In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.

Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979)
Directed by Richard Lester
Written by Allan Burns, based on characters created by William Goldman
Produced by Gabriel Katzka, Steven Bach
115 minutes

The first prequel Hollywood ever cranked out is also the answer to the question of which one remains the best, Butch and Sundance: The Early Days. That may be faint praise in the company of titles like The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas, Exorcist: The Beginning or the Star Wars prequels, but if there absolutely positively had to be another Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, without Paul Newman or Robert Redford — whose characters were shot up by the Bolivian army in the climax of the original — then this belated follow-up is actually pretty good. A blithe screenplay constructed by Allan Burns (co-creator of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda), a solid cast and comic flourishes by director Richard Lester that deftly sidestep parody while providing plenty of grins all add up to a thoroughly enjoyable western adventure.

Part of the fun is the slight of hand that permits Tom Berenger and William Katt to pull off roles originated by Paul Newman and Robert Redford. That’s not saying they’re preferable to Newman and Redford (nobody is) or really recapture their on-screen chemistry (no one can) but Berenger and Katt hold their own and their casting keeps us in the movie rather than throwing us out of it. The Early Days recognizes what made William Goldman’s original script very good: surprises, action that tilts toward the irreverent and colorful banter zinging between the title characters. Collaborating with director of photography László Kovács and art director Jackson De Govia, Richard Lester spared no expense giving the film both visual panache and certain wit. None of it resembles the Old West and the film lacks the female presence Katharine Ross brought to original, but it all works fine.

One year into a prison sentence for horse theft, Robert A. Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy (Tom Berenger) is brought before the governor for a parole hearing. Vouched for by Sheriff Ray Bledsoe (Jeff Corey) — the crusty lawman who arrested him — Butch promises that if set free he will most certainly commit more crimes, but agrees not to in the state of Wyoming. Visiting a casino, Butch has his new pistol stolen by a lightning fast stick up artist named Harry Longabaugh (William Katt). To retrieve his gun, Butch joins the posse of noted lawman and tracker Joe Le Fors (Peter Weller) who gives up the hunt when his men show little inclination to pursue the kid into a rock fortification. Butch stays behind to parlay with Longabaugh, suggesting that his intellect and the kid’s reflexes would make a good team.

Returning to his old hideout, Butch is reunited with cattle rustler O.C. Hanks (Brian Dennehy) before being swept up in a raid by Sheriff Bledsoe. Convinced Butch set him up, O.C. threatens to kill him first chance he gets. Butch and the kid get their feet wet as bandits by knocking over high roller casinos and such. Butch bestows his young partner with the handle Sundance Kid, due to jail time the kid spent in Sundance, Wyoming and their adventures take them through snowbound Telluride and to the farmhouse in Circleville, Utah which Butch occasionally shares with his wife Mary (Jill Eikenberry) and two sons. Life as a citizen doesn’t sit well with Butch and with the help of two bumbling outlaws (John Schuck, Christopher Lloyd), Butch and Sundance attempt to rob a train carrying U.S. Cavalry troops and cash.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 2 users: 100% for Butch and Sundance: The Early Days

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.

Harry and Walter Go To New York (1976)
Directed by Mark Rydell
Screenplay by John Byrum and Robert Kaufman, story by Don Devlin and John Byrum
Produced by Don Devlin, Harry Gittes
115 minutes

Disparaged by critics and ignored by audiences, Harry and Walter Go To New York deserves a reception much better than the one it was pelted with in July 1976, when all interested parties seemed to agree that the best thing for this lavishly produced comedy with music was to act like it never happened. Actor and veteran TV director Mark Rydell had delivered three solid films in a row — Steve McQueen in The Reivers, John Wayne in The Cowboys and James Caan & Marsha Mason in Cinderella Liberty — but unable to bank whatever producer Don Devlin was betting on, editor Monte Hellman was hired to recut Rydell’s footage. Harry and Walter Go To New York doesn’t jig to the rhythm of The Sting or any other recognizable genre really, but blunders onto something novel and even magnificent in its own right.

Adapting a story idea by Devlin was screenwriter John Byrum, one of the original staff writers Jim Henson hired for Sesame Street. In many ways, Harry and Walter Go To New York is like something The Muppet Theater might stage on the Muppets’ night off. The jokes don’t have punchlines, at least none that would get very far without a laugh track, but a gentle type of backstage tomfoolery runs through the piece, which like The Muppet Show, allows some of the finest actors of the 1970s — Caan, Gould, Keaton, Caine, Lesley Ann Warren, Charles Durning, Carol Kane — to get in on the low key fun. Whether you think the story is much ado about nothing, the cinematography by László Kovács and production design by Harry Horner make every moment of this visually splendid knick-knack a marvel to watch.

In Sudburry, Massachusetts of 1892, the singing and dancing duo of Harry Dighby (James Caan) and Walter Hill (Elliott Gould) take the stage in a variety show whose audience is filled with just as much poultry as people. In New York City, renowned gentleman thief Adam Worth (Michael Caine) falls into a trap sprung by Rufus T. Crisp (Charles Durning), a bank president whose safe was cracked by Worth and his gang. Meanwhile, the dim witted Walter wants little more than a career in show business, but Harry’s criminal enterprise lands the entertainers in the same Concord prison as Adam Worth. Harry and Walter are put in his employ as butlers, maintaining Worth’s lavish cell and receiving his guests, including crusading journalist Lissa Chestnut (Diane Keaton) who arrives to do an expose on the thief.

While Worth charms Ms. Chestnut, Harry cajoles Walter into using her flash lamp camera to photograph the blueprint of a bank vault that Worth plans to crack. When they set the precious blueprint on fire, Worth has Harry and Walter exiled to the prison’s rock quarry, where it’s hoped the idiots will blow themselves up. Using a vial of nitroglycerin, Harry secures an early release for himself and his partner. Arriving in New York, Harry volunteers to Ms. Chestnut’s newspaper hoping to get his hands on the bank vault photograph. Once Worth is set free, the crime lord smashes up the newspaper office in search of the photo. To repair the damage and forge on protecting the public, Ms. Chestnut implores Harry and Walter to help her and her staff (Jack Gilford, Carol Kane, David Proval, Valerie Curtin) crack the vault first.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1 user: 100% for Harry and Walter Go To New York

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” the programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Screenplay by Peter Stone, based on the novel by Morton Freedgood (as John Godey)
Produced by Gabriel Katzka, Edgar J. Scherick
104 minutes

Listening to a Beastie Boys LP or watching The Taking of Pelham One Two Three will not only assist a visitor in the successful navigation of the New York subway system, but for 1 hour 44 minutes, the latter is an electrifying 1970s cops and robbers thriller that captures the magnitude of NYC as well as the mettle of many of the people you’re likely to encounter there. Based on a 1973 bestseller by Morton Freedgood — a PR hack who published several potboilers under the name “John Godey” — Hollywood came calling during a bleak time for the Big Apple, which was depressed economically and threatening to crack with crime and ethnic tension. In an effort to turn the city’s fortunes around, Mayor John Lindsey invited the film industry to use Manhattan as a back lot, but his office initially found in this script exactly the type of social distortion he was trying to clean up.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of those once in a blue moon entertainments that fires on every cylinder from start to finish, sharply adapted by Peter Stone and supremely well cast right down to walk-on roles. If anything is better than “Walter Matthau as Lt. Zachary Garber” and “Jerry Stiller as Lt. Rico Patrone”, I don’t know what is; the equivalent would be Ricky Gervais and Patton Oswalt starring in a $150 million summer action movie; in other words, unlikely. Even more so than The Fugitive, this is an E-ticket ride through a great metropolis, with accents and plot developments that feel singular to that city above any other. TV journeyman Joseph Sargent does a yeoman’s job balancing action across different locations, while the peerless camerawork by Owen Roizman and musical score by David Shire send this movie into another stratosphere.

On a subway train departing Pelham Bay Park Station in the Bronx at 1:23 in the afternoon, men sporting long coats, hats and wearing fake moustaches and eyeglasses move into position. Identifying each other as Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), Mr. Grey (Hector Elizondo) and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman) and armed with submachine guns, the men access the motorman’s compartment and hijack the train, using Green’s expertise as a conductor to stop in a tunnel somewhere between 28^th Street and 23^rd Street. At the Transit Authority command center, the wry Lt. Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau) and Lt. Rico Patrone (Jerry Stiller) have their boredom interrupted when Blue radios threatening to execute hostages starting in one hour unless a ransom of $1 million is delivered.

