Hudson Hawk (with David Hughes)

0:00The year is 1991. The movie Hudson Hawk. Hello, everyone and welcome to Unspooled. Yes, welcome to Unspooled. This is a podcast about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them. We have covered the If I Top 100 and now we are checking off movies from three major lists. Bill at our box top 250 films with the most fans. The IMDB top 250 and the New York Times 1000 essential films. And we'll be chasing our own curiosity too because today we are going to be talking about a film that many people consider one of the worst big budget movies ever made. That movie is of course Hudson Hawk. I am Paul Sheer. I'm an actor, writer and director and I am also someone who paid money on opening weekend

1:03to see my Bruce Willis, my star of moonlight in Hudson Hawk and I was so severely disappointed. I'm maybe Nicholson. I'm the film critics of Los Angeles Times. I am not surprised at all that Paul paid money to see this opening weekend. I was terrified off. So I'm really glad they were having a chance for me to get into it because I love figuring out what's truth and what's legend when it comes to movies that people call the biggest bombs of all time. Now we are taking a little bit of a break from our normal format. We're not just going to be breaking down the Hudson Hawk like we do in our regular movie episodes. Today we're going to be doing an interview with someone who is really examined the Hudson Hawk. His name is David Hughes. He is a film journalist author. He's written books like Tales from Development Hell, The Complete Kubrick, The Complete Lynch. He now has this deeply forensic hilarious new book called The Unmaking of Hudson Hawk. He went through many of the drafts of the film. He breaks down all the onset chaos. Kind of gives us the full Joel Silver of it all.

2:05And basically performs an autopsy on one of the most gloriously out of control productions ever made. This episode of Unthful is brought to you by Nutriful, the hair growth supplement that makes you feel better about what's going on on top of that big brand of yours. Dining hair tends to be talked about as though it is fate that these are the genes you were born with, that is just how it goes. But there is way more than DNA at play. Stress, nutrition, aging. These things that both men and women go through at different stages in their life. Nutriful goes to the root of those hair health issues. Nutriful is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand. And no coincidence, it's also the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. And because hair health is not one size fits all, Nutriful offers different formulas for both men and women at any age or stage of life. Now the Nutriful woman's formula has been upgraded to its most advanced version yet it is 100% vegan, biotin-free, and comes in a smaller capsule size to make your daily routine easier.

3:06See thicker, stronger, faster going hair with less shedding in just 3-6 months. Right now, Nutriful is offering our listeners $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you visit Nutriful.com and enter promo code unspooled. That is Nutriful.com spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com promo code unspooled. Unspooled. Now if you've not seen Hudson Hawk, all you need to know is it is a movie starring Bruce Willis that came out in 1991 about a singing cat burglar. Danny Ayello is his partner. They harmonize through a heist James Colburn plays a fake spy who is named after a character in North by Northwest. CIA agents are named after candy bars. I mean, it is taking a lot of bold swings here. But it definitely kind of lives right now in that Ishtar, Waterworld, Glee, Hall of Fame. Which by the way, if you want to hear us really get into Ishtar, we did talk about that another sort of year wrong about.

4:06Which I really was fascinated to get into how good the music is, honestly. It's really hard to write songs that bad. Amy, I know it's a prep for this interview. You watched What's Not. I did watch Hudson Hawk for the first time. And I thought, okay, I can see a world in which there was a version of this movie. I enjoyed. It's not this version, but I could see a version. Right, there is something about it. And we're going to find this out as we talk to David. But that is pure. And it's not a cash grab. It's a passion project. We're going to find out a little bit why I think passion projects always signal. A bad thing. But yeah, we thought this is a great chance to talk about movie that you may have never seen or you maybe saw it and forgot about it or maybe you never have any desire to see it. I think anyway, you slice it. It will be an interesting conversation because David is going to break down for us a little bit about all the ways that this movie went wrong. And I think that that can be put on any big blockbuster that doesn't work. Well, I would like to say on behalf of people who had never seen this before, it's worth

5:08a watch. It's worth a watch. I just just try to understand heads or tails of how this came to be. I love it. All right. So let's jump in. Please welcome David Hughes. Today our guest is David Hughes. He's a film journalist, the author of Tales from Development Hell, the complete Kubrick, the complete Lynch. And now his deep forensic new book, the Unmaking of Hudson Hawk, David, welcome to the show. So excited to have you. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. We normally don't talk about movies like the Hudson Hawk on our show. We talk about like these movies that people love, but Hudson Hawk kind of falls into a category that I'm obsessed with, which is it surpasses bad because not badly made. It's just kind of off key. I feel like the room, there's a lot of passion there. It's not the ginger dead man with like Gary Busy. It's like these are movies that like through all the right things were being like they wanted

6:11to make a good movie. Everyone wants to make a good movie, but this one they were trying for a lot of big things, but it's become a failure or become like a punchline almost, but you go deep and I guess my first question to you is why this why Hudson Hawk, a movie that yes, it is a punchline, but I feel like people haven't really like autopsy to it like you have. Right. Well, you know, I've written a couple of books about films that never got made. Right. And that kind of got me into this idea that it's great to go through like all the drafts. And then at the end of most of the films in those books, you don't get to a film. So you don't know what the you only have the blueprints and you're trying to piece it together. But in this case, you did have the finished film, but you also had Stephen DeSousa's actually pretty great, more or less first draft. There was a first draft that a couple of moonlighting, moonlighting writers had worked on. The first solid draft was Stephen DeSousa's and there and there was nothing wrong with that, but nobody would be talking about that movie with all, you know, no, um, strays to to to to DeSousa there, but nobody would be talking about that movie 35 years

