Matt Salinger Talks about the Canceled 1990 Captain America Film

Captain America: The First Avenger storms into theaters this weekend with Chris Evans in the title role of the genetically engineered WWII-era superhero—but Evans wasn’t the first actor to play America’s ultimate weapon. Matt Salinger—yes, of thouse Salingers—starred as Steve Rogers in a version that teaser posters promised was, "Coming Spring 1990 to Theaters Everywhere!" It never did.

Plagued by a small budget that eventually dried up before the film’s completion, 1990’s Captain America is a far cry from the spectacle of today’s superhero franchises—or even Tim Burton’s Batman, which was released one year prior. We spoke to Salinger, who’s decidedly mid about his experience on the set of Captain America. Sure, he got the chance to play a superhero in what could have been a breakout role opposite Ned Beatty and an impressive cast. But Salinger lost 20 pounds from overheating in the costume during filming and now admits the movie probably should never have seen the light of day. And, sure, more than 20 years later, we’re still discussing it at GQ, but instead of speaking to Edith Zimmerman, he’s unfortunately stuck with me.

**GQ: Have you seen the commercials for the new Captain America film? **

Matt Salinger: Well, that’s why I’m doing this, because it looked awesome. It looks great. Some of it’s weird—it’s almost like having déjà vu. I don’t know what the storyline is, but the character goes through some similar things, so it’s pretty cool. It looks like what we had hoped ours would look like.

**GQ: Did you know there was a new film coming? **

Matt Salinger: I had heard when they were beginning to make it and I had actually written a note to the director—because I’m just sort of acting for fun these days – thinking it would be cool to sort of tip my hat, in a way, to the production by, whatever: sweeping the floor as someone runs by or who knows what. Ideally there would have been a character that sort of helps Captain America in some way—that would have been fun. I heard from the casting director that they were shooting in England and if there were anything when they got back to the States they’d be in touch. I didn’t push the matter.

**GQ: I remember the hype for the original film, then it never came out in theaters. **

Matt Salinger: There was some initial hype; in movie theaters there were posters of the shield. I think [director] Albert [Pyun] and the team he put together could probably have done a very good movie. I thought the script was terrific; I thought it was a really nice script. I auditioned for it and was offered it and actually turned it down the first time because I wasn’t sure 20th Century Films had the wherewithal—actually, my lawyer warned me—to do what they needed to do: to give it the exciting ride that it needed to be to accompany the very nice story. Then they said what they needed to say to get me to do it, but then it didn’t really live up to it.

**GQ: When did you first realize, "Hm, this isn’t quite what I thought it would be"? **

Matt Salinger: In filming, there were a lot of shots that the director was saying, "Oh, well, we’ll get this when we go to Alaska." Or, "We’ll get this when we go back to the states." Then, when we finished up in Yugoslavia...I don’t remember how I got the word, but, suddenly we weren’t even going to go to Alaska. And the shots back in the states turned out to be two days of pickups. They just ran out of money—it was a lot of well-intentioned people that loved the story and loved the character and wanted to make a good film and just weren’t able to.

**GQ: And there are some great actors like Ned Beatty who are in the film. Did that still give you hope it would turn out OK? **

Matt Salinger: Yeah. I thought it would. I knew it was a chance... When I got the part and agreed to do it, James Spader was over at our house for dinner and he started chasing me around the room with a towel over his shoulders. He was excited and it was an exciting thing...and it just didn’t work. I didn’t know what the special effects were—or were not. I wasn’t very sophisticated about that at that point.

**GQ: It was interesting watching the film again—it’s quite grim. A kid watches Nazis slaughter his family and apparently The Red Skull is responsible for the assassinations of both Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr. **

Matt Salinger: There’s not a lot of gray area there with The Red Skull. I think, frankly, [Albert] was more interested with The Red Skull than he was Captain America; so The Red Skull’s background was really important to Albert. By killing all of the American heroes, they certainly made him a villain, that’s for sure.

**GQ: How was the suit? **

Matt Salinger: I lost 20 pounds. It’s latex and it’s foam and it’s hot as hell. I would take off my boots at lunch and I would have half an inch of sweat at the bottom. My whole body would be sweating and have nowhere to go. It was brutal. But that was part of the fun of it, too. The same people in England made the Batman costume.

**GQ: And the shield? **

Matt Salinger: Luckily I was very good at throwing Frisbees, so, when I had to throw the shield, I could do it pretty well.

**GQ: It was plastic? **

Matt Salinger: Well, there were about five different shields for different purposes.

