Get Low was an incredibly difficult project to get made in the first place. Apparently it took eight years to get it together — the director previously won an Oscar for the short, Two Soldiers.
“The thing is, it’s ultimately about loss, regret, redemption, reconciliation,” said [Dean] Zanuck, “and while these are themes that hit me dead-on, they aren’t exactly what studios are focusing on right now.”
Robert Duvall and Bill Murray are both getting buzz for this one, though Murray was a hard fish to catch:
Meanwhile, director Aaron Schneider recalled the lengthy and labour-intensive process of convincing Murray to take the role.
“Bill came on at the last minute,” he said. “Apparently, he doesn’t read scripts and doesn’t really have an agent, although he does have a lawyer. Anyway, there’s this 1-800 number you have to call first, then you mail a one-page synopsis of the film to him, so that’s what we did. A few weeks later, we heard he was interested and were instructed to send a full screenplay to some P.O. Box in upstate New York.”
“But the thing with Bill is, he never really says he’s in,” said producer Dean Zanuck. “You meet with him, talk about golf for a while and then he leaves and he may or may not call the director. So Aaron slept with his phone beside his head for weeks ‚Äî eventually, he came on board.”