7:13on. And yet because of this incredible clash of tones and comedic sensibilities that happened when Daniel Waters came on board, it just there was some kind of crazy alchemy that happened and it just made me want to like dig deep and then the deeper I went, the deeper I got and the deeper I wanted to go and I talked to all these people and they all had a different sides of the story and it was just it was irresistible. And then I had the title, the unmaking, I've done so many making-obs in the last 35 years. I just couldn't release. And then of course, Daniel Waters said, why didn't you call it, yeah, that's probably what happened, which is like the last. I remember being so obsessed with Bruce Willis, especially Bruce Willis from Moonlighting and this idea was like, oh my gosh, he's going to be in this big movie. It's a comedy and I can go see it because it wasn't, uh, are, but now Amy, you avoided it. Like this never, Amy saw Hutton Hawk for the first time to sit down and talk to you. So it's very fragile. Yeah, that makes me feel amazing and it's happened so many times, but it's never happened

8:15to a more wonderful person as a woman, a huge fan. So, uh, all my friends are going to be calling me about that. Do you consider yourself like, in evangelist, like you get to be Johnny Hutton Hawk seed? Uh, it's high-think people to want to watch this movie for the first time because I will say, my favorite kind of movie is an ambitious failure. Or at least that's a movie I'll go to the map for. I'll protect the right of a studio to make an ambitious failure. I, I will say my first reaction was I thought that the script was kind of great. I could see why I need to see this movie. I could see the script being made of the Roger Rabbit energy and it being fantastic. Well, that's great. That's great. No, I actually set out wanting to people to look at it for a second time and I wanted them to reassess it and I wanted them to consider whether maybe they had done it dirty the first time in the way that, you know, our fellow critics had done, you know, I was

9:15at Empire Magazine in 1991 when it came out, but I didn't get to review it. But Kim Newman, who was at Empire at the same time, did and he loved it. And so did Mark Komode, who's now like one of our kind of national treasures of film criticism. And so, but they were the only two guys who were laughing their asses off in a while, you know. Did it get you, Chris? I went with my friends and we loved it. Uh, me and, me and, uh, no, sorry, me and one other guy loved it and everybody else hated it. So I think they were infected by the, by the poison of the pens of the critics that had, that had, had hated it. And also we were coming off die hard too. And you guys just did like, did an episode, not you, Amy, but, but, you know, you did an episode on that. And oh my god, I just love that movie all over again. So we're on a high, we're on a Bruce Wallace high, me and lighting Bruno was his other personality. It was kind of out there, you know, he had an album, a vinyl, a vinyl, or I guess you could buy it as whatever you want it. But I had the album of that. And I thought for the longest time as a child that Bruce Willis wrote the song under the boardwalk, I didn't realize that there was a album of covers, uh, Secret Agent Man under

10:20like, I am obsessed with this era of Bruce Willis where he's like playing harmonica, doing Bartles and James wine cooler commercials. There was nobody cooler than Bruce Willis. And this kind of, you know, landed like a kind of thud on the pavement outside the, outside the premier, you know, and it never really recovered for like another sort of couple of decades, but it really did take the wind out of his sales. And it was a combination of like the film that people saw, but didn't expect. And maybe a little bit of that very English, we want to take him down a peg or two because he's just too damn smart and successful. Right. He was a Timothy Shiloh May of 1991. I think that there's two things at play in Hudson Hawk. I have a theory that passion projects are never going to give you a good final project. Like whenever you hear a director go, well, this is my passion project. It normally is associated with something that didn't come out right.

11:23Uh, you can look at like Francis Ford Copa's passion project of Megalopolis. You know, it's like it's, it's like someone's time since toys. Yes. People were telling them no for good reason for a very long time. And I had enough power that nobody can say no. Exactly. And so what kind of made me really laugh about this is this is Bruce Willis holding on to a terrible, terrible idea. Like this idea was the like generated out of a like three long nights of drunken debauchery and like it's a it's like on a napkin and it's a song like that's how Hudson Hawk starts. Like a song and an idea on a napkin. It's like and he carried that napkin and that song up a hill to get like a hundred million dollar plus movie made and that is wild because it really is. It started with nothing. That's right. I mean, it's unbelievable. It started literally in like 1980 and 1981 with these two guys sitting in a bar and,

12:23you know, hey, it's a song and it's going to one day this is going to be a movie. And as Bruce Willis said, he had no right to say that at the time. But it was the 80s. Everybody said, right. Like that. You know, it's like when I get famous, I'm going to make this and you're going to come with me, right, but he does it. And there's something admirable about that. Like he never forgot Hudson Hawk. But I also think and Amy, you may have a different opinion on this. David, you will see what your opinion is. But I'm always I feel like there are certain people and I would say this. Comedians can do comedy, comedic actors. I think needs certain parameters to be very funny. And that's not a dig. It's a different school of thought. There are funny comedic actors who I wouldn't put on stage, but they can kill in a film. And it feels to me like Bruce has this ego of where he is. I'm known for being funny and then basically has no one that can help rain in what is funny