While the Mayor (Lee Wallace) dithers over how New York voters will respond to his decisions — negatively, it seems, no matter what he does — his deputy (Tony Roberts) and wife (Doris Roberts) advise that it would be wise to pay the hijackers and avoid risking another Attica. Sparring with Blue over the radio, Garber is stumped over how the meticulous ex-British Army colonel plans to escape an underground tunnel. When a sharpshooter fires off a round on accident, Blue makes good on his threats and executes one of the hostages. With the ransom cash running late, Garber thinks fast and produces a ruse to prevent Blue from shooting anyone else, including an undercover transit cop whose identity remains unknown. As Pelham 123 gets moving again and hurdles toward Manhattan, Garber hits on how the hijackers plan to escape.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 208 users: 94% for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” the programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
Directed by Michael Cimino
Written by Michael Cimino
Produced by Robert Daley
115 minutes

For everyone who’s wished that Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges could have acted together in the same movie, the good news is that it’s called Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. The GREAT news is that this screwball buddy caper road movie has everything that a fan of drive-in movies could want: bank robbery, fist fighting, fast cars and fast women. If those weren’t enough, Gary Busey (billed as Garey Busey) even shows up. The script by Michael Cimino came to Eastwood in 1972 courtesy their mutual reps at the William Morris Agency. Responding to the offbeat bent of the piece (“Michael must have written it in some hallucinative state” Eastwood joked to biographer Richard Schickel), Malpaso agreed to let Cimino — a Michigan State grad with an MFA in painting from Yale and a successful career directing commercials in New York — make his feature film debut.

One of the innumerable charms of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is that Cimino never seems in a hurry to go anywhere or prove anything here, putting the “idio” in “idiosyncratic” as if the Coen brothers were making a heist flick. Instead of being wed to pulp fiction, the material has a noble innocence to it. Filmed in the towns of Ulm, Fort Benton, Hobson, Augusta and Choteau in the Great Falls vicinity of Montana, it’s one half road movie and one half situation comedy, with four men who have nowhere else to go moving in together, taking day jobs and plotting the score of a lifetime. Whether a credit to the script or to the exuberance of 23-year-old Jeff Bridges, Clint Eastwood has never smiled in a movie as much as he does here. One of the few reflections of the time period it was made is a whimsical theme composed and sung by Paul Williams, “Where Do I Go From Here”.

At the rustic Spirit Lake Idaho Community Church, the sermon of John Doherty (Clint Eastwood) is rudely interrupted when a stranger opens fire and chases the pastor through a field of wheat. A white ’73 Pontiac Trans Am crosses the pastor’s path and he jumps in. The wheelman is a kid who just stole the car and gives the name Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges). Watching the pastor pop his dislocated shoulder back in, the kid deduces that this is no ordinary clergyman. Stealing a ‘73 Buick Rivera, the pastor tires of grand theft auto and parts ways with Lightfoot, only to spot two more associates, bank robbers Red Leary (George Kennedy) and Eddie Goody (Geoffrey Lewis). The pastor changes his mind about riding shotgun with Lightfoot and even accepts the company of two women (Catherine Bach, June Fairchild) the kid picks up in town.

After Red comes gunning for the duo, the pastor reveals that he’s a Korean War veteran answering to the name Thunderbolt. A bank robber by vocation, Thunderbolt punctured the vault of an armored car company with a cannon firing 20mm artillery shells; the mastermind of his gang hid the money behind the blackboard of an old schoolhouse, but upon his death, only Thunderbolt knows where the loot is stashed. Believing he ripped them off, Red and Goody want Thunderbolt dead, but he explains to them that the schoolhouse and the loot have vanished. Lightfoot infects the thieves with the idea of hitting the same armored company again. The four men move in together and take day jobs to raise seed money for the job, devised more as an antidote to boredom and an excuse to build camaraderie than anything else.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 89 users: 86% for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Firefox (1982)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Alex Lasker & Wendell Wellman, based on the novel by Craig Thomas
Produced by Clint Eastwood
136 minutes

Arriving with fanfare in June 1982 and introducing Clint Eastwood to a generation of mallrats — who were either too young to get into R-rated movies or too busy pumping quarters into Q*bert to care — Firefox didn’t work then and today figures onto my list of the five biggest clunkers the screen icon ever made. Based on a novel that allegedly came to Eastwood by way of a helicopter pilot he contracted for aerial photography, it’s the exactly the type of high tech cloak and dagger business your barber might recommend. International thrillers like these can be compelling when written by Frederick Forsyth or Tom Clancy, but for starters, Craig Thomas is not in that literary weight class. His source material — as well as the adaptation and direction of the movie version — are cheaper and lazier than they have any excuse to be.

Whether or not it was conceived as Clint Eastwood’s response to the special effects extravaganzas of Lucas or Spielberg, Firefox manages one interesting conceit in a Russian Jewish underground and finds one fun moment, when Eastwood finally pilots the top secret fighter jet into the wild blue yonder. Nothing else elicits much more than a yawn. Visual effects producer John Dykstra held up his end adequately, but Eastwood’s explosiveness as an actor seems poorly suited to the spy genre or to acting in front of a blue screen. Blue Thunder — which followed Firefox into theaters by one year and would have been a classic with Clint in the lead role instead of Roy Schneider — infused excitement and an edge to a very similar storyline. Here, even composer Maurice Jarre turns in work that crashes on the test pad.

Somewhere in Alaska, U.S. Air Force major Mitchell Gant (Clint Eastwood) has his solitary jog interrupted when a young captain (David Huffman) descends on Gant and compels him to come out of retirement to pilot an experimental Mach 5 fighter jet not only invisible to radar, but equipped with a mind controlled weapons system. Known as Firefox, the jet is parked in a Soviet hangar in Bilyarsk. Fluent in Russian, Gant’s mission would be to infiltrate the base with the help of a dissident group and steal the aircraft. Traumatized by events in Vietnam — where Gant was shot down, captured and witnessed the death of a child in a napalm strike — and prone to panic attacks, he remains NATO’s best option for preventing the Cold War from tipping in favor of the Soviets.

In London, British intelligence expert Kenneth Aubrey (Freddie Jones) disguises Gant and issues him the identity of an American businessman trafficking heroin out of Russia. Proving a poor field operative, Gant bumbles into KGB checkpoints until being provoked into killing an agent in a train station restroom. His contact (Warren Clarke) manages to get Gant on the road to Bilyarsk, where the engineers who built Firefox (Nigel Hawthorne, Ronald Lacey, Dimitra Arliss) have suffered enough persecution from the KGB over their Jewish faith to sacrifice their lives to help Gant. Once in the air, Gant heads for a U.S. submarine on an ice pack in the Arctic Circle to refuel, but finds himself pursued by a prototype Firefox piloted by his Soviet counterpart.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 12 users: 42% for Firefox

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Honkytonk Man (1982)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Clancy Carlile, based on his novel
Produced by Clint Eastwood
122 minutes

The star attractions in Honkytonk Man are the roadhouses that chew up and spit out an endless cycle of musicians. The film was a rare — but in retrospect not really surprising — commercial letdown from Clint Eastwood while he reigned as the biggest movie star in the world. Instead of good guys and bad guys, this is a story about a country bluesman who lives and dies according to the rules of the songs he releases into the night. Not exactly Escape From Alcatraz. The smokehouse lighting by Bruce Surtees and antique world designed by Edward Carfagno recreate the pit stops of the Dust Bowl with a savage beauty unparalleled among films set against the Great Depression, but the dramatic tissue needed to connect the set pieces together disappears like a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Directing his ninth film in 11 years, Eastwood assembled his finest cast yet. Verna Bloom and Matt Clark are the matriarch and patriarch of a farm family. Bette Ford, Barry Corbin, Tim Thomerson and Tracey Walter are characters encountered on the road, while country western legends Marty Robbins and Porter Wagoneer make appearances. The biggest gamble though was Eastwood casting his son Kyle — who’s grown into a successful career as a jazz bassist — as his character’s nephew. The junior Eastwood comes off more like a real kid than a coy child actor. Honkytonk Man has a subtle sort of grace and forces little, but at the same time, the material barely seems to warrant a feature film, with characters and incidents that come and go while the atmosphere is what stays in the air.

