Michael Caine: The Swarm was about an attack of bees and it was made in Hollywood, and the reason I made it is I was so impressed because I was with Henry Fonda, Fred MacMurray, Olivia de Havilland, and José Ferrer. All the big Hollywood stars, and this was my second movie in Hollywood, I’d just made Gambit with Shirley MacLaine, Shirley brought me to Hollywood.
We were making this picture and I thought it was going to be great, because all these stars, and I realized eventually… The one scene, there was one scene where I realize that maybe the film wasn’t any good, because it was Henry Fonda, we had a scene with no jackets on. We had white shirts, and there was this big scene where all the bees were above us in a big swarm in this sort of greenhouse.
And halfway through the scene I was looking at him and he was looking at me, and there were all little black dots all over our shirts. The bees were all crapping on us and unfortunately that was the first review. We didn’t know at the time that that was the first review, it was a load of crap.
But I tell it now, here’s a “use the difficultly.” I was in this, and I realized very quickly this was a load of rubbish, and what I did — I was with some, as I just said, some of the most experienced and famous Hollywood stars. I never went into my dressing room when I wasn’t in the shot. I sat and watched them all day every day to see what they did and how they did it. And that was an extreme example of me using the difficulty. And I was covered in bee crap as well all the time.