13:25about him. So it just becomes real scatter shot. And it seems like especially in this era, everybody who is famous in this era thinks the three stuages are the funniest fucking thing. And I never liked the three stuages. And I always irritated whenever I seem like, oh, my favorite comedians, the three stuages are like, fuck you. I hate this. But that's what like I feel like Bruce will say. Yeah, we're bringing back the three stuages. Like, no, we don't need to bring like it's the wrong instinct. And it from a comedic point of view, it makes me furious. Like just trust a funny person. You can do it. Just trust a funny person. I mean, actually you are so right on about the three stuages. Like there is something where I almost don't understand why they were so funny for a group of people kind of carrying the torch of the three stuages bringing them back. Like, do I think I've ever liked about the three stuages? Was there eight bit Nintendo game? But like, that's a good cut. Oh, it's really good. You're like trying to get clam crackers out of a clam chowder for the clams. It's throwing pies. I remember this. Yeah, okay. Very good game. The three stuages did one thing really well.

14:25I'm sorry. Well, they didn't even really technically do it. I let them list for that. But like, where I think I really see the comedy of Bruce Willis, what's shaping against this movie is he also wants to be cool at the same time. Yes. And you can't be cool and funny in the way he's trying to be. I don't know if anybody's really pulled that off. Oh, that's very cool. That's very cool observation. Yeah, I think you can be cool or you can be funny. And I think Ryan Gosling is a beautiful encapsulation of both. Like in Project Hail Mary, he is cool, but he's a nerd, right? He's not like a cool guy, but he's funny, right? I think to be funny, you have to be low status and cool people are high status. Like, you can have shorts and egg or punch somebody in the stomach and say a witty line afterwards. And that's funny, but it's not like a, it's not relatable. It's not like a, it's not a, it's not a funny performance. And I think it's, it is hard to parse because I remember a friend was working on a Snoop Dog

15:29sketch show and he would turn down any characters where he was low status. And they're like, no, no, no, but that's like the funniest characters. They're not, I don't want to, I'm not that guy though. It's like, well, of course, not that guy. It's a sketch show, right? We got to, and it's like, and it's like, and it's like, and that's where Snoop Dogg is not up there as the great comedic talent of the generation. It's like you, like they can, they can work in a, they can work in a spot, but they want to be perceived always as being the cool version of themself. And comedy isn't cool. It's not, it's the funniest comedians are not cool. They are hilarious, but cool is not the way that you would describe, I think, the top 10 people that would come to your mind. It's funny because when Bruce Willis, he didn't do a lot of comedy after, because Daniel Waters, the co-writer said, it kind of killed his comedy spirit. Now I'm sure he was a cut up among his friends and I'm sure that he made a lot of people laugh on the, on sets and stuff like that. You know, and he had like friends around him, he laughed a lot. But when he was on friends, which is how my daughter knows Bruce Willis, she was like 14 and she's like, it was obsessed with friends for a while.

16:30He wasn't cool. He was the guy talking to himself in the mirror, if you remember saying, you were a bad ass. You know, he was like a sad, right? And it was kind of funny because we were like mocking him a little bit and he wasn't the focus of, but of course he is the focus of everything in Hudson Hawke's, his movie. He's going to be at the center of all the jokes. He's going to get the best lines and all of that stuff. And it was kind of like, and he was doing basically these are the jokes folks, try the fish, you know, in Hudson Hawke. Literally throwing everything at the wall and seeing what, and everything he threw at the wall cost $100,000. Well, and it's also, it's what I really found that to be a sad observation at the end of the book, which was like, oh, we missed out on a hilarious Bruce Willis comedy. You know, the closest we'll probably get to is like blind date, which is also kind of a flop and a failure. But we put it in number one. It did. Yeah. And I remember liking it as a kid, but I feel like people look back on it a little bit. But that's like, you know, like we made like the whole nine yards, I guess.

17:31Oh, right. The whole nine yards. Like so like we have these like little spots, but even in that, he's cool, right? He's like, he's that he's the high status funny guy. Like, you know, and, and, and, and it's a, it's a bummer because you just want him to be paired with the right person. Whereas like, Robert De Niro, I mean, you could say he goes in so many different directions in his post career of being funny, but he doesn't seem to have that worry of, of status. Like he can play, you know, whatever, not bad grandpa or dirty grandpa or whatever. You know, he, he seems to come at it from more of the acting side, but I think Bruce Willis is kind of out of this world where he is still competing on some level with the, you know, Stallone's and Schwarzenegger's like he's an action movie star. And I could see his agents being like, stop the comedy stuff. People want to action. You're going to do that. And they, and they pigeonhole him to a certain extent too. I don't even think he moves away. He's like, well, why would I ever take a risk? Let me just do the thing that people want me to do. And I can say my witty thing, you know, and that's it, you know, and that's, and that's

18:33interesting. Which is a bummer because I think of him as somebody with just ripples of charisma. And the thing of the fact that he had to like, him his charisma and, and he didn't let it, he didn't become the full flower of I think a movie star that he could have become because of that. I can imagine him. Yeah. But then in like the sixth sense, I mean, he was, his charisma was, was turned down to one and he was still, it was still an amazing film and he was great, you know, you couldn't through a picture without Bruce really, you know, great, great, and breakable, 12 monkeys. I mean, you know, these are like very sort of white, that now there is a certain space that he can move within and you don't want him to stretch out of those spaces. Yes. And then again, I'm so in him, the actor that could pull off 12 monkeys and it's not an obvious, you know, no, it's not that he wouldn't take chances. It's like I feel like he just left that one part of him. Yeah. A little bit. He's ticked. He takes these great roles. Now, the thing that I am fascinated by and what I love about this book, and if you're not a fan of Hudson Hawk, I read this book without rewatching Hudson Hawk first and I just

