Dream Tropes Wiki/Troubled Production

Template:Trope
Sometimes, no matter the quality of the work itself, it just takes the creators so much effort and heartbreak to make it that at the end of it all, they can be forgiven for wondering to themselves "Was It Really Worth It?"

These sort of productions tend to range from complete disasters to the slightly more benign ones, but what they always have in common is frayed tempers, patience, screw-ups, delays and breakdowns. Reality Subtext may happen too. A Prima Donna Director usually helps things go disastrous (especially if he just got his Auteur License and his ego is on full force). Both Protection from Editors and Executive Meddling can exacerbate this phenomenon. Epic Movies are particularly vulnerable to this, especially if Hostile Weather strikes the set. This trope always applies to small or start-up studios, due to how little experience the show runners or head businessmen have in running a new one.

Troubled Productions frequently will end up with a final product that:

* is a bloated, disorganized, confusing picture that makes little sense.
* is ambitious but falls short of its intended goal in a spectacular way.
* uses the gladiatorial on-set mood to create performances that are impossible to achieve otherwise.

It should be noted that most works involve some degree of chaos, the natural result of trying to accomplish a creative output with the support staff the size of an army. Some of these productions required some outside leader to push through the insanity and get the work done. Knowing more of how it turned out tends to make people admire the creators even more - hey, look, they went through all this bullshit that would make a normal dude probably give up and still created something great! However you look at it, the insanity behind it tends to contribute to the quality of the finished product, in one way or another. It's exceedingly rare for a troubled production to result in a So Okay, It's Average product.

A few of those overlap with, and may often lead to, Development Hell and Vaporware, which is having trouble on starting the project. Others enter The Shelf of Movie Languishment after being finished. When concerning the music industry this can overlap with Music Is Politics, where the politics of the industry leads to this trope. If a Fortean or allegedly supernatural dimension creeps in, a Troubled Production may escalate into a case of The Production Curse.

See also Movie-Making Mess, the smaller-scale, amateur version of this; and Not in My Backyard!, who can turn any public works project into this.

As mentioned, a lot of the examples here tend to be famous for their quality, good or bad.

## Examples

### Film

* *This is My Sleepy Town* was a Vanity Project for father-and-son duo Greggo and Manny Hartsock, who were inspired to make it after Greggo showed Manny *The Breakfast Club*. A high school comedy-drama plot and a $12 million budget funded by Greggo's former employers, it had a problematic production from production starting in 1998 and production almost ending in 2002 before the film had some scenes added and was finally screened in 2003.
	+ The film went through *six* directors. The first director hired for the project, Template:W (later of *An Inconvenient Truth* fame), thought the screenplay was so poorly written that he hired *St. Elmo's Fire* co-writer Template:W to rewrite portions of the script he thought to be "stupid", thus creating a script more reminiscent of other coming-of-age high school films of the 1980's. The Hartsocks only agreed with portions of Kurlander's script, so after an "argument", Davis left a week after principal photography began. English director Template:W was hired next, and he held the same opinion with the Hartsocks' script, and he ultimately left the film due to both problems receiving his pay and concerns over conditions on set. The third director was Template:W, who opted to shoot the film as a comedic spoof of 1980's coming-of-age drama films due to his experience in the genre and because he thought the script was incredibly campy, he left due to an argument with Greggo over the boom mic operator forgetting his cue to lower the mic in for a scene. The fourth director was Template:W of *The Flintstones* and *Are We There Yet?* fame, he only shot for two months due to scheduling issues with another film. The fifth director who finally finished the film was sports promoter-TV producer-book author Template:W, however Template:W directed the filming for some extra scenes added when PBS Kids Movies bought the rights.
	+ They initially planned to film in Template:W, their home state, but weather issues moved filming to Template:W, Template:W.
	+ Amateur Cast was in full effect. Most of the "actors" had simply answered a Craigslist ad.
* *Neon* was the first project of best friends Brad Evans and Stuart Shertick, who started making this film when Stuart was *seventeen* years old! By the time the movie was released, he was 36. Five years after release, he past away due to cancer.
	+ Not to mention, Stuart Shertick was under immense pressure and between 1984 and 1985, got into alcoholism and didn't even show up to filmings most of the time. He quickly recovered however, but not before production resumed with a smoother pace. He also wrote screenplays and produced a few movies, including Daniel 'n Alana.

### Sports

#### Auto Racing

* The NASCAR China 500 in 2017... ugh...
	+ It was originally planned to be held at the Template:W but was moved to Template:W for logistics reasons.
	+ Several road course ringers had to be hired not only because some of the drivers didn't know how to race on the circuit, but because some drivers refused to participate for both political and human rights issue-related reasons.
	+ Template:W was scheduled to appear but couldn't make it due to travel reasons. Template:W appeared however... and delivered the "Gentlemen, start your engines" command. And you know the race sunk further when the woman who claimed her grandmother was from the moon had to stand in for Xi Dada.

