Jon Hamm gave up 60 per cent of his salary to finance three extra days of filming on Confess, Fletch.
The new sequel follows on from crime comedies Fletch (1985) and Fletch Lives (1989). It is based on Gregory Mcdonald’s 1976 novel of the same name and is the first movie in the series not to star Chevy Chase in the lead role – which has now been taken over by Mad Men star Hamm.
In a new interview with Uproxx, director Greg Mottola said that the money that Miramax was able provide for the film only covered 27 days of shooting. When Mottola and Hamm went out to find extra funding, they were turned down by every financier.
“Everyone said, ‘I don’t know that this kind of comedy works in this day and age,’” Mottola said. “They just had a kind of like, ‘Who’s Fletch? I don’t think anyone cares anymore.’
“So, basically, what we did is Jon gave back 60 per cent of his salary to the budget. I gave back some of my salary, not as much as Jon because he’s richer than me and I’ve got three kids. And we bought three more days of shooting.”
He added: “We got it up to 30 days in Boston and one day in Rome. And we said, f*** it, we’re insane, we’re dumb. We’re going to make this movie. And then Miramax really supported us, creatively. They didn’t fight us on people we wanted to cast.”
Lorenza Izzo, Marcia Gay Harden, Kyle MacLachlan, Roy Wood Jr and John Slattery also star in the new film.
The film has received favourable reviews, with IndieWire’s Jude Dry writing: “Equal parts goofy, charismatic, boozy, and clever, Hamm is firmly in his element in Greg Mottola’s entertaining art heist romp.”
Confess, Fletch is now playing in selected cinemas in the US.