19:35enjoyed every part of it because I think you really do a great job of articulating is there are so many steps before this movie gets to even casting. And the amount of meetings, the amount of notes and the fact that you were able to get these notes and talk to these people that were involved on a certain level of scripting, even these two moonlighting writers who were kind of trying to, you know, toss out a script while they're writing this moonlighting, you know, a series that simultaneously just to kind of show like how also so many hands can also make something really like it just can take out the unique voice too because it does seem like it went through so many different people by the end. It's like, well, whose movie is this? And to a certain extent, when Bruce Willis gets on set, he's like, well, it's my movie. And I'm going to change everything that else is here too. So it's a constant like the movie is constantly being wrestled away from each other at every given step. It really is like a, it's a non movie, but it has this amazing Heather's team attached to it too.

20:36But you can see every step of it, how it could, oh, this is a good idea, but it went the wrong direction. And so many movies go and that thing. But to kind of do that forensic deep dive to me was really kind of fascinating because I feel like the script always had some issues like it was never like this is a home run. But it's like the script never fully fully made sense. And I think it all starts with another obsession of mine that I think is so weak, alchemy, alchemy, like this idea of like, and that took a really funny part of the book too. Just like, people just be like, why are we doing this about alchemy? Like what did this is? No, it's not anything bigger. It has to be real. But that was Joe Silver's obsession and and Steven DeSusis said who'd written die hard and Commando and die hard too, whatever. He said, okay, Joe, you finally get to put alchemy in a movie. This one, this it could work because we need a Macuffin, you know? So I don't blame him for that. But what's amazing about it is that they kind of turned golden to lead while making them. I mean, it's just the metaphors just write themselves, didn't they?

21:36No, but I love that because you're right. A producer's job is alchemy, like combining these different things and hoping it will turn into box office gold. And I have to say not knowing anything about what Hudson Hawk was even before I sat down. The last thing I expected to see was it to open up in the days of Leonardo da Vinci exploring no one expected the 60 century. I thought it'd be like Bruce Willis with a saxophone. Like that was my outsider pressure running around in a cool jacket. Like, hey, baby and being kind of obnoxious, I was not expecting like Mona Lisa jokes about how she had horrible teeth and for it to look so expensive from the start. Like you're inside an ancient laboratory of Leonardo da Vinci and you've got everything. You've got like the you've got his gliders. You've got gigantic little gizmos with big moving parts and fans coming in a moment of criticism where I feel like all I see is people trying to figure out how to do things for no money at all and then jumping back and being like, oh my god, they were just I'm going to make this up snorting so much cocaine that they built an entirely in our da Vinci

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24:44But you know, how do you walk that line of like talking to people and getting them? Because look, I imagine you got, I would say like some of the best stories, but I also imagine there's a chunk of things you can never write in a book because you're like, how you can't, I can't say that. I can't talk about that. It's a perfect time for stories that you can't talk about. No one wants to have. But how do you walk that line of kind of address, you know, talking to people about their bad ideas in a way that makes them feel open and not judged for those ideas too? Well, I mean, there are no bad ideas, first of all, right? Sure. You know, right, right, right. So whatever you got to celebrate everything is an obviously because now I have the finished film, the difference between doing this where the film exists and it's out there and everywhere is that everybody can say, oh, but you know, I had this great bit where, you know, and oh, it would have worked if only they'd done that. You know, whereas when I was doing the film, the books about films that never got made,

25:45people were always able to say, oh my God, it would have been Christmas day forever. Right. The film had only been made. So this I can be kind of sensitive about and say, oh, I didn't want, but it was always kind of somebody else's fault. You know, the one person who didn't say that was like Dan Waters who, you know, is still saying, hey, these are the jokes folks. Right. Right. And so also giving away credit. Like I said, oh my God, everybody quotes the favorite line. I guess I won't be seeing you at that hack convention in July. And he said, yeah, that was a Bruce Willis ad lib. I can't take any credit for that. And I'm like, oh my God, that's amazing because no one ever gives away credit. Yeah. I think the one thing that people like. Yeah. I did, like what I really thought was interesting too is like this team, this Heather's team that comes in, you know, they're taking Stephen D'Souza's script, which you said is a very pedestrian kind of run of the mill, you know, 1990s action script. It would be whatever it is. And D'Souza in the book is very mad that they've deconstructed this thing. But when I, when I was reading, I was like, oh, that's cool that they decided to do this

26:48take. And you see like, oh, we get this. And Bruce Willis has this connection with Daniel Waters where he's like, oh, yeah, you, like, this is what I want to do. There seems to be like this buy in to kind of deconstruct the thing that he wants to do, which is like James Bond before he's James Bond. Like that's what Bruce Willis is like rallying cry as the entire time. But he was willing to throw that all out the window. And it feels like I don't know if you're getting the sense that it was it every day. Is it a different Bruce Willis? Like idea of what the movie should be or were you getting any of that from people or because it seems like you threw out your action movie for a deconstruction of an action movie, which seems like a big choice in the moment. I don't know. Yeah, what did you think about like, or did you get to any inside of like Bruce Willis? Is how he viewed the movie in the sense of like all the changes? I think he just wanted to see what was funny. And I think if he liked the jokes and the his buddies on the set laughed, that was kind of good enough for him. And the pressure that was coming from him was to do his comedy. And I think that he felt that maybe DeSouza didn't have that.

