Cult Classics: Hudson Hawk (From The Argus)

Cult Classics: Hudson Hawk

1:15pm Wednesday 27th July 2011 in Blogs By Owain Paciuszko - Seat 13

Bruce Willis is Hudson Hawk

Whilst bartending and waiting for his big break Bruce Willis day-dreamed about a music loving ex-con bartender character known as Eddie 'Hudson Hawk' Hawkins, it was a pet project for Willis and as he found success, first with tv series Moonlighting and then films such as Die Hard, the time was right for him to bring his baby to the big screen for Summer 1991.

Willis co-wrote the film's story with his friend and music producer Robert Kraft (who was Grammy-nominated for his work on The Muppets' Christmas Carol soundtrack), and had uber-producer Joel Silver on board. The script was polished by long-time Silver collaborater Steven E. de Souza, who had helped pen hits such as 48 Hours, Commando and both Die Hards.

Surprisingly the team decided to hire Michael Lehmann to direct, he was hot property after the pitch black teen comedy Heathers and he also had the incredibly under-rated quirky sci-fi Meet the Applegates under his belt. Along with Lehmann came Heathers writer Daniel Waters, who had been working for Silver in writing the action-curio The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (a vehicle for controversial comedian Andrew Dice Clay), and the film was set on course to be something truly unique amongst the emerging crop of Die Hard clones.

Lehmann and the crew put together a great cast to fill out the oddball supporting roles around Willis' wise-cracking hero, including Hollywood stalwart James Coburn (whose In Like Flint films were a big influence on the project), Danny Aiello, Sandra Bernard, Frank (brother of Sylvester) Stallone, Richard E. Grant and Isabella Rossellini.

However as the film's schedule got pushed further back Rossellini had to drop out and she was replaced by Maruschka Detmers, who, after a few days of shooting, had to leave due to back problems and Andie Macdowell was brought in to fill her shoes as the undercover Vatican nun that Hawk falls for.

Richard E. Grant, in his brilliant book, With Nails, goes into plenty of detail about the slightly skew-wiff making of the film, in particular looking at Aiello's requests that his character Tommy Five-Tone, Hawk's sidekick, actually should survive in case there's a sequel. Considering his character is in a limousine that plunges off a cliff and explodes this proved a challenge for the screenwriters, thanks to Aiello's influence they resolved this issue by having him turn up on a donkey five minutes before the end of the film, his face and clothes somewhat charred and he revealed that the limo had both air bags and a sprinkler system.

For me, that ludicrous twist is one of the reasons I absolutely love Hudson Hawk. Indeed, the whole tone of the film has this wonderfully tweaked sense of logic that is closer to a Tex Avery cartoon with a delightfully subversive wit and spurts of rather shocking - if comical - violence.

Grant goes on to talk about being invited to the premiere of Die Hard 2 a year before the release of Hudson Hawk, the sounds of cheering and applause that erupted from the auditorium at the film's close, and how Silver leant over and told him that next year it'd be magnified by ten for Hawk. Of course, one year later, as the lights come up, the theatre is quiet and empty, with most people having walked out.

Hawk was, to a large degree, a victim of Willis and Silver's own success, there's always a moment when Hollywood likes to give people a kick in the shins, and unfortunately it often seems to occur with projects that are, in many ways, a pretty bold move for the filmmakers. Yes, Hudson Hawk is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, it features robberies timed to songs with Willis and Aiello delivering a pantomimic rendition of the classic pop song Swinging On A Star, and two of the minor villains are called the Mario brothers. There are surreal moments where Hawk falls from the roof of a skyscraper only to land in a cosy armchair in an apartment elsewhere, a sequence in a car where the director intentionally had the New York skyline appear on both sides of the road and deliberate edits wherein scenes move rapidly from day to night. What's genuinely remarkable though is that the film goes all out in this tone and there is little sense of compromise, which is probably why this was branded a vanity project.

Or perhaps people were just confused, expecting Die Hard 3 and getting something absurd and daffy. The film was advertised in much the same fashion as a 'standrad' Willis vehicle, with the tagline 'Catch the excitement. Catch the adventure. Catch the Hawk.' being changed to 'Catch the excitement. Catch the laughter. Catch the Hawk.' when the film bowed on video. But, it was too late by then, the film had its reputation and it stuck.

It wasn't until I stumbled upon the film late at night on TV that I myself thought any different, hearing just the deluge of negativity over the years, and as the film began I found myself laughing out loud at the intentional and inspired mania of the film. It took all those action movie cliches turned them onto their head and then turned them up to 11. It was knowingly smart and arch in its apparent stupidity, tongue-in-cheek and post-modern it suffered - like Schwarzenegger's later Last Action Hero - of being a bit too knowing and mannered when audiences wanted something that they'd seen before, or, perhaps at least to know in advance exactly what kind of film they were getting.

Ultimately the film tanked at the box office (though the director takes pleasure in pointing out - somewhat self-deprecatingly - that the film was a hit in Europe) and alongside a couple of other flops it forced Tri-Star pictures to merge into Columbia. The film came a bit of a wobbly time for Willis' career, with the disastrous The Bonfire of the Vanities having been released the previous year, but, it remains one of my favourite films on the actor's CV.

Unfortunately though it seemed to neuter the career of Lehmann somewhat, he followed the film with the decent comedies Airheads and The Truth About Cats & Dogs, but has generally stuck to television and the occasional film such as the dire 40 Days & 40 Nights and Because I Said So. Co-writer Waters got to add some of his style to the scripts for Batman Returns and Demoliton Man, but seems to have spent most of the last two decades as a script doctor (though he did direct a couple of films). Which is a shame, because these two did make one of the definitive high-school films of all time in Heathers, and though that's achievement enough in some respects, their dark, anarchic styling seems to have become a little diluted by the Hollywood machine.

Still, they can both be proud that there is a cult fanbase for Hudson Hawk, one of the most joyfully subversive and deranged blockbusters that Hollywood is yet to produce.

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