As a dust storm descends on a farm in Oklahoma, a Lincoln convertible swerves onto the property and knocks down a windmill. Emmy (Verna Bloom) recognizes the driver as her brother Red Stovall (Clint Eastwood), dead drunk. Her 14-year-old son Whit (Kyle Eastwood) has his sights set on life beyond that of a cotton picker and is beguiled by the automobile and the guitar case inside. Whit’s father (Matt Clark) discovers a letter that reveals Red has been invited to try out for the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. When his driving is revealed to be an improvement over his uncle’s, Whit is permitted to take Red to a local honkytonk, where his uncle picks up extra cash for the road picking his guitar and singing. Red then enlists his nephew’s aid settling a debt by sneaking into a chicken coop and making off with the poultry.

With the family pulling up stakes for California, Red asks his sister if she’ll allow Whit to drive him to Nashville. Not wanting her reckless brother — stricken with tuberculosis — to be alone, she agrees. Along for the journey is Grandpa (John McIntire), who feels he’s too old to start over and prefers to die in his birthplace of Tennessee. On the road, Red and Whit are chased by a bull, visit a whorehouse in Tulsa where $2 buys Whit his first sexual experience, unwittingly rob a roadhouse to collect money owed Red by a smalltime hood (Barry Corbin) and pick up a starry eyed 16-year-old named Marlene (Alexa Kenin) who wants to be anywhere but Oklahoma. Arriving in Nashville, Red’s sickness cuts a promising radio career short, but fate has one more twist in store for the honkytonk man.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 14 users: 93% for Honkytonk Man

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Jackie Brown (1997)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, based on the novel Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard
Produced by Lawrence Bender
154 minutes

Whether by freak accident or intelligent design, few movies manage to evoke the lives of their characters with the depth of Jackie Brown. Not only does the third film directed by Quentin Tarantino not pick up where Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction left off, it seems to have been dipped in the inkwell of another writer, perhaps one 20 years down the road, weather beaten and worn down, who ponders whether he’s got enough left for one more run. Part of that creative dissonance is due to the fact that Tarantino adapted a novel by Elmore Leonard, one of his literary heroes, using the Blaxploitation genre of the 1970s as a touchstone as well. But the filmmaker refuses to populate the movie with pimps, prostitutes or private dicks and instead, composes a modern love story as subtle, mature and self-assured as any director twice his age. Of the first five he directed — including Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterds — Jackie Brown is Tarantino’s best picture.

The picture is not without flaws. Samuel L. Jackson is allowed to do too much and draws a spotlight on how pleased some of Tarantino’s dialogue is with itself. And at a notch above 2 ½ hours, the film does feel long. While some of his other films mandated epic running times, here, the story barely seems to warrant the excess. But the film’s perfections are diverse. Plot and style are almost invisible; it’s character and performance that take center stage and on that count, the film is a master class on directing. Pam Grier’s moments with Robert Forster soar. Bridget Fonda gives the performance of a lifetime as one of the goofiest vixens ever seen in a caper. Tarantino also demonstrates remarkable taste by recognizing what makes an Elmore Leonard novel special: human beings articulating fears and desires, while plotting to get away with lots of money. Jackie Brown is the finest compliment the author has ever been paid on film.

In the city of Hermosa Beach, Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) entertains dim-witted prison buddy Louis Gara (Robert DeNiro) with his knowledge of the firearms trade. Ordell’s girlfriend — an insolent, bong loving beach bunny named Melanie (Bridget Fonda) — is hardly impressed. Ordell receives a phone call from Beaumont, an associate who’s been arrested for drunk driving with a pistol. Ordell hires steady bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) to bail Beaumont out, then uses the promise of Roscoe’s Chicken ‘n Waffles to lure Beaumont out of his apartment and silence him permanently. LAPD detective Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen) and a high charged ATF Special Agent named Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) intercept stewardess Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) returning from Mexico. Caught with $50,000 and a bag of cocaine, Jackie remains mum on who the contraband belongs to. Hired by Ordell to bail the stewardess out of jail, Max falls for Jackie at first sight.

Getting the jump on Ordell before he can put a bullet in her, Jackie offers her employer to buy her silence with $100,000 for each year of prison she’s sentenced to prison. In return, she offers to help Ordell retrieve half a million dollars he has stashed in an airport locker in Mexico. Confiding to Max that what she really intends to do is cooperate with the ATF and set Ordell up, Jackie reveals her biggest fear isn’t getting shot, but starting life over with nothing to show for it. Max realizes that he’s tired of the bail bond business and agrees to help Jackie scam not only Ordell, but steal his half million dollars under the nose of the ATF. Louis and Melanie are employed to help, a decision Ordell ends up regretting. To stay out of jail, Jackie has to convince Nicolette that she’s on his side. To stay alive, Max has to convince Ordell that Jackie was protecting him, and that she has just cause for not handing his money over to him.

Elmore Leonard was born in New Orleans, but his father’s work as a site locator for General Motors eventually settled his family in Detroit. Joining the Navy as soon as he graduated high school in 1943, Leonard would enroll at the University of Detroit after the war and ply a degree in English and philosophy into work as a copywriter at an advertising agency. Writing on the side, Leonard would have five novels and thirty short stories published between 1951 and 1961 — mostly westerns — with two being adapted into movies in 1957, The Tall T and 3:10 To Yuma. Transitioning away from westerns once the genre fell out of fashion, Leonard turned his focus to crime fiction. With Glitz in 1985, Leonard vaulted from genre author to bestselling author. Without exception, the movies either scripted by Leonard or adapted from his novels — Hombre, Mr. Majestyk, Stick – were critical and commercial duds.

Leonard’s twenty-ninth novel — Rum Punch — was published in 1992. Among those who read a copy while it was in galleys were producer Lawrence Bender and writer-director Quentin Tarantino, who’d been an Elmore Leonard fan almost since he could read. Following the mega success of Pulp Fiction in 1994. Miramax Films optioned four of the author’s books for Tarantino to possibly adapt to film, including Rum Punch. Leonard’s dialogue soaked tale of an airline stewardess, a gunrunner and a bail bondsman in Miami floated to the top of the projects Tarantino was considering as his follow-up to Pulp Fiction. Relocating the story to Los Angeles, Jackie Brown would also shift away from the sensational violence and comedy Tarantino had become celebrated for. Despite revitalizing the careers of Pam Grier and Robert Forster, it drew a blank among critics and was overlooked by audiences in December 1997.

In an interview with The Book Reporter in January 1998, Elmore Leonard revealed the genesis of the novel that inspired Jackie Brown. “Rum Punch, I thought of a character of Max Cherry, the bail bondsman. I decided I wanted to do a book about a bail bondsman because of the kind of people he’s involved with every day. A story has to come out of that situation. My researcher found a bail bondsman for me who understood what we wanted to do. He was very willing to cooperate. So I learned about his business and started to write the book about a bondsman doing his job. I realized not too far into the book that he wasn’t my main character. The woman, Jackie, was the main character. The plot was happening to her. And then the other characters fall right into place on opposite sides of her. She’s caught in the middle and how does she get out? And I never know how they get out. I never know how my books are going to end.”

According to legend, when Quentin Tarantino was fifteen years old he became so engrossed reading a copy of Elmore Leonard’s The Switch that he strolled out of K-Mart without paying for it. Arrested and almost taken to jail, he was let go, only to return to the store to pull off the heist successfully. Appearing on The Charlie Rose Show in October 1994, Tarantino enthused, “I love Elmore Leonard. In fact, to me True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie that he didn’t write, you know. And like, actually, I actually owe a big debt to like, kind of figuring out my style from Elmore Leonard because, you know, he was the first writer I’d ever read — and, but also like Charles Willeford did it as well — but he was one of the first writers I had ever read that just let mundane conversations actually inform the characters, you know, and then all of a sudden, ‘Boof!,’ you know, you’re into whatever story you’re telling.”