27:52And then DeSouza kind of left. And you know, Daniel Waters came in. And Daniel Waters, I don't know if he got Bruce Willis exactly, but I think Bruce felt that he had the power. The power imbalance was better. He hadn't just, you know, Daniel Waters had written Heathers great, but he hadn't just come off die hard and die hard too and come on though, you know, so it was like not that he was being pushed around or whatever, but he could say, hey, do a joke about that because I like that. That's funny. And then adding the sound effects in post and doing the, you know, the three stuidges and stuff and making Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard go bigger than they have had ever been before. I mean, just insane stuff. And at the same time, then you have like James Coburn being in there to kind of like inject some sort of actual reality and then all of the candy bars. I mean, it's just, it is just crazy. And you can't say that it isn't trying to entertain you. And this is one of the things I love about it. It's got a new idea every 30 seconds. And if you don't like that idea, there'd be another one alone, presently. And I think that's why I, I went my head.

28:53I was liking it to like a fully live action Roger Rabbit is like this just collision of like cartoonish tones being stuffed in and the idea that I was thinking, I don't know if I'll watch Hudson Hawk again, but I think that every time I watch it, I will see a new tiny joke that I really enjoy. Like in this one, chilling the ketchup in a champagne bucket full of ice or when you just have two random employees with spaghetti in their thermos just dumping it out. Like those tiny little details where I feel like, oh, they thought about what to put in the scene. I mean, I guess they had time. They were spending months making this going like forever, but they filled it with so many little visual jokes. Well, and there's a great quote at the end and you'll be able to remember who said it, David, but it was like the, like the last joke of the movie kind of let the audience in on what the movie was and like, oh, but they got it right at the end. And it's like, oh, and, and, and you know, and I guess it's like, we were talking about this. We did an episode on drive and it's like, people come in expecting one thing and I think it's so hard to get them to turn their head to what they're not expecting, right?

29:54And it's like, and how do you do that? And I think sometimes we get so invested in the work. You're like, we won't need to do it, but it's weird. It's like, oh, yeah, you can feel it in a screening when people like, oh, okay, now they're on our side. But it's like, you don't know how to do that. Right. And when you're making, I can't blame the people over the years, you know, long before I started on the book, I've been blaming the marketing campaign. It's like, oh, well, they set it up as an action movie because it was coming off die-hard and die-hard too blah, blah, blah. And I look back at the marketing materials and I was like, they really didn't. They did actually let you in on what the film could be as the song swinging on a star and whatever. And then Daniel Wood has took issue with me. I'll put him out with that. And he said, well, actually, it was the TV campaign that sold it as an action. And I've worked in film marketing for 36 years this year. And I'm like, well, that's what I would do. Of course, he's coming off die-hard and die-hard too. Of course, I would put the action in and hope that people like the other stuff. And of course, that would be sort of criminal misscelling, I realize. But what can you put in a 30-second spot, Leonardo da Vinci? I don't think so.

30:56I also think it's like this weird kind of thing where now we have plenty of time to look back on it. To Amy's point, I don't know if I'll watch it again or whatever. It is an interesting movie to watch, but it's not regarded like, oh, we missed the boat on it. I think what we did was we were probably unfairly cruel to it for something that was doing so much cool stuff. It's not a, it's a different kind of, and I hate this term, but trash can fire. It's like, oh, because it's actually like, it's a lot of cooks trying to do a bunch of different stuff. And I think it's so interesting to watch. But it's not like a live-die repeat, which had a weird campaign. No one saw it and everyone's like, oh, my God, this top cruise movie is the best, one of the best action movies we've ever seen. It's like, it's not regarded that way. I think that people are a little bit more, and you're right, less harsh on it. But I wanted to talk about this moment that I think is also really tricky. And you said about, like, the UK has an intensity to take down people as we do here in the states

31:57when they're high. In the middle of making this movie that's going off the rails, Bruce Willis gets his phone call from the producer of Bonfire the Vanities and they go, hey, movie sucks, but you're great. We're going to put more of you in it. And Bruce Willis is like, I improvise, I'm a majority of that movie. So more of me, so he's now embodied to be more himself in this movie. And then Bonfire the Vanities comes out. And yes, it's a flop, but he's also called out for being too much. I was like, we don't like that. So it's like, you do have this thing where he's basing his whole performance on a test score. Something that will inevitably be the thing that people hate about him. Because like a double dip of hatred in performance. I think that I also think that there is this big thing about getting unglued from the weight of the brick bats, the variety stories, all of that stuff. And I think like Europe and Asia to a degree was kind of like re-enfanced from that a bit.