#### Professional Wrestling

* The WNA has had a history of this.
	+ The "Super Match of the Year" at WNA Invasion 2000 had to be rescheduled after Smokemaster was fired after he was caught on camera participating in the destruction of corporate property in the Template:W (he had come out as a member of the anti-globalization movement weeks prior). Smokemaster later tried the indie wrestling circuit but he was killed by anti-anarchists as part of the El Kadsreian government's big plan to end anarchism once and for all before he was even able to continue rebuilding his career.
	+ A tent had to be pitched for the WNA Roadshow event in Wats in 2003 because the venue was already booked with a Thunder Nationals monster truck show.

### Other

#### Shopping Malls

* GM ShopVilla Tokyo was a tough build, owing to location and planning issues, a construction worker getting injured during the construction of the K-Mart store, and the foreign workers hired for the construction having to stay in *love hotels*. However, when it opened it was a huge success and is one of GM's most profitable malls.
* GM Atlanta was a failure in it's early days.
	+ It was originally developed by Template:W and planned to be opened in 1991, however the clusterf\*\*\* surrounding their failed U.S. expansion, plus several incidents including a construction worker falling to his death during the construction of the food court rotunda, led the mall to be half-finished for half a decade until GM Supermalls bought it in 1999, completed it in late 2002, and finally opened it in 2003.
	+ Security at the soft opening was poor, with a member of the Template:W production crew able to walk in and film the festivities without anybody noticing. He also took a photograph of a wall painting by Vicnoran artist Pedrizi Ba, which formed the basis for the infamous "THE DAWN IS YOUR ENEMY" bumper.
* GM Keene:
	+ It was originally developed by Template:W and opened as "New Hampshire Mills" in 2001 with anchor stores such as Sears, SuperTarget, Ultimate Electronics, and Dick's Sporting Goods. However, Mills didn't realize opening a mall in the middle of a mountain town in New Hampshire was one of the biggest no-brainers in retail history. The mall struggled in competition with every single mom-and-pop shop in the downtown area, and the mall was barely full, even on Black Friday (in 2005, a Reverend Billy "sermon" outside the Disney Store was called off mid-way as nobody was in the section of the mall it was located in).
	+ When Mills went under in 2007, the mall was sold to a couple of locals by successor Simon Property Group and renamed as the "Keene Regional Mall". The mall struggled still until 2009 when it was closed suddenly. In the mall's last days, security was poor, with one example of the poor security being that retail enthusiasts (and furries, who went to rescue the thrown-away PBS Kids Playground bits that weren't donated to local parks, especially the ceiling decorations with characters like *Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat* and Cassie from *Dragon Tales*) dived into the garbage dumpsters en masse trying to take as much thrown-away retail memorabilia (and signage) as they could, and all of those individuals who stole old store property never got caught because the rent-a-cops hired by the mall owners didn't bother to give chase to them and there were no security cameras to catch the people. Another example of the poor security was that a member of the Ames Fan Club forums went into the mall and filmed the empty husk that was once a failed mall with pride, and he too didn't get caught for it (and so did a Something Awful user a day after the video was uploaded to YouTube). The mall then stood empty (except for the Sears, which was converted into a indoor flea market, the SuperTarget, which remained open, and the Dick's Sporting Goods, which was turned into a local emergency management office for a time and then was converted into a U-Haul center after the emergency management people found a new building), until 2013, when it was bought by GM Supermalls and after renovations was reopened as GM Keene.
* Century III Mall
	+ Century III Mall was originally opened in two phases, phase I opened in 1979 and phase II opened in 1980. In 1995, the Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation sold the mall to Simon Property Group and the received a facelift a year later in 1997. In 2011, GM Supermalls bought the struggling mall and tried to revitalize the mall by adding a 12-screen Cinemark movie theater in the old Gimbles/T.J. Maxx/Marshall's/Steve & Barry's anchor and a second food court in the old Montgomery Ward/Horne's/Lazarus/Macy's Furniture anchor along with some some new stores like 77 Kids, Brothers, and Toys "R" Us. After the whole revamping of the mall after GM bought it, Century III began slowly to "die" with many stores closing between 2015 and 2019. The former Toys "R" Us anchor was used a Spirit Halloween pop-up shop after Toys "R" Us went out of business. Sears closed in 2014 leaving only Macy's and JCPenney as the only anchor stores left. The second food court that was added in 2011 is down to only one tenant, a Chinese food stand called "Century Wok".

#### Other

* The World Film Awards have had this happen a lot:
	+ The 1990 edition in Naples, Italy ended up taking place in the auditorium of an American DoDEA high school due to the committee's reservations for Template:W becoming invalid when it was announced to be a venue for the Template:W, with some of the matches having been scheduled for the same weekend as the ceremony.