Tarantino met his producing partner Lawrence Bender in 1989 at a barbecue in L.A. A ballet dancer turned actor turned aspiring producer, Bender would get the struggling video store clerk’s script for Reservoir Dogs into the hands of people who ended up financing it. While in pre-production on Pulp Fiction, the duo then came across Rum Punch in manuscript form. Reading the novel and immediately seeing it as a movie, Tarantino and Bender made overtures to option the film rights. In the liner notes for the 2-Disc DVD release of Jackie Brown, Leonard wrote, “Originally, my faith in Quentin was based on Reservoir Dogs. Right after it came out Quentin approached my agent, Michael Siegel, with the idea of acquiring the rights to Rum Punch. The fact that he wasn’t in a position to buy the book wasn’t a concern. We wanted Quentin to have it. So we promised to save it for him — hold off any offers that might be made — until he had a studio behind him and could buy the book. This came about shortly after Pulp Fiction was released and Quentin became the hot kid in town. We offered him five novels with film rights available. Miramax stepped up and optioned four of them for him.”

Bandits, Freaky Deaky, Killshot and Rum Punch were the Elmore Leonard titles Miramax optioned for its favorite son. At one point, Tarantino envisioned adapting, producing and co-starring in Killshot opposite Robert DeNiro for director Tony Scott. He was preparing to pass Rum Punch to another director when he reread it and once again, became enamored with its big screen potential. His adaptation would make key alterations. The action shifted from South Florida to the South Bay of Los Angeles — Hermosa Beach, Carson, Torrance — where Tarantino grew up. In the film’s production notes, Tarantino explained, “I don’t know Miami at all, but I know South Bay like the back of my hand. This was a way for me to make this movie personal to myself and to be confident that I could keep it real. In a South Bay context I knew exactly where each of these people would live, how they would dress, what their apartments would look like. Shooting in Miami I would not have come to those things as naturally.”

Tarantino spent a year working on and off on an adaptation. In a January 1998 interview with The Guardian, he revealed, “I remember something Stephen King said once a long time ago when he was going to direct the movie Maximum Overdrive when they asked him, ‘Do you hope to bring an adaptation to your stuff that may be other filmmakers have not?’ He used Elmore Leonard as an example. He saw the Burt Reynolds movie, Stick. He said, ‘I saw Stick, and it is a story. Everything that happens in the novel happens in the movie, but I don’t have that feeling that I have when I read an Elmore Leonard novel.’ That was sticking in my head because I like Elmore Leonard novels. I wanted the movie to have that feeling, and I felt the way to have that feeling was to truly invest in the characters so they are not just movie characters doing movie plots. The first hour of the movie is pretty well hanging out and getting to know these people. That was my track into getting it.”

Tarantino changed Leonard’s white airline stewardess Jackie Burke into a black stewardess named Jackie Brown. He had Pam Grier in mind for the part. “It was one of those things that I knew a good idea when I saw it. I thought Pam is perfect for the role. She is the exact right age. She looks younger, and she looks like she can handle anything. By doing that, it turned it into a Pam Grier movie. Nothing wrong with that. That sounds good; another Pam Grier movie I would like to see. Then it became very easy. The fact that she is black ended up giving the piece even more depth; not in a cheesy way or a cheap way.” He added, “At 44 she is probably going to have to go to jail for a year and start all over again. The cops are fucking with her. It made the dilemma more crystal clear, having to be a black woman in that situation. It just gave it more depth.”

After Samuel L. Jackson and Bridget Fonda joined the cast, Tarantino was still trying to settle on who would play Max Cherry, the bail bondsman. “I had about four guys in there. I will name the guys. I had Paul Newman in mind; I had Gene Hackman in mind; I had John Saxon in mind; and I had Robert Forster in mind. I was always leaning more towards Robert Forster than the other guys. I didn’t have to cast him right away. I had my options open. You know what I mean, why pin yourself in a corner? I was always leaning more towards Robert Forster, and I walked into a restaurant and he was there, and I knew he was the guy. I walked into a restaurant with the book, with my notebook to do some writing, and he was in the restaurant, and I thought, ‘That’s Max Cherry, he’s right there.’ C’est la vie to the three! All terrific actors. All would have done a wonderful job but they are not Max Cherry; Robert is.”

In a November 1997 interview with The New York Times, Tarantino revealed, “The hardest part to give up in Jackie Brown was Ordell, who is played by Samuel L. Jackson. I was Ordell. It was so easy to write Ordell. I was Ordell for the year I was writing the script. I had to really work hard in letting go of Ordell and letting Sam play him and not being a jerk about stuff. Sam was him for 10 weeks; I was Ordell for 52 weeks. Ordell was all my mentors as a young man growing up. Ordell was who I could have been. It was interesting writing the film because that all kind of came back to me, and that persona of who I could have been at 17 if I didn’t have artistic ambitions. That was it. If I hadn’t wanted to make movies, I would have ended up as Ordell. I wouldn’t have been a postman or worked at the phone company or been a salesman or a guy selling gold by the inch. I would have been involved with one scam after another.”

With Miramax Films financing a budget of $12 million and Guillermo Navarro serving as director of photography, Tarantino’s third film commenced shooting May 1997 in Los Angeles. Tarantino cited several movies as inspirations in style. “During Jackie Brown, I would watch one side of the laserdisc for Carlito’s Way. My cinematographer and I watched two movies: Hickey and Boggs, which was directed by Robert Culp and was shot in the 70’s — it’s a really good movie. And then we watched They All Laughed, by Peter Bogdanovich. Both were perfect for Jackie Brown. They All Laughed is a masterpiece, I think. It captures a fairy-tale New York. It makes New York look like Paris in the 20’s. It makes you want to live there. And we kind of used it. And then we watched Straight Time, one of the best L.A. crime movies ever. But I wanted Jackie Brown to look more like a movie than that. Straight Time is too gritty.”

To get Jackie Brown into theaters for year’s end awards consideration, Tarantino and editor Sally Menke were cutting all the way up to December 4. The film snuck into theaters Christmas Day 1997. Critics responded coolly. David Denby, New York Magazine: “The movie doesn’t so much dramatize the characters as tail them. They come; they go; they meet and talk; they talk again; and finally someone gets shot.” Todd McCarthy, Variety: “Unquestionably too long, and lacking the snap and audaciousness of the pictures that made him the talk of the town, this … nonetheless offers an abundance of pleasures, especially in the realm of characterization and atmosphere.” Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: “Each scene is staged methodically, overdeliberately, as if it concealed some payoff zinger. But the zingers don’t arrive. All we see is a reasonably clever Elmore Leonard caper that needed to be treated as fast, trashy fun. It doesn’t help that Leonard isn’t nearly the artist Tarantino is. He’s strictly a genre man, with paper-thin characters and an amiable low-life spark to his busy, lurching plots.”

Taking in $39.6 million at the U.S. box office, Jackie Brown was regarded by many as a failure coming off the $213 million Pulp Fiction had grossed worldwide. But in an interview with IGN in October 2003, Tarantino maintained, “You have to remember, movies are not about the weekend that they’re released, and in the grand scheme of things, that’s probably the most unimportant time of a film’s life, but the thing is, I wasn’t trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie. So, if you were waiting for Pulp Fiction part two, you were going to be disappointed.” He added, “I made Jackie Brown like the way that I always felt about Rio Bravo, which is a movie that I can watch every couple of years. It’s just like, ‘I know those people now.’ Once I saw it once, I got the story line out of the way and I just hang out with them. Then, it’s like, hopefully, if you liked Jackie Brown, every three years or so, you can put it in and you’re having screwdrivers with Ordell and you’re taking bong hits with Melanie and you’re drinking white wine with Jackie and it’s all good.”

Sources:

“The Two Hollywoods; The Man Who Changed Everything” By Lynn Hirschberg. The New York Times, 16 November 1997

“Quentin Tarantino interview with Pam Grier, Robert Forster and Lawrence Bender” By Adrian Wootton. The Guardian. 5 January 1998

“Interview with Elmore Leonard” By Jennifer Levitsky. The Book Report, 13 January 1998

“An Interview with Quentin Tarantino” By Jeff Otto. IGN, 10 October 2003

“Lawrence Bender Looks Back On 20 Years with QT” By Scott Feinberg. And The Winner Is … 27 February 2010

Miami Vice (2006)
Screenplay by Michael Mann, based on the TV series created by Anthony Yerkovich
Directed by Michael Mann
Produced by Michael Mann, Pieter Jan Brugge
Running time: 134 minutes (theatrical version)/ 140 minutes (Unrated Director’s Cut)

Should I Care?
Vice cops masquerading as drug smugglers and trafficking through that world in all its glamour and tragic inevitability as envisioned by Michael Mann — executive producer and style maestro of the groundbreaking 1984-89 TV series — is Miami Vice for you, nothing more, nothing less. Sorry for those expecting something else. Darker and less romantic than the version we last saw during the twilight of the Reagan years, but ten times more visually enthralling, the beauty of Miami Vice (2006) is how it expresses life in the fast lane of the South Florida underworld; not through an original story, compelling characters or an ability to make us really care about either, but by evoking mood. This is ultimately more a movie about fast boats, sports cars, designer sunglasses, sniper rifles and Santeria shrines than it is about people, but its detail is so serrated and spirit so intoxicating, it becomes a richer experience than most movies about people.

