashed her personal weapons and brought it as a praise, as a result of Demi seems nice within the film along with her bald head, and Jada seems nice, too. So the place’s the burn? Not solely the place’s the joke, however the place’s the burn? I do not get it.” On the similar time, he would not imagine the film itself has been impacted in a unfavourable method. “I am assuming that my subsequent residual test for G.I. Jane will double.”
Twohy’s historical past with G.I. Jane dates again to 1995, when he discovered himself on a shortlist of writers introduced in by Hollywood Photos — one of many Walt Disney Firm-owned labels that targeted on grown-up fare — to work on a script that had originated with British author Danielle Alexandra. Moore was already connected to the undertaking at that time, and had been impressed by Twohy’s contributions to Harrison Ford’s 1993 hit, The Fugitive. “I initially handed, as a result of I haven’t got a navy background,” the author explains. “So the studio stated, ‘Please exit and meet with Demi.’ She was filming Striptease on the time, we met in her trailer throughout her lunch break.”
Throughout that lunchtime assembly, Twohy remembers asking Moore one crucial query. “It was her thought to shave her head, and I stated: ‘Are you aware what sort of a cranium you’ve got? Do you’ve got a handsome cranium? As a result of if not, this might go unhealthy, fast.’ She stated: ‘I do not know, however I believe I do! I’ve by no means seen it.’ I used to be captivated by her and that was the purpose of the assembly. Once I received again to L.A., I informed the studio, ‘OK, I will do it.'”
Twohy turned in his first draft of G.I. Jane in Aug. 1995, a full two years earlier than the movie arrived in theaters. And people two years had been full of a number of rewrites, plus a serious third act overhaul that Scott demanded when he signed on to direct. “It was one of many extra torturous writing tasks I have been concerned with,” laughs Twohy, whose different credit embody a stint on the script for Kevin Costner’s infamous 1995 bomb Waterworld and writing and directing all three entries in Vin Diesel’s fan favourite Riddick trilogy — Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick and Riddick.
One of many first decisions that Scott and Twohy confronted was whether or not or to not enlist the U.S. navy in bringing G.I. Jane to life. As Twohy recollects, the director initially argued in favor of cooperation with the Navy, hoping to make use of precise places and expertise. “He beloved the hovercrafts that the Navy had,” the author says. “He informed me, ‘I can not get my fingers on the hovercrafts with out cooperation, so we’ll cooperate!'”
However Scott’s resolve wavered because the Navy demanded script modifications and artistic oversight. Twohy remembers the duo sitting in “countless conferences” the place a rotating crew of bureaucrats raised objections to the quantity of swearing within the script and the usage of the SEALs title. (The fictional group within the film known as the U.S. Navy Mixed Reconnaissance Staff.) “After awhile, we received to the purpose the place we had been like, ‘F*** the hovercrafts and f*** the Navy — we’re doing it with out cooperation.”
Twohy credit the always-resourceful Scott with determining a strategy to characteristic the Navy within the film with out their direct involvement. “Ridley went right down to Florida and located a seashore venue that was immediately reverse a Naval base,” the author says. “He realized, ‘If I arrange on this seashore and movie seaward, all these battleships and frigates and Navy exercise goes to be within the background of my film.’ And that is the best way we did it!”
Whereas Twohy began work on the script realizing that he was tailoring the position of Jordan O’Neil to Moore, the remainder of the solid wasn’t set in stone. In actual fact, he initially wrote the unit’s rating officer, Command Grasp Chief Jack Urgayle, as an older character than the one ultimately portrayed by a then-39-year-old Viggo Mortensen. “That was a little bit of a shock,” he says of Mortensen’s casting, revealing that Harvey Keitel additionally wished to play the position. “Ridley approached Harvey for an additional half, however he stated, ‘No, I wish to play Grasp Chief.’ Ridley knowledgeable him, ‘We have met a few of these guys, they usually are inclined to skew younger — you are too outdated for that half.’ So Harvey declined to hitch the film; he wished Grasp Chief or nothing. That is when Viggo’s title made its look.”
Twohy says that Mortensen got here to set with the concept Grasp Chief could be a D.H. Lawrence fan, a operating thread that units up the emotional closing scene between him and O’Neil. “Viggo is a poet himself, and I can solely assume that Lawrence is one in all his favourite poets. So he introduced that to the desk and included it into the character.” Mortensen’s relative youth additionally upped the depth within the battle of wills he shared with Moore — a battle that takes a bodily flip in a single memorable scene the place the 2 get right into a combat that leaves her bloodied and bruised.
