Nick McLean Behind the Camera by Wayne Byrne

Author:Wayne Byrne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2020-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

Burt Reynolds enters a stunning composition in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Best Little Whorehouse is an ­old-fashioned musical production with intricately choreographed ­song-and-dance numbers, nothing new to McLean who had worked on musicals as diverse as Funny Lady and The Rose.

These kinds of musicals require you to be very controlled. You need a lot of rehearsals, but there’s more work involved for the dancers than there is for a cameraman; you just have to watch and follow the choreography very closely. You have to nail it every time in case the cast gets it right, because you don’t want to ask them to do another take. I was working with William Fraker again on this one and as always he had a very precise way of framing his shots. We brought in the Louma Crane on this film, which was brand new in those days and which allowed us to do a lot of big moves. The big shot near at the beginning where we follow someone around the house was done with the Louma Crane.

In a scene excised from the final cut of the film, Reynolds performs a wonderful version of Dolly Parton’s song “Where Stallions Run.” But it turned out that Reynolds’ loyal followers weren’t too keen on seeing their favorite film tough guy singing plaintively across the plains of Texas and a nervous Universal cut the scene after negative preview screenings dictated as much. The scene has received rare screenings on television down the years as it has been occasionally reinserted to pad out the film’s running time. McLean said, “You have to remember that at the time The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas came out, Burt was more famous as an action hero and that’s what cinema audiences wanted to see him doing on screen, not singing and dancing, or being vulnerable. It’s unfortunate because Burt did an amazing job with ‘Where Stallions Run,’ but the tests cards and reactions came in and the studio listened.”

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