Shot almost completely in digital high definition, Miami Vice has such a deep focus feel — putting the viewer at a meet and greet in a Haitian slum or in a jaunt to Havana for mojitos — that you forgive it for not including a scene where Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx have a Heineken to talk about their characters’ feelings. The fact that Mann prefers moving images to talk — at least with dialogue worth retyping — only makes the movie stand apart from the plot heavy/brain dead cops ‘n robbers thriller du jour. It’s true that Naomie Harris, Justin Theroux, Dominick Lombardozzi, Elizabeth Rodriguez and Barry Shebaka Henley all warrant a lot more screen time than Mann gave them here, but John Ortiz, Luis Tosar and Gong Li are utilized particularly well as Crockett & Tubbs’ adversaries. A second or third viewing, where the story and characters can be pushed aside and the world Mann illuminates becomes the focus, is highly recommended.

So, What’s This About?
A prostitution sting staged by vice detectives — charming rogue James “Sonny” Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx), the cooler headed of the pair, until violence against a woman is introduced — is interrupted at a Miami nightclub when Crockett receives a frantic phone call from an informant named Alonzo (John Hawkes). Driving like a speed demon, Alonzo alerts Crockett that a case he’s working has gone very bad and asks the detective to look after his wife. Patched through to the FBI, Crockett is notified by special agent in charge Fujima (Ciaran Hinds) that the deep cover feds Alonzo is cooperating with are about to conduct a “meet and greet” without backup. He’s unable to pull his people before the Aryan Brotherhood types they’re meeting obliterate the feds with Barrett M82 sniper rifles. Alonzo and his wife quickly join them as collateral damage.

Meeting with Fujima and their superior, Lt. Castillo (Barry Shabaka Henley), Crockett & Tubbs learn that Alonzo was part of an interagency task force attempting to infiltrate the white supremacists, whose operations in South Florida put them on the receiving end of cocaine produced and smuggled out of Colombia. Unable to trust his people, Fujima turns to Crockett & Tubbs to find out how FBI security was breached. Assisted by fellow vice cops Zito (Justin Theroux), Switek (Dominick Lombardozzi), Gina Calabrese (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and an intel officer Tubbs is living with named Trudy Joplin (Naomie Harris), Crockett & Tubbs sabotage the transporters being contracted by the Aryans to run product into Miami. They then fabricate deep criminal backgrounds for themselves as transporters and pressure another snitch (Eddie Marsan) to get them a meeting with Jose Yero, the Colombian the feds suspect is supplying the Aryan Brotherhood with cocaine.

Crockett & Tubbs fly to Haiti and learn that despite his vast resources, Yero (John Ortiz) is merely middle management, tasked with logistics and security for someone even higher up the food chain. Initially passing Yero’s scrutiny, the vice cops are taken to his boss Montoya (Luis Tosar), who after a brief introduction awards them a $3 million deal to transport 1,000 kilos of cocaine from Colombia to Miami. Montoya advises the pair “In this business with me, I do not buy a service. I buy a result. If you say you will do a thing, you must do exactly that thing. Then you will prosper beyond your dreams.” Montoya’s financial officer and lover Isabella (Gong Li) — a Chinese woman raised in Cuba — becomes their business contact. Though Isabella presents Crockett & Tubbs an opportunity to crack Montoya’s operation, Crockett jeopardizes it by getting romantically involved with her.

Who Made It?
Legend has it that Miami Vice was born on a notepad that NBC president of entertainment Brandon Tartikoff was scribbling program ideas on. One of his brainstorms supposedly read “MTV cops”. Tartikoff shared that concept with Anthony Yerkovich, a writer-producer on the network’s landmark police drama Hill Street Blues. Yerkovich maintains that he had already started compiling research on Miami and that vice cops operating in “a sort of Barbary Coast of free enterprise gone berserk” was his idea. Conceived as a feature film, Yerkovich was contracted by NBC to expand his idea into a two-hour television pilot he titled Gold Coast, later Miami Vice. Yerkovich supervised the pilot and five subsequent episodes, while Michael Mann — co-writer and director of an acclaimed TV movie (The Jericho Mile, 1979) and moody feature film (Thief, 1981) — was named the show’s executive producer and served as primary style authority.

Debuting in September 1984, Miami Vice introduced a vibe for music, fashion and design that had never been seen on network TV before. The novelty began to wear off after Season 2 and Michael Mann moved on to a career as one of the more visionary directors in film, with The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and Heat (1995). In 2004, Mann agreed to direct a $120 million feature film based on Miami Vice for Universal Pictures, with Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx taking over the roles played by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in the ‘80s. Utilizing digital camera equipment that Mann and director of photography Dion Beebe had experimented with on Collateral (2004), the production would be beset by tropical storms, security threats and cost overruns before the director’s gritty, R-rated take on the pastel colored TV series opened in the summer of 2006 to fair weather reviews and disappointing box office.

How’d They Do It?
In 2001, Michael Mann and Jamie Foxx attended a birthday party for Muhammad Ali, where Foxx cajoled the director to make Miami Vice: The Movie. Mann recalled, “My initial reaction was, you’ve got to be kidding me, why would I want to go back to Miami Vice? Then I looked again at the pilot and some of the early episodes and I got kind of captured afresh by the deep currents and the emotional power of those stories, and I’m talking here about the first two seasons. The way the issues were brought in from the outside world into the lives of Crockett and Tubbs and the way the stories impacted on them. To me, these stories summed up Miami Vice as it originally was. Secondly, Miami has always had a real allure for me, in the same way maybe as Las Vegas had in the 1970s, it was really sexy and beautiful and really dangerous and deadly and tragic at the same time. I love those kinds of places, those Twilight Zones, you know.”

Mann’s impulse had always been to try Miami Vice as a movie. “When Tony Yerkovich wrote the pilot for this show — I read it in 1984, 1985 — and when I first read it, my first instinct was to have us not go forward as a pilot for television series, but to make this as a feature film that I would direct. That was impossible and it was already at NBC and we went ahead and did it as a television series.” He added, “Someone said, ‘Well what exactly is it about Miami Vice that compels you to do it as a film?’ I think the answer to that is that it contained in what Tony wrote a combination of large, very dramatic events in which people’s lives are changed, violence occurs, deals are made, deals are broken. The environment in which it’s happening is almost like an opiate. It’s almost too beautiful. That combination of drama happening in this very lush, romantic place, those two things together made everything poignant and magnified. That was the allure. That was the real attraction to me in why I wanted to make it in a film in 1984 and ‘85 and eventually did in 2006.”

In May 2002, it was announced that Michael Mann would write and produce a Miami Vice feature film for Universal Pictures. While the studio was highly receptive to the idea of remaking Miami Vice as an event movie, Mann saw an opportunity to push the material past its prime time television roots. “I felt strongly that nobody wanted to see some nostalgic version of Miami Vice, like the other movie versions of TV shows that have been made, with the same elements and cameos from the original cast and all that stuff. Not putting those kinds of movies down, you know, but why would you bother? If you want to see the Miami Vice from 1984, we’ve got a whole rack of really beautiful DVDs you can buy, so you can get your nostalgia trip that way.” After Mann officially came on board as director, Universal agreed to a production budget of roughly $120 million. Filming was scheduled to begin in April 2005, with Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell as leads.