Whereas Twohy wasn’t on set the day that Moore and Mortensen went head-to-head, he was given the inside track concerning the brawl afterwards. “I heard that when Viggo places her head by way of the door and throws her from contained in the interrogation room to the skin space, he was presupposed to throw her right into a pad that was on the door. However he threw her a little bit off, and her head hit the door for actual! They actually received into it.” (Moore later confirmed off her battle scar throughout an look on The Late Present With David Letterman.)
Twohy additionally wasn’t on set the day that Moore — and the remainder of the crew — noticed precisely what her cranium regarded like when it was shorn of hair. “I noticed behind the scenes footage later,” he recollects, including that Moore served as her personal barber. “I all the time assumed that Ridley would have filmed it in a single take with six cameras, however he stored stopping and beginning! Demi would get three or 4 strokes of the razor in, and he’d be like ‘Cease, cease! Are we good? How does the cranium look?’ When she received about 40% of her head shaved, the entire crew broke out in applause. You may hear numerous the navy actors within the background yelling, ‘Hoo-yah, hoo-yah!’ It was an enormous f***ing deal; I might have beloved to have been there.”
However the author was current and accounted for when Scott filmed the scene that was supposed to open G.I. Jane. “Ridley’s authentic thought was to start out with an motion sequence that confirmed that O’Neil’s not simply an intel officer, however has athletic aspirations as properly,” Twohy says concerning the discarded sequence which discovered Moore practising a quick and livid Skeleton run at a Winter Olympics coaching facility in Lake Placid, N.Y.
“He filmed this improbable sequence, the place she’s hurtling down the Skeleton course at 50 miles an hour, along with her coach barking in her ear the entire method,” he continues. “Then she crashes and burns on the finish, as a result of she’s not taking his path very properly. That is one in all her character flaws, pondering ‘I’ve received to do that my method,’ which is the other of teamwork.” (Though the Skeleton sequence was lower from the theatrical model of G.I. Jane, it was later launched on each the Laserdisc and DVD editions.)
Whereas the alternate opening was ultimately launched, Scott shot one other ending for G.I. Jane that has solely ever been seen by studio executives at Disney. Twohy says that the movie’s third act was all the time a sticking level for the director, who wished O’Neil to face actual world fight on the finish of fundamental coaching, in the identical method that Prime Gun ended with Tom Cruise’s Maverick flying into an precise battle with hostile enemy fighters. (The unique Prime Gun was directed by Scott’s brother, Tony Scott, who died by suicide in 2012.)
“Ridley all the time had it in his head that we had been going to do the identical factor,” Twohy recollects, including that his personal choice was to make surviving fundamental coaching a life or demise scenario of O’Neil. However Scott finally gained that battle, and the author scripted the ending seen within the movie the place she and her fellow trainees are dispatched to get well weapons-grade plutonium from the Libyan desert. On the recommendation of the movie’s navy adviser, ex-Navy SEAL Harry Humphries, Scott filmed an ending the place O’Neil was shot and killed by a sniper, along with a finale the place she survives the mission. Disney executives had been proven each endings and went with the happier model that common audiences noticed when the movie premiered.
“It was a cautionary ending — simply stark as f***” Twohy says of the alternate finale. “The story that we informed was telling the mother and father of America that they should be prepared for his or her daughters to return residence in physique baggage. Ridley and I talked about it and I stated, ‘I do not assume it is gratifying, however I can see how this may be an apt ending if we’re being completely lifelike about this.’ However I am assuming the studio stepped in and stated, ‘Nope.'”
Due to Moore’s still-potent star energy, G.I. Jane topped the field workplace its opening weekend, however the combined crucial response ate into its earnings and the movie ended its run simply shy of $50 million. Wanting again, Twohy believes that the vitriol that surrounded Moore’s earlier movie Striptease impacted the best way that G.I. Jane was greeted by reviewers and audiences alike.
“Striptease got here out whereas we had been in manufacturing, and the stink was within the air,” he says of that 1996 flop. “I do not assume it was pretty acquired, and Striptease had lots to do with it, as a result of it was a really unhealthy film. She ought to have been nominated for G.I. Jane, and I believe she would have been, too, if not for Striptease. That tainted her possibilities and perhaps everybody’s possibilities.”
Over the following 25 years, although, Twohy says that he is acquired messages from many viewers — together with quite a few feminine navy officers — who give the film an enormous “Hoo-rah.” “I do hear from ladies in fight settings who say, ‘That film is why I am right here.’ I additionally hear from exercise folks, too! They’re like, ‘Anytime I wish to get pumped up for a superb exercise, I watch G.I. Jane.’ I believe it has a strong message that also resonates in the present day, and I am positive that numerous ladies within the navy undergo the identical issues that we portrayed. I do not assume misogyny has gone away within the navy.”
G.I. Jane is at the moment streaming on Tubi.