32:57We got a little bit of it in the UK. And now we knew that there was something going on, but I think it was like, it was all over the place in 1991. And it's right. Well, he was dating Demi Moore and there's this like, you know, it's like, like there's a time and I don't think this is afterwards. Remember this Amy where he like bought that small town in Colorado and they staged like a true West production in that town and he forced people to only have premieres in that town. So all of his movies were then doing premieres in a local Colorado town. He tried to buy the scheme out and it's like that. There's a great story about this whole moment where he tried to buy Colorado, which is, you know, people hated it. I mean, but I love that kind of ambition. I mean, I have to say he does not to me become like the star of Hudson Hockey. He almost like loses the start on power in this movie to Richard E. Grant. I just think Richard E. Grant is so fantastic in this film film. Like, I'm glad I watched Hudson Hawk for him because he is just like coming in so funny.

34:00I think he absolutely gets what the tone is. And maybe I'm also just biased because I read his diary. You know, he has like that great book that he wrote about like being on set of all of these films at his diary of working on Hudson Hawk. I mean, just to set the tone of it, he starts off by like likening it to both the Iliad and the Odyssey that he went off and fought a war and then like came home and was returning to enemies basically variety ready to attack him. But I mean, come on. Like, that performance is wonderful, right? It really broke my heart to think about how a film can be so universally divided that you miss the little bits of goodness inside of it. And that Richard E. Grant had to worry, though, is my career going to be over because of just my association with this movie that maybe even nobody's going to bother watching to see that I was okay. Yeah. And I think one of the things that the book has done to my great joy is it's kind of, you know, I think Daniel Walter said it's kind of like processed his, helped in process his trauma and Steve DeSus' said the same thing. You know, of course, they both live in the houses that it paid for.

35:02Right. So it's kind of, you know, but still a very, very painful experience for both of them. And that's kind of really helped because I think, you know, they didn't know how much love there was for this film. They genuinely didn't. And very few people do. They say, oh, people come up and I think, oh, they're being sarcastic or whatever. And one of the reasons why I think Richard E. Grant wouldn't talk to me, apart from I've said everything I'm going to say and that's in the book, but that I hope that he would read the book is that it does actually make you see how many people do actually genuinely love this film. And some people are coming to it for a second time and looking at it and saying, hey, it's not that bad. Bruce and co-creator Robert Kraft did when they sat down to watch it together a couple of years ago, you know, and other people are coming to it for the first time without all the baggage associated and either having the view that like Amy does, which is, yeah, I could see what they did. They're probably never watching it again, but I'm really glad I saw it. And other people are saying, oh, my God, this is a gem. You know, I love this and I'm going to keep talking about it now. Yeah.

36:03I think I really, I, in rereading it, I think I was like, oh, yeah, I did like that. I did like that. And I think it's so easy to get into that world of hate, but I also think I respect all these people that made this movie and everyone's trying. Like no one seems to be phoning it in with the, maybe with the exception of like the final days they were shooting back in LA where I think everyone was like after 100 plus days, just physically exhausted. You said one thing though in the book that made me go on a side deep dive and I, you may not feel comfortable talking about it, but I will break it up nonetheless. You talk about one of Bruce's producers, this guy, Carmen, Carmine's, Arosa, like he basically produces all of Bruce's movies like Die Harden and of course, Hudson Hawk and, you know, a bunch of stuff. And there's this one moment that I think you mentioned the book. Oh, he and he married Jane March, who Bruce Willis was in the movie, Color of Night with. And I was like, oh, what happened to Jane March? What happened there? And then I went on a little deep dive and found that like, he married her.

37:03And then basically, like if anyone ever asked for her to be in a movie, he would say, well, I have to be the producer of it. And they're like, no. And then he basically wouldn't let her be in any movie. So like, lecture career. And it just is like, and that energy of, and this is not in your book, it's just my own side because I was like, huh. And I just had my own question for a second. This is out there, very easy information. But it was making me go like, oh, these are the kind of people that work also around that weren't saying, maybe we got to tone that down or maybe we got to pull this back. You could see that that energy, which is a very specific 90s energy in this movie of like overspending being a little bit bigger than you need to be. But seeing that this one, yeah, his one producer essentially tanked his life's career from attaching himself to, I mean, to many cases, many cases. I'm saying it, but it's still 100% 100%. No, yeah, no, no, no, but it's like, but I think it is an interesting time. I feel like people don't understand that level of moviemaking now either.

38:04I mean, it's wild to see that kind of inefficiency. You wouldn't let it. I mean, the fact that they go overseas and then they're caught in like a war torn country and they don't, they can't do laundry and they like, they don't seem well taken care of in any way. Like, I want to know who the line producer was at a certain point because it seems like, yeah, those are some of the bigger issues too. I mean, that's a very fundamental mistake they made, which is not to hire an Italian line producer for the for the Italy parts. Yes, right. And, you know, they were supposed to shoot in Hungary the whole of the third act was supposed to be in Hungary. They ended up going there just to do interiors, which could have been done on an L.A. soundstage, except that they'd already built the stuff, which is one of the most expensive sets ever built. You know, I mean, I'd like to say the money was there on the screen, but when you hear that there were a million dollars worth of paintings of the main villains that were done that were out that are only glimpsed in one scene. They don't even get a close up like the painting Ghostbusters.

39:06No, you don't even get that. It's literally just a side kind of side view of all of those perfect replicas of some of the greatest artists of all time doing the minervas, you know, the Mayflower, sorry, Richard E. Grant, Sandra Bernhard's character. And the fact that, you know, Joel Silver was flying Diet Pepsi in because the Diet Pepsi in Italy didn't like the taste. So he was, he didn't like it that much. He didn't like it that much. He was like, I've never seen it. He was not by like, they know what would be inflamed freight or commercial, you know? Yeah. So just 90s filmmaking. Or that story that where like Joel Silver goes to an ice cream shop and just orders one of everything. Right. I mean, because you can. You're Joel Silver. Of course you're going to do that. Now that's the other thing. This is a time capsule of a kind of profligate filmmaking that would, you know, they'll never let you do again, except that now they spend a billion dollars on a prime series of Lord of the Rings or, you know, whatever it may be. So there is that. Right.