Mann’s drive to simulate the experiences of real undercover cops pulled Miami Vice away from the confines of South Beach to locations in the Dominican Republic (standing in for Haiti), Uruguay (for Cuba) and Ciudad del Este in the notorious tri-border region of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. Stephen Donehoo — managing director for international strategic advisory firm Kissinger-McLarty Associates — was added to the payroll as political advisor. Donehoo’s job was to negotiate the production safe passage into areas of the world where few tourists could tread without serious concern for their safety. Mann asserted, “There are things you can’t artificially create. As good as our crews are, you can’t duplicate the texture, the fabric of the neighborhoods. Audiences know when you’re making it up, and they know when you visually deliver an animated environment for the actors that makes it feel like they are truly here.”

Given the complexities of what Mann wanted, production setbacks might have been inevitable. Colin Farrell dislocated a rib while weight training and had to be hospitalized during a research trip to Cuba, of all places. The actor’s injury pushed filming back six weeks, to June 2005, into what became the worst hurricane season anyone in the Gulf of Mexico had ever seen. Tropical storm Dennis, Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Katrina each hit South Florida during the course of what stretched into a 105-day shooting schedule. In October, Hurricane Wilma slammed into a Miami highrise where a production office was located. At the same time, cast and crew were in Santo Domingo, the rowdy capital of the Dominican Republic, where security traded gunfire with an off-duty policeman who barged onto the set one day. The incident reportedly spurred Jamie Foxx to refuse to work overseas and forced Mann to scrap an elaborate climax to be filmed in Ciudad del Este.

Collaborating with director of photography Dion Beebe, Mann sought a texture he felt was best captured by shooting in digital high definition, as opposed to film. “We shot this film digitally and we shot Collateral digitally, actually for two different reasons. Collateral because I wanted to see into the night. For Miami Vice, yes we had a lot of the scenes that take place at night, but the primary reason for doing it had to do with what I wanted you to feel about daylight. About how light hits the water. How light hits these people. How intensely saturated and vivid everything you’re looking at becomes.” Bebee added, “Something we pursued was a very deep, dark definition in our clouds and in sky. And Miami has very dramatic sky, and weather. So some of the early testing were about how do we really bring that about into a 3-D quality on screen. There are times you look at these images of the sky and it does feel like you could reach out and touch the clouds.”

Co-producer Bryan Carroll calculated that about 4% of Miami Vice was shot on 35mm film, for slow motion or visual effects purposes. 75% of the digital footage was made on Thomson Viper cameras, like those used in Collateral. Additional footage was captured with more flexible Sony HDW-F950 or HDW-F900 cameras. Mann explained, “The requirements of shooting in Hi Def are very difficult and it’s difficult for a lot of cameramen because it’s an inversion of everything you do when you’re working with photochemical, meaning motion picture film. On film, you use light to illuminate areas that are dark and you try and protect the blacks by making blacks stay black. And Hi Def is a complete inversion in which you’re protective of the whites and you’re trying to make it so they don’t clip and there’s quite a different learning curve.” While Universal claimed that the final budget rested at $135 million, speculation in the film industry was that Miami Vice cost at least $180 million to produce.

Opening July 2006 in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, Miami Vice spread critics all over the map. Tony Scott, The New York Times: “Mixing pop savvy with startling formal ambition, Mr. Mann transforms what is essentially a long, fairly predictable cop-show episode into a dazzling (and sometimes daft) Wagnerian spectacle. He fuses music, pulsating color and high drama into something that is occasionally nonsensical and frequently sublime. Miami Vice is an action picture for people who dig experimental art films, and vice versa.” David Ansen, Newsweek: “It’s filled with Mann’s signature macho verisimilitude, but essentially it’s the stuff of what, in saner fiscal times, would have been a B movie. Miami Vice delivers the thrills, atmosphere and romance it promises, but it doesn’t resonate like major Mann.” Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle: “Perhaps vice isn’t what it used to be, or maybe Crockett and Tubbs just aren’t all that interesting when removed from their appropriate time slot, but this may well be the dreariest and most monochromatic time you’ll have at the movies all summer.”

With domestic box office of $63.4 million, Miami Vice was pronounced a commercial dud, despite adding $100.3 million in theaters overseas. The Los Angeles Times took Mann to task as much for failing to appeal to young moviegoers as for brokering a deal paying him close to $6 million to write, direct and produce, plus a cut of the box office gross. Mann maintained that Universal knew full and well what they were getting into. “My idea was that you do Miami Vice for real, make it a hard R-rated movie with real violence, real sexuality and using the language of the streets. That took them aback more than a little and there was a series of meetings where I had to make my point. But they knew what I wanted from the outset, and in sitting around the table it’s my job, in part, to convince them that this is the right way to go. We all have to feel that we are making the same movie, and that we want to make that movie. And to their credit, I brought my perspective on Miami Vice to them and they endorsed it completely”.

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Cool Cops, Hot Show” By Richard Zoglin. Time Magazine, 16 September 1985

“Miami Heat” By Daniel Fierman. Entertainment Weekly, 21 July 2006

Miami Vice — Production Notes

“Michael Mann Interview: Miami Vice” By John Maguire. Confessions of a Film Critic, 27 July 2006

“Digital Vision” By Michael Goldman. Millimeter, 1 August 2006

“Miami Vice Far Less Than a Universal Thriller at the Box Office” By Lorenza Munoz. The Los Angeles Times, 6 September 2006

Miami Vice (Unrated Director’s Cut). DVD audio commentary by Michael Mann. Universal Studios Home Entertainment (2006)

What the *&#! Is This About?
Emerging from his home on the southside of Dublin, Martin Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) is shot in his driveway. Moving back in time, a young Cahill (Eamonn Owens) is chased home by police after nicking groceries for his family. Cahill’s petty robberies land the boy in a Catholic reformatory. 18 years later, he’s released from prison for his latest offense. His wife Frances (Maria Doyle Kennedy) notifies him that the flat where they grew up and still live is being demolished to make way for a new development. Cahill files suit and refuses to budge, even as crews tear the building down around him. He holds out for a replacement flat in Rathmines, which prompts exasperated authorities to ask if he’d rather live closer to his own kind. “No, I’d sooner live closer to me work. All the big houses.”

Cahill supports his family of four as a burglar. When Frances urges him to buy a house, Cahill deposits $80,000 in a bank, which his men Noel (Adrian Dunbar) and Gary (Sean McGinley) promptly steal back for him. To establish an alibi while his gang is at work, Cahill hangs around the police station waiting for Inspector Kenny (Jon Voight). The cop fails to compel Cahill that there’s only one way that things can end for him if he keeps this lifestyle up. Arrested for robbing coins from an arcade, Cahill plots a heist big enough to support his family if he’s convicted, as well as humiliate the police in the process: O’Connor’s Jewelers. “Two million in gold and jewels, waitin’ for us.” So heavily fortified that even the Irish Republican Army walked away from the score, Cahill’s ingenuity results in the biggest heist in the history of Ireland.

While Cahill fathers a child with his sister in law (Angeline Ball) – with his wife’s blessing – he also studies enough Irish penal code to win an acquittal at his highly publicized trial. Even after nailing one of his men (Eanna MacLiam) to a pool table believing he stole, loyalty in his circle remains strong to the man the press calls “The General.” When the IRA demands half of the O’Connor’s loot, Cahill refuses, “There’s nothin’ as low as robbin’ a robber!” Though he manages to stay ahead on the law, twenty-four hour police surveillance takes its toll on Cahill’s health. Stealing priceless works of art proves to be his downfall when Cahill finds a buyer in the Loyalists, sworn enemies of the IRA.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
Wanting to make a film about contemporary Ireland, filmmaker John Boorman arrived on the tale of Martin Cahill, the infamous Dublin robber who was shot and killed by the IRA in 1994. Boorman was familiar with the exploits of the General because in 1981, Boorman’s home was burglarized. Among the objects lifted was a faux gold record the director had been presented for the soundtrack to Deliverance. He was notified that Cahill was likely responsible. Boorman recalled, “At that time, he was really just a cat burglar – he wasn’t doing any of these big things, but he was very audacious then, and provocative. The police recognized his modus vivendi, but also he always wanted to be known when he pulled off these things. He wanted the credit for them. It was also a challenge, you know: ‘Well, OK now try and prove it. I did that, now prove it.’”

