Jack Black Ghosted ‘Demolition Man’ in the Middle of Filming

1993’s Demolition Man is a ridiculous movie. There are poop-swabbing seashells, dystopian Taco Bells and a nude Sylvester Stallone dummy that later became the creepiest Planet Hollywood decoration of all-time. Seriously, who put this on the ceiling of a family restaurant and thought that it wouldn’t emotionally scar children?

Then there’s the cast. Instead of a more seasoned actor, the producers hired comedian Denis Leary to play Edgar Friendly, the leader of a guerrilla army of resistance fighters, which, I guess makes sense, considering that his rebels are opposed to the politically correct fascists who won’t let him have any fun. 

He basically does a tight five in the middle of the movie all about how he yearns to smoke cigars in restaurants and read Playboy magazine while nude and slathered in green Jell-O. It’s kind of hard not to side with the evil police state after that. 

As you may have noticed, one member of Friendly’s band of rat-eating soldiers, or “Wasteland Scraps” if you will, is a young Jack Black, who doesn’t have any lines and never once breaks into an acoustic power ballad. Sure, this was back in the early ‘90s, but Black could have had more screen time had he actually shown up to the set when he was supposed to. As Black revealed during an interview with IMDb, he was “stoked” to land a part in Demolition Man, but soon discovered that he was “basically just a glorified extra.” 

“I would go to set every morning at 6 a.m., wait all day in the trailer, and then at about 9 p.m., they would say, ‘Alright you’re done for the day.’ And I didn’t do anything,” Black recalled. Then after weeks of shooting, Black accidentally slept in because he had “partied too hard the night before.” He quickly got dressed and started driving to set, before he thought to himself, “Fuck it, it doesn’t matter,” reasoning that “they never use me anyway.”

Black decided to let his agent know that he was planning on ghosting Stallone and company, but got an earful instead. “I just got a call from (producer) Joel Silver,” his agent barked over the phone, “and he said that this Jack Black kid better be dead. They needed you today Jack. Today was your day on camera!” 

Black’s characterization of these events may be a tad hyperbolic, but you get the idea.

After sleeping in, and briefly considering bailing on the day’s filming altogether, Black finally showed up to the set. But he was extremely late, so they scrapped his one line. He doesn’t seem too upset about it now, though. “Apparently I missed the chance to say, ‘Yo Denis, we’re really gonna give ‘em one right?’ So who the fuck cares, I missed a stupid shitty line.” 

But just imagine how much better Demolition Man would have been had Jack Black gotten to speak and refer to Denis Leary’s character as “Denis.”

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