40:07Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings. Yeah. But there's still a much greater degree of control, I imagine. So yeah, it's a portrait of out of control, Hollywood. And the other thing about deconstructing, I just took it back to something you said before, isn't it a little too soon? Yeah. Maybe to deconstruct like the films in the die hard kind of, because by the time last action hero came around, we felt like we were kind of ready for it. Right. And of course Nick DeSamilian wrote that great book, Last Action Heroes about the sort of the, oh, amazing book. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And, you know, so maybe the audience wasn't ready for it to be deconstructed yet. If it was a little bit ahead of its time, maybe. Well, it feels like they were also not sure what they were deconstructing because it's sort of like they were, he was known for a certain type of action movie. Not like it's, it's the issue that I have with Last Action Hero on the surface is it shouldn't have been Schwarzenegger in the movie because it confuses the premise a little bit. It's like, oh, we know him in this. So now he's deconstructing it. So I start to lose like what the, what the idea is, where if it was somebody who looked like him or felt like him, but wasn't him, it's like, oh, I see this is a comedy thing.

41:10When he's in it, like, oh, here's Bruce Willis, the biggest action star deconstructing action movies, but he's not deconstructing the action movies that we're familiar with. He's kind of going for James Bond, but he's also not James Bond. So it's like, it's like, well, where does it fall? It's like, he's just deconstructing like the general idea of action movies. Like, it's like, eh, that's, it's tricky. It's hard. I think for an audience to be like, well, what is? And maybe now with this kind of space, we can be like, oh, it's this, but we just could, yeah, you're right. See, we didn't even know what you're trying to do. Yeah, exactly. And some of the references are a little bit not right for a 1991 audience of our rated movie covers. Either they're a little bit too old. The three studios stuff is too old. The A man flint is too old. You know, it's like, yeah, now I'm in for like a parody of James Bond. Yeah. It's, um, it's wild. I want to watch it again. I, yeah, now I'm like, I'm dying to rewatch it. I was just like, a con like kids are watching it.

42:11A radio lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry, but, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world a new radio lab adventures on the edge of what we think we know wherever you get your podcasts. You've got your favorite blanket, a freshly poured drink, and a cold case burning a hole in your streaming queue. You're not just watching True Crime. You're running the investigation from the comfort of your couch. Welcome to murder she watched the podcast where we recap, dissect and slightly over analyze some of the best and craziest true crime documentaries on our favorite streamers. Did the spouse do it? Why is the shady neighbor wearing leather gloves in July?

43:11Why did this guy agree to be interviewed in this documentary? We ask the tough questions that you're often just screaming at your TV. So every week we break down the twists, red herrings, and absurd documentaries that have kept you up all night. It's high drama, cozy vibes, and absolute couch detective energy. Grab your throw blanket and hit subscribe. Which murders she watched wherever you listen to podcasts and let's solve this thing together. The question I have is this. Based on all the work that you've done and the amount of journals and you both are amazing film journalists, the question I'll ask to you both is, do you believe that a person like Joel Silver, a person who has made so many amazing quintessential films at a certain point doesn't actually know what they're doing because it seems like they're approaching this movie, which the wheels are coming off from day one.

44:12The same way that they probably are approaching a hit that gets sort of like, we don't know. It feels to me like there's very much like could be great. Could suck like it like they don't they don't seem like it doesn't seem like at any point Joel Silver was overly nervous. It just seems like yeah, maybe this works. Like it just seems like and that like and that that I guess I was thinking about that a lot. Because they just not know and does anyone know because you can say like I always say that the zookeeper, the Kevin James movie, tested at 100%. And I remember talking to a person in that movie and she said, oh, we tested a hundred bread. It was going to be a giant hit and it was a colossal bomb. They followed a Paul Bart Maul cop and it was just a bomb. And it's like, you don't know and maybe is that the I mean, I don't know. It's like, yeah, they had the reservations, but are there any different than the reservations they had at last Boy Scout? You know, and that came out better. I don't know. Because it just feels like they don't know. They're not they're not holding back. I mean, what do you say? I think I think and I could be wrong on this. I think they start off having a pretty good sense. Then I think they get high on their own supply and think they're geniuses.

45:16Then I think they start to look down on their audience and think they'll take swill and they're not trying to impress them as much. They think they'll just take their leftovers. It's like a it's like the week of a food of restaurants. You start off serving them the good stuff and then you're like, here you go. You'll take this as chilly. And then I think they lose connection with the audience. And I think as soon as you start looking down on them, then you feel. I like. I mean, I don't know. It is an alcohol. It is an alcohol chemical process, as you know. But I can't believe that Joel Silver didn't see that the matrix was going to be amazing when he produced that in like 1999. It was only eight years after Hansen Horg. And yet maybe he didn't. You don't know because it's weird. You know, it's a very weird movie to pull out in the cinemas, the matrix. And the matrix also tested terrible, right? Right. And it was sort of like this thing where like, oh, I guess it's going to be a flop. And there is that energy. It's like, it's the reason why like, you know, Sean Connery turned down the matrix. So you gotta get this. You know, it's like people just like, and sometimes you don't get it.