Crime reporter Paul Williams chronicled the details of Cahill’s life in his 1995 book The General. When Boorman and his producing partner Kiernan Corrigan inquired about the film rights, they discovered that producer P.J. Pettite had already scooped them up. Receptive to working together, contract negotiations dragged on for so many months that Boorman turned his attention to a film version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. He spent nine months in pre-preproduction before Paramount balked at Boorman’s $85 million budget for Narnia. He was set to direct A Simple Plan for much, much less when a dispute between producer Scott Rudin and Paramount’s financing partner scuttled that film two weeks before shooting was to begin.

Returning to Ireland, Boorman learned that Pettite was ready to sell the rights to The General. Optioning them out of his own pocket, the filmmaker discovered that a rival Cahill project already had a script and was out to financiers. In March 1997, Boorman plunged into a script of his own. With Paul Williams on hand to provide information not covered in his book, Boorman wrote, “The gang members were shadowy enough and I simply invented a group of characters and gave them the names of people in my village. Cahill himself sprung to life on the page. I had heard his voice. I knew his wiles. Frances Cahill and her sister Tina were a more difficult problem. They were not involved in criminal activities … I considered contacting them. Paul Williams advised against it. He said they would refuse contact with anyone outside their world. This was to be a fiction based on fact. The frameworks would be built of incidents that occurred. Beyond that I would rely on the truth of the imagination.”

Finishing a first draft in three weeks, Boorman had a script – titled I Once Had A Life – and a budget ready to present to buyers May 1997 at the Cannes Film Festival. Gabriel Byrne and Gary Oldman were both suggested as potential leads, but Boorman had settled on Irish character actor Brendan Gleeson to play the General. Financiers were even more skittish about the tone of the project. Boorman recalls, “Because of the way Hollywood is, people are led to expect that the heroes are people you can root for, they’re sympathetic. When I was trying to finance the picture, Americans all said two things. One was, ‘Well, put a star in there.’ The other was, ‘Well, does he have to do these brutal things, and why does he have to die?’ They could see it as a kind of Robin Hood thing, but they didn’t want the complexity and they didn’t want the tragedy. I always said when I was making the film that this has to have a tragic dimension. If it’s not seen as a tragedy, it’s not going to work.”

Taking out bank loans in order to get production off the ground, Boorman opted to shoot The General in black & white. Apart from his stylistic preference for the dreamlike nature of black & white film stock, the director felt that an unsaturated look would give audiences safe distance from events that had transpired so recently. A casting director, a production manager and cinematographer Seamus Deasy were each hired. Soon – with a budget of $13 million USD – an eleven week shooting schedule commenced August 1997 in Dublin. In a concession to potential buyers, Boorman had agreed to shoot on color film stock so that a color version of The General could be sold to television. Theatrical prints, however, would be struck on a black and white negative. A distribution deal was at last reached with J&M Entertainment; The General would be released by Warner Bros. in the U.K. and Sony Pictures Classics in the States.

As the film’s May 1998 release grew near, many in Ireland already had an opinion on The General. Boorman recalls, “There was something in this picture to offend everybody. The police weren’t very happy about it being made. We were nervous as to how the criminal community would take to it, or not take to it, and whether they would take action against us. It attacks the church, and the government, and corruption, and hypocrisy. So there was a lot of controversy. Then the press started to dig up victims of crimes, people who felt offended just by the act of us making the film. This was all before it came out. When it came out, all the controversy disappeared. All the bits I was being accused of, like glamorizing crime. Clearly, the film doesn’t do that. It’s a balanced picture of the guy.”

Critics greeted The General warmly upon its release in December 1998. Derek Elley, Variety: “With The General, his first feature in three years, the 65-year-old Boorman has not only come up with a pic that puts many British New Wave filmers half his age to shame in its energy and ’60s esprit, but he has poured all his love of his adopted homeland, Ireland, into a movie that says more about the rebellious Irish psyche than any heap of overtly political pictures.” Janet Maslin, the New York Times: “And he presents this film (photographed by Seamus Deasy) in such seductively beautiful black and white that it has the visual precision of a photo essay. The black and white tones (shot on color stock) are so rich that the ski masks of the burglars wind up looking like velvet.” But despite hope for Academy Awards nominations, The General never expanded beyond 41 screens and was completely ignored by the industry. It grossed only $1.2 million in the States.

Why Should I Care?
John Boorman – who wrote, produced, directed and comes as close to being an “auteur” here as you get – has had a gloriously erratic career, celebrated for Point Blank and Deliverance, mocked by some for Zardoz and Excalibur and generally ignored for everything since the mid-1980s. He makes up for the absence with this film. The General works beautifully in so many different modes: as an independent film, cops versus robbers flick, foreign film, tragedy, social satire. It’s brilliantly acted, impeccably photographed, scored superbly well and acutely written, comically exposing the hypocrisy of various institutions in the state of Ireland and affectionately celebrating the character of the country Boorman has called home for 30 years, in the humor, intelligence and resiliency of its people. So I guess I liked it.

While Boorman does frame the cunning Cahill as something of a folk hero, The General doesn’t escape scrutiny for lining his pockets at the expense of his community. Brendan Gleeson – who became heavily in demand as a supporting player in Hollywood after this film – is so real that he made me forget Gabriel Bryne or Gary Oldman were ever suggested for the role. Boorman’s decision to shoot in black & white – the DVD features both the theatrical version and the colorized one – gives the film a noble, elegant sheen unmatched by most movies from directors far younger and supposedly more vigorous than Boorman. Irish jazz saxophonist Richie Buckley composed the sensual musical score, while Van Morrison’s “So Quiet In Here” and “It Was Once My Life” add considerable panache to an already class production.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“A Personal Account on the Making of The General” By John Boorman. The General – Production Notes. Sony Pictures (1998)

“Safe haven” By Charles Taylor. Salon, 1998 December 17

“John Boorman” By Joshua Klein. A.V. Club, 1999 January 20

Synopsis
Upon completion of a ten year prison sentence, the “world’s greatest cat burglar” Eddie “Hudson Hawk” Hawkins (Bruce Willis) emerges from Sing Sing to reunite with his buddy Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello). Hanging out at their old neighborhood bar – which has been turned into an upscale Yuppie dive – Eddie is coerced by two-bit mafia hoods the Mario Brothers (Frank Stallone, Carmine Zozzora) to break into an auction house and steal an antique horse. Easily completing the score with Tommy’s help, the Leonardo Da Vinci sculpture Eddie steals becomes property of a sinister English butler with sword blades up his sleeves. Snooping out the auction house, Eddie meets a mysterious Vatican art expert (Andie MacDowell) and narrowly escapes death from a bomb left by the Mario Brothers.

The next assortment of colorful characters to intercept Eddie are a fiendish CIA goon squad with candy bar code names – Snickers (Don Harvey), Kit Kat (David Caruso), Almond Joy (Lorraine Toussaint) and Butterfinger (Andrew Bryniarski) – led by old school spy George Kaplan (James Coburn). Abducted and taken to Rome, Eddie next meets the Mayflowers (Richard E. Grant, Sandra Bernhard), obnoxious billionaires hoping to obtain pieces of a mechanism Leonardo Da Vinci built 500 years ago with the power to turn lead into gold. The Mayflowers coerce Eddie into stealing the final piece from the Vatican. Double crosses, a crotch sniffing mutt, curare darts, a Da Vinci glider and many explosions ensue.

Production history
Hudson Hawk originated with Robert Kraft, a Harvard grad who in 1979 was knocking around Manhattan as a piano man. Kraft befriended a bartender named Bruce Willis when he heard the 23-year-old blowing a harmonica at one of his gigs and invited him onstage. Kraft was reading about jazz great Coleman Hawkins – The Hawk – as well as Chicago, whose lakeshore winds were sometimes referred to as “the hawk.” After encountering a similar gust while walking west on 86th Street from Central Park, Kraft came up with a tune. “I didn’t know if it was going to be a song or a bassline. Whatever. But somewhere in that period, Bruce had the idea that there was a character, there was maybe a story. And he said at one point – either that afternoon or many weeks later or something – ‘Someday I’m gonna make a movie called The Hudson Hawk.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, sure. I mean, you’re working in a bar, I’m trying to get a record deal, and you’re already making this movie.’”