**GQ: So the one you threw was like a Frisbee. **

Matt Salinger: Yeah, but it was still pretty heavy, but that one is definitely plastic. I’m glad this [new] Captain America gets to carry a gun. I didn’t understand how my guy was supposed to do everything he was doing with just a shield.

**GQ: Right. He’s a super soldier built to fight Nazis, but he doesn’t need a gun… **

Matt Salinger: But I was really good with that shield! I’ll match my shield skills with this guy any day.

**GQ: What was one of the cheesiest effects you had to pull off? **

Matt Salinger: In my costume they gave me these ears—they weren’t my real ears—they just had this plastic that was part of the costume, these rubber ears. And there were some shots where they just looked so bad. Really kind of cheesy.

**GQ: Before you transform into Captain America, characters keep referring to you as this "frail boy." You looked anything but frail. **

Matt Salinger: Yeah, that’s just what they did. They didn’t double cast it. In the current movie it looks like they double cast it and that might have been the smarter…

**GQ: Actually it’s Chris Evans’ head with some CGI trickery… **

Matt Salinger: Well, see, there you go. If we had the budget or wherewithal to do something like that, they probably would have. I was a big guy who was in good shape and was athletic, but not the bulging, ripped muscle guy. I learned at one point that they offered my part to Howie Long—I met him, somewhere, and he mentioned that he had been offered that part. In a way, that was sort of a more typical, generic, over-the-top way to go with it. We’ll never know how that movie would have been.

**GQ: When did you first find out that the film wouldn’t get a theatrical release? **

Matt Salinger: To my way of looking at it, when we didn’t finish the film, I would have been surprised if it had gotten into the theaters. If they didn’t have the budget to finish the film, they weren’t going to have the budget to distribute it. [The director] told the editors to put it together the best they could then they released it on video. That was that. Everyone under the age of ten seemed to really love it [laughs] and most people over the age of ten saw it for what it was—they saw it as a missed opportunity.

**GQ: The Roger Corman version of The Fantastic Four made in 1994 was never released. Would you have preferred the same thing happen to Captain America? **

Matt Salinger: [Pauses] I’ve never thought of that. I don’t know. I just wish we had been able to make the film the film it could have been. Am I bitter? Not at all; it was fun and not that many people get to play a superhero. And now it’s sort of a kitschy kind of cool thing to have done. If I took myself super seriously...it’s not like you do a film version of Macbeth and it doesn’t work and you’re trying for something super dramatic and classical. This was a comic book movie...I can’t decide. Part of me thinks if it hadn’t come out then people would have been wondering what happened. At least this way they got to see, "OK, here’s what they did. Here’s what worked; here’s what didn’t work." Maybe future superhero movies were a little bit better because of the mistakes that were made.

**GQ: For someone who wants to watch the 1990 version, what would you tell them? **

Matt Salinger: [Laughing] Um? Well, the personal legacy of this movie is it was one example of several that showed me how powerless actors were to make a movie good or not. It was one of the beginnings of my stepping out of acting and stepping into producing. As a career, it became clear to me that it was going to be entirely too frustrating. That’s the personal legacy, for somebody thinking, "Should I check this out?" Yeah, you should check it out. You can see how far technology has wrought the movie business—especially for movies like superhero movies where there’s a lot of action and a lot of special effects. Look, could you have made Harry Potter 25 years ago? No. Certainly not the way it is now. You should see it as a before and after kind of thing—that’s assuming this one is as good as it looks.

**GQ: There’s a close-up scene, early in the film, that’s set in the 40s in which you have your hair slicked back and you’re wearing a light suit. My initial reaction was you looked exactly like that famous picture of your father. Was this intentional? **

Matt Salinger: That’s just, yeah...nothing intentional about that.

**GQ: Are you still a fan of Captain America? **

Matt Salinger: I’d like to wish Chris Evans well and I hope it’s a successful film. And I loved the comic books as a kid. I mean, I read them growing up: Captain America and the Falcon.

**GQ: From the mid-’70s. **

Matt Salinger: Yep! They are. I always thought that the Falcon would make a tremendous character and that they really should have done it. He was a black guy who rode, I think, a motorcycle that could fly, or something.

**GQ: Especially compared to Bucky, Falcon was a bit more of a badass. **

Matt Salinger: Oh, it would have been tremendous! And it could have brought a lot of comedy to it. If I were making it, I would have definitely done Captain America and the Falcon—because then it could have been a buddy movie like what Mel Gibson and Danny Glover had in [Lethal Weapon]. It could have been tremendous.