46:18I, my experience as this as an actor and sometimes even as a director is whenever someone's so funny on set like, but like everyone's like, oh, shit, we got let this person go. I'm like, isn't that we're going to make it? It's not going to work because you're appealing to the crew and the people there. You're not making the movie. And a lot of the times that's what I think goes off the rails is to Amy's point getting high on your own supply. You're like, this is good. I'm loose. It's like, it's like a drunk person dancing at a party being like, I'm the best dancer ever. And then like a sober person's watching it and me like, whoa, stop dancing. Right? Like, it's like, that's the energy that I feel like is constantly going on. And then every now and then that drunk dance becomes something iconic. And I'm like, I wouldn't have guessed. You know, it's like, so you, like, I think there's a part of a producer. It's like, let the art let them do their thing. I don't know. I can't judge. And I think that's the sign of a good producer, but I also feel like it just makes me feel like less confident in anybody's notes at a given point because I don't think anyone

47:22does know. I don't think anyone, you know, although this movie had a lot of moments where people are like, stop make, don't make this movie. Don't make this movie. Please don't make this movie. But I do think it's, I do think that that is like part of it. I think maybe when you are a producer, you just have to be like, this will be the best movie of all time. And I have to only embrace it like that. And maybe that's the downside of it. Is that you? I think, oh, yeah. If you put yourself in the mindset of Joe Silver, who's just done die hard and die hard to with Bruce Willis. I think you want to make die hard three with that guy. So I think you're basically going to give him whatever it's not you up there on the screen. It's Bruce putting himself out there. He's the one essentially dropping his pants. He's the one pretending to be to have this chemical in his body that means he can only move his head and his body is frozen him and Danny ILO together. I mean, that's just crazy. You know, he is putting it all out there. Joe Silver is standing back and he'll take the credit or he'll take the, you know, he won't take the blame. You know what I mean? He'll just move on.

48:22Right. It's a guy that Bruce do his thing. Yeah. That moment. And I think maybe five years later, he perhaps wouldn't have done that. And you know, he's doing like lethal weapon for you, like whatever. And then at that point, you just, it's just a license to print money kind of thing. You're not really keeping your eye on. Is this going to be great? I don't know. This could work. It might not. But the thing is, what Bruce wanted went at that point at that particular moment in time. I mean, Joe was just like, sure. Like why not? Yeah, because I mean, at worst Kiss Narrow, if, and it did make its money back eventually, like, then, if Bruce will get swatted down by the press, maybe Bruce will listen to you a little bit more next time. Well, that's what I'm going to say. The real dark side of it is I'll let him make this bomb so I can get him on a discount for die hard three, which will make me even richer, which is like, and that's, and that is what the business is. You know, I said to David, David, it texts me and said, well, what did you think of the book? And I was like, I loved it so much. I've talked about this book so much because I want to give it to so many people because I

49:26think that this book, regardless of you know, Hudson Hawk, regardless of your care about Bruce Wells, is a fascinating look inside a process of incredibly talented people, smart people. And to your point, the unmaking of a movie, how do you get, you know, from, from the song at 20, you know, in a drunken estate at a bar to a $100 million movie that becomes a punchline that I think most people have to like recover from for years. You know, and I feel like you do such a beautiful job. I think of celebrating the idea and it's not about like, well, it didn't work. It did like you are so it's such a great, it's a great read. It's the way I like to approach things to I think everything has, it was made with an earnestness that I feel like you captured really, really beautifully. I highly recommend this book to all. Great read. Thank you so much. Amy, I'm so glad that we got a chance to talk to David.

50:31His book, the unmaking of Hudson Hawk is only available from PlumeriaPix.co.uk. It's worth the order. It came very quickly and that's again, PlumeriaPix.co.uk. We'll have it in our show notes. You can also listen to his audio commentary podcast, Rogue Commentary, which is available everywhere. Podcast or hosting, I have to say after that conversation, I don't know. I feel like David gave me, you know, a second look at Hudson Hawk. I love the book so much, but I like that he's not approaching it as a punchline. He really is supportive of it. I miss that we don't have more of that moonlighting Bruce Willis in our movie, Lexicon. I feel like he, I don't know. He's the guy with the scale now and I wish he was the guy with more of the wise cracks. He's the guy with the scale and the wise cracks, but I would like to see more comedy from

51:32him. Me too. I just always think it's a waste when somebody gets scared away from doing something they're good at. Last week, Amy, what do we have on the docket? It's been a great big summer, hasn't it? It has been the biggest of summers if you're into Trojan horses and minions and back rooms and back rooms and killer girlfriends. So we thought it would be a great chance for you and I to sit back and look at what summer has brought you and I a few weeks ago, took some guesses at what would be the big hits of the summer. We, I'm going to say I made some, some bad guesses. I, I did. I, I made some bad guesses. I mean, we all knew there are going to be some big ones, but let's kind of recalibrate and see where summer has landed as we do our official summer wrap up. And make sure you check out our sub-stack each and every week to go a little bit deeper on the movies that we talk about here. It's always free. So join in the conversation. Unspooled is produced by Amy Nicholsome Paul Sheer, Molly Reynolds and Harry Nelson.

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