Circumstances changed six years later when Willis went from obscurity to celebrity starring in the screwball detective series Moonlighting. When he wasn’t selling wine coolers for Seagram’s, Willis still had Hudson Hawk on the brain. “It kind of started out as a more of a serious action movie. One of the first things we said was that it was like James Bond before he became James Bond. What was James Bond like when he was 20 years old? Sean Connery, like, what was that guy doing? Like if he was stealing, he was a good thief. We got about that far.” Willis approached Moonlighting writer-producers Ron Osborn & Jeff Reno to pen a script. Reno recalls, “He had a character in mind that he wanted to do, this ex-con who had just gotten out of jail and got caught up in some kind of international situation. Ron and I came up with an idea, ran it by him, and he loved it, and everything was good, so we spent a lot of time then with him just kind of developing this.”

With a first look deal at TriStar Pictures, Willis also took his pet project to Joel Silver, who ultimately brokered a commitment from the star to do Die Hard 2 first in exchange for Silver producing Hudson Hawk. Steven E. de Souza had written the latest draft of the script and to direct, Silver brought in Michael Lehmann, director of two dark cult comedies, Heathers and Meet the Applegates. Lehmann recalled, “Steve de Souza wrote a draft that was very funny, very lively and very much a kind of fun action-adventure comedy. But I felt it was a little too close to home and that it was a little too much like other movies, and people had seen enough of this stuff without being reflective on it, and it would be fun to take the genre and turn it on its head.” Daniel Waters – author of Heathers – was hired to rewrite the script. Among his many contributions was the movie’s best idea: Willis and Danny Aiello belting out tunes in an effort to subvert burglar alarms.

Hudson Hawk commenced shooting July 1990 in New York on a budget of $42 million. As production moved to Italy, then Hungary, then England, that amount climbed. Interviewed by the New York Times in May 1991, co-producer Michael Dryhurst explained, “Hudson Hawk was conceived on a very broad canvas. The moment you put people into airplanes and hotel rooms, you’re into money. We were supporting a cast and crew of 100 people in Italy for 12 weeks and Budapest for 4 weeks. You’re paying for hotel rooms, location, food and per diems. And support costs in Europe are much higher.” Daniel Waters bluntly assessed some of the overruns: “The Italians were great people, but everybody has wine at lunch, and lunch never seems to end. American crews will work 48 hours straight if you pay ‘em enough. You can pay an Italian crew all the lire in the world and they won’t work past 10. Their lives are too important. We’d be saying, ‘Wait a minute, where are you going?’”

In his memoir You’re Only As Good As Your Next One, TriStar chairman Mike Medavoy diagnosed the real problems with Hudson Hawk: “(1) the star is the co-writer, (2) the producer is more powerful than the director, and (3) the director had never done a big film. Within the first three weeks of shooting, the film was over budget, so I flew to Rome to see what could be done. As soon as I saw the first dailies, I was certain Hudson Hawk would be, to use the popular Hollywood euphemism, ‘a total fucking disaster.’ While there was no way to stop the train wreck, I was hoping there was a way to minimize the damage. The performances were uneven. While it is admittedly hard to tell in dailies what is funny and what isn’t, everyone in the film seemed to be ‘acting funny’ but no one was funny.”

In a bid to speed up filming after six weeks, Silver replaced Dutch director of photography Jost Vacano with Dante Spinotti, an Italian. Maruschka Detmers – who had been cast as the female lead – was also let go after back pain prohibited her availability; Andie MacDowell was flown to Rome to take her place. Due to a schedule that was constantly shifting, MacDowell waited three weeks to get in front of a camera. Dryhurst rationalized the impending wreck to the New York Times: “One of the problems we had was the script, which had a number of changes as we went along. That’s always a recipe for difficulty, because you can’t plan. The script was being adjusted right up until the middle of November, when we were within three weeks of completion. It’s basically extra cost, because the script wasn’t locked in.”

While Joel Silver attempted damage control by claiming that Hudson Hawk barely exceeded its scheduled 81-day shoot, the New York Times reported that the show went on for 106 days. Daniel Waters described watching dailies with Silver and hearing the larger than life producer change his assessment of what they had on a day-to-day basis: “It’s like a Hope-Crosby picture,” “It’s like The Pink Panther,” “It’s a 90’s James Bond movie.” Pitching the movie to the readers of Entertainment Weekly on the cusp of its release in May 1991, Bruce Willis crowed, “This film is anything goes, in the classic comedy vein of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. It’s Cary Grant meets James Bond meets Our Man Flint meets The Flintstones meets Dorothy Lamour meets Miles Davis. Did we leave anything out? The film also has a jazzy cool feel to it, as opposed to rock & roll or country & western or polka.”

Whatever the hell the end product was, critics drop kicked it out of the park. Daily Variety: “Ever wondered what a Three Stooges short would look like with a $40 million budget? Then meet Hudson Hawk, a relentlessly annoying clay duck that crash-lands in a sea of wretched excess and silliness. Those willing to check their brains at the door may find sparse amusement in pic’s frenzied pace.” Julie Salamon, the Wall Street Journal: “Despite all of its failures of wit, sense, and pace, the film does most effectively flaunt the millions spent on it. The inane action takes place in splendiferous settings.” Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: “This may be the only would-be blockbuster that’s a sprawling, dissociated mess on purpose. It’s a perverse landmark: the first postmodern Hollywood disaster.”

While some in the film industry conjectured that Hudson Hawk cost as much as $70 million, sources close to the production told the New York Times that the bill was closer to $51 million. At any rate, the movie did a spectacular belly flop at the box office, grossing only $17.2 million in the U.S. Hudson Hawk seemed to play better on the small screen; when released on VHS, it even developed somewhat of a cult following. Recording a commentary track for the 1999 DVD release, Michael Lehmann stated, “Now the thing is, when this movie came out, a lot of people I think were expecting a solid, hard action movie along the lines of Die Hard or Die Hard 2. And we were attempting to provide a little bit of action and a lot of the kind of pyrotechnics you see in those movies, but this is, was and is meant to be a comedy.”

Talking Hudson Hawk with Robert Kraft in November 2005, Willis mused, “The thing that I think should be said about the film is that it was special to us for a lot of different reasons, but it was vilified I think more than any film of its time, of its decade. They had been trying to tear down, you know, come after me I guess since the first Die Hard. And, you know, the films were successful anyway, but they had started to review this film long before anybody saw any of it. So it was just my time to catch a beatin’ in the press. But the film is in profit now and it’s, you know, paid for itself and it’s makin’ money … I still laugh at it, I think it’s funny. There’s stuff in the movie that makes me laugh. I mean, it’s just so silly. And that was the whole point. We were just trying to make people laugh. It might have been a little too hip for the room at the time.”

Opinion
With so much going so wrong in so many departments – the story is MIA, staging clunky and visual palette downright shitty – finding amusement in Hudson Hawk comes down to how you feel about the jokes and about Bruce Willis. While the irreverence of Daniel Waters is reduced to a trickle in the big action flicks he normally rewrites (The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Batman Returns, Demolition Man), in Hudson Hawk, Waters’ acidic pop culture wit gets sprayed around with a high-pressure hose. Some of it is quite special: a CIA master of disguise and mime whose sentiments magically appear on cards he hands out probably takes the cake. The banter and movie references fly back and forth at the speed only a video store clerk can process and demands the movie be seen two or three times to absorb it all.

Hudson Hawk becomes too painful to endure more than once in a lifetime due to its star, who struts his way through empty scenes so assured of his own cuteness that instead of enjoying the movie, you want to take it out back and smack the grin off its face. Hudson Hawk isn’t a character, he’s Bruce Willis celebrating Bruce Willis, and that cocktail plows the movie head on into Stoker Ace and Rhinestone. Willis at least appears comfortable letting better actors try to help him. Andie MacDowell is in on the joke and turns in a funny performance, while James Coburn is as sharp as ever. But painting on such a big canvas only shows how impaired Michael Lehmann – who went on to direct My Giant and Because I Said So – is when it comes to anything involving ingenuity or wit.

© Joe Valdez

Sources
The Story of Hudson Hawk. Bruce Willis-Robert Kraft interview. November 2005

Hudson Hawk. DVD audio commentary track featuring Michael Lehmann. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, March 1999.

“Why The Hudson Hawk Budget Soared So High“. By James Greenberg. The New York Times, May 26, 1991

“Bruce Willis On the Level“. Entertainment Weekly, May 24, 1991