{"id":720938,"date":"2026-07-31T13:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/720938\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T13:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:06:12","slug":"robin-williams-rare-footage-released-by-francis-ford-coppola-after-30-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/720938\/","title":{"rendered":"Robin Williams rare footage released by Francis Ford Coppola after 30 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Robin Williams<\/a> takes centre stage in rare rehearsal footage that\u2019s been released by Jack director Francis Ford Coppola<\/a> after 30 years.<\/p>\n

This week marks three decades since the release of the Godfather filmmaker\u2019s family comedy Jack, in which Williams played a young boy who ages four times faster than normal due to a unique medical condition.<\/p>\n

To mark the anniversary of the film\u2019s premiere, Coppola shared a behind-the-scenes clip in which Williams can be seen joking about his child co-star, Adam Zolotin.<\/p>\n

\"Never-before-seenNever-before-seen rehearsal footage from the set of 1996 film ‘Jack’ (American Zoetrope)<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved making Jack and thought it was imaginative and unusual, despite the fact that the theme had been dealt with perfectly in Big by Penny Marshall,\u201d Coppola wrote on Instagram. \u201cAnd the ending of Jack is very touching.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cIn this rehearsal clip with Adam Zolotin, the two adlib their way playfully through song, with the young Louis coercing his nervous friend to pretend to be the principal so that he won’t get in trouble with his mother.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Jack, which also stars Diane Lane, Jennifer Lopez, Brian Kerwin and Fran Drescher, received negative reviews at the time of release, but critics praised Williams. That decade, Williams also starred in films such as Toys (1992), Mrs Doubtfire (1993), The Birdcage (1996), Flubber (1997) and Patch Adams (1998). <\/p>\n

He also voiced the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin in 1992 and won an Oscar for his role in Good Will Hunting (1997).<\/p>\n

One of Williams\u2019s best-loved films was Jumanji, which was released the year before Jack, in 1995.<\/p>\n

\"RobinRobin Williams in 1996 film ‘Jack’ (American Zoetrope)<\/p>\n

During his time on Jumanji, Williams stepped in to defend child star Bradley Pierce<\/a> from over-demanding producers.<\/p>\n

Alongside Kirsten Dunst, Pierce played one of the kids in the hit family film; in 2020, he recalled shooting a sequence in which the titular game leads to a fierce monsoon.<\/p>\n

The actor, who was 13 at the time, was having trouble breathing in the scene due to the water and his extensive makeup. In the film, his character is transformed into a monkey. <\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t breathe through my nose,\u201d he told CBCListen<\/a>, adding that the shoot, which lasted for eight days, \u201cwas really draining for everybody\u201d and left him \u201ctired\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite this, Pierce recalled that producers attempted to get the child stars to work overtime, which is not legally permitted.<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren can only be on set for a number of hours,\u201d Pierce said. \u201cThe producers had approached our parents and said, \u2018Is there any way we can do a bit of overtime to get it done?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not uncommon at all in the industry because it literally saves $100,000 (\u00a373,000) plus to do that extra half hour rather than a whole day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams, however, \u201ccaught wind of these conversations\u201d and \u201cpulled the director [Joe Johnston] and producers aside\u201d to tell them that wouldn\u2019t be happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018No, we are not doing any extra time. You\u2019re going to let everybody out now and we\u2019re going to come back next week,\u2019\u201d recalled Pierce.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cFor all the dollars that would have cost, nobody would have stood up the way he did. In addition to being warm, generous and kind, he was also very protective.\u201d <\/p>\n

Williams died by suicide in 2014, aged 63; an autopsy found that the actor had been suffering from Lewy body dementia for the last years of his life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-720938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}