Paul Simon’s Onscreen Dilemma: Why Richard Dreyfuss Wasn’t Cast

Paul Simon’s career has never been short of creative tension. Even in his early days with Art Garfunkel, there was always a bit of friction in the studio. Getting the right take was often a mission, and wrangling everyone together for big projects like Graceland was no walk in the park. Still, Simon managed to keep things ticking along, even if not everyone saw eye to eye behind the scenes.

Despite the occasional clash, you wouldn’t pick it from listening to his records. Simon’s solo albums paint him as a laid-back storyteller, and when things didn’t go to plan, it often just added a bit of charm. Take the oddball percussion at the start of ‘Cecilia’ on Bridge Over Troubled Water – a happy accident that worked out for the best.

Chasing New Inspiration

After a few albums, Simon hit a familiar wall: things started to feel a bit stale. He wasn’t keen to keep churning out the same old tracks, so he decided to shake things up. With Garfunkel having a crack at acting, Simon figured he’d try his hand at writing music for a film. It wasn’t a new idea – plenty of musicians had done it before, from Elvis to The Beatles. But Simon’s project, which would become One Trick Pony, had more heart than your average rock star vanity flick.

Simon wasn’t planning to take centre stage himself, despite being comfortable in front of the camera thanks to his Saturday Night Live stints. He wanted proper actors to bring his characters to life and deliver his songs in a way that felt genuine. Most of the casting went smoothly, but one name stood out as a no-go from the start: Richard Dreyfuss.

The Dreyfuss Dilemma

Simon didn’t even bother testing whether Dreyfuss could pull off his tunes. All the actor needed to do was mime along, but Simon reckoned Dreyfuss’s distinctive voice would make it impossible for punters to buy into the performance. As Simon put it,

“At one point, Richard Dreyfuss and I talked about it. It couldn’t be done. It would have been insurmountable, because I had to give the soundtrack to Warner Bros., and there was no way I could have Richard Dreyfuss singing on it. There was no way Dreyfuss could be in the movie and open his mouth and have my voice come out. It would be funny.”

Even with a bit of suspension of disbelief, Simon knew it wouldn’t fly. Musicals had pulled off stranger things, but letting Dreyfuss mime to Simon’s vocals would have been taking the mickey. It would have ended up like Jack Nicholson’s infamous turn in Tommy, where he absolutely mangled ‘Go to the Mirror’ halfway through the show.

Sticking to His Guns

Making a film was a different beast to recording an album, but Simon wasn’t about to cut corners. He wanted the end result to have the same impact as his best work, even if it meant saying no to some big names. For Simon, it was better to keep things authentic than to risk a mismatch that would leave everyone scratching their heads.