Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka Nightmare: The Crocodile Dundee Casting Scare

Few directors can match Steven Soderbergh’s relentless output. The celebrated filmmaker has become synonymous with productivity, having delivered a remarkable number of films over the past decades. Between 2010 and 2019 alone, he managed to release nine features, a feat made even more impressive by his so-called retirement from 2013 to 2016. Soderbergh’s early work includes Kafka, a surreal, genre-blurring piece starring Jeremy Irons as the enigmatic writer Franz Kafka. The film weaves together elements of Kafka’s life and the peculiarities of his fiction, resulting in a cult favourite that, while never a box office sensation, has earned a loyal following among cinephiles.

During the making of Kafka, Soderbergh experienced a particularly odd and unsettling dream. He recounted to The Playlist that, for reasons unknown, his subconscious conjured up the idea of casting Paul Hogan—the Australian comedian best known for his role in Crocodile Dundee—as the lead. This vision was less than welcome.

“I’d forgotten about that dream until I’d dove back in [re-editing Kafka] and remembered,”

he said.

“I had a beard at the time, and I woke up in the course of one night, I had a big white patch in my beard. I was stressed.”

Paul Hogan: An Unlikely Kafka

For those unfamiliar, Hogan shot to international fame as the rugged, affable star of Crocodile Dundee, a film that made Australian culture a global curiosity in the mid-1980s. Despite winning a Golden Globe, Hogan’s acting range was, to put it kindly, rather limited. He excelled at playing the quintessential Aussie, but little else. His subsequent projects failed to capture the same magic, and his career quickly lost momentum. By the time Kafka was in production, Hogan’s star had faded considerably. His 1990 film Almost an Angel was a commercial disappointment, and his later appearance in Flipper saw him overshadowed by both Elijah Wood and a dolphin.

The notion of Hogan stepping into Kafka’s shoes is, in hindsight, rather absurd. Jeremy Irons brought a gravitas and complexity to the role that Hogan simply could not have matched. Soderbergh’s anxiety over the idea was, it seems, entirely justified.

Stress and Surrealism on Set

Soderbergh’s recollection of the dream is tinged with both humour and genuine distress. The physical manifestation of his stress—a sudden white patch in his beard—serves as a testament to the pressure he felt during the film’s production. Kafka itself was a challenging project, blending reality and fantasy in a way that was both ambitious and, at times, frustrating for its creator.

Imagining Hogan on set, perhaps brandishing a large knife or delivering lines with his trademark Aussie twang, only adds to the surreal quality of Soderbergh’s experience. The director admitted that the process was already difficult enough without the added complication of an eccentric Australian comedian in the lead role.

What Might Have Been

While it’s tempting to speculate whether casting a household name like Hogan might have boosted the film’s commercial prospects, the reality is less optimistic. By the early 1990s, Hogan’s appeal had waned, and his association with Crocodile Dundee had become something of a double-edged sword. Soderbergh’s decision to stick with Irons was, in retrospect, the right one—both artistically and, quite possibly, for his own peace of mind.