When Dustin Hoffman joined the set of the famous Papillon (1973), the tale of two prisoners’ escape from Devil’s Island, he had no idea what lay ahead: his co-star Steve McQueen lived up to his proudly unruly reputation as a screen icon. As he recounts in his memoir on the eve of turning ninety, Look At Me, Hoffman stayed in character, especially enduring the huge amount of drugs circulating, but he lost his temper when McQueen asserted his star status to keep a close friend of Dustin’s away from the set during a visit.
Dustin Hoffman Overwhelmed by Steve McQueen’s Drug Use on the Papillon Set, Up to a Confrontation
“Joints all day, laced with a bit of cocaine,” Dustin Hoffman describes his set-mate Steve McQueen for Papillon: Steve didn’t seem to mind at all, something Hoffman attributes to the whole McQueen-esque balance. The same, however, did not apply to him: one evening, as a guest at Steve’s dinner, he was offered an enormous joint of the strongest weed I had ever tried. After the experience, he desperately told his colleague that he wasn’t opposed to it, provided it happened on the weekends, so he could continue to perform convincingly. In reply, McQueen laid a trap, sending him one day chocolate cookies baked by his private chef, with a secret ingredient: marijuana. It was the eve of an important scene, which Dustin understandably couldn’t perform, provoking laughter from the entire crew, who had been warned about the prank.
The gaiety gave way to rage when, one day, Hoffman invited a friend to lunch on set, basketball coach Gene Shue, then coach of the Philadelphia 76ers. When the break arrived, he couldn’t locate Gene anywhere, but was told that a more paranoid McQueen had him expelled. It was the drop that caused the cork to pop: “I told him: go to hell. And he replied: go to hell to you too. I didn’t speak to him for two weeks. I had told the director that I refused and that I wouldn’t look at him off-camera.” When the moment for an important take arrived, McQueen was surprised that Hoffman still hadn’t spoken to him: “There was a back-and-forth and I lost my temper. Deep down I’m a coward,” recalls Dustin, “but if I cross a certain threshold of indignation I don’t care about the consequences. I told him: ‘You son of a bitch, how dare you treat my guest like that? Who the hell do you think you are? Do you think because you’re a movie star you can crap on everyone? It’s pathetic.’ ” But he didn’t get mad; he simply sat there waiting for me to stop.” In hindsight, Dustin attributes McQueen’s hold on the situation to the fact that the microphones were still on and he didn’t want to leave too many traces of the altercation, but confirms that several crew members secretly congratulated him for having put the star in his place.
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