The Keys to the Kingdom (18 page)

He and Eisner were friends and their wives were close as well; in 1978, Jane Eisner and Margie Gordon had even conceived a television series together about two working mothers and their children sharing a household. They pitched the idea to Marcy Carsey, Eisner's protégée at ABC, who advised them to get a professional writer and then raised eyebrows in the industry by giving the two novices a deal and agreeing that the network would pay for script rewrites. Bill Persky, a veteran television writer-producer who was among those who came and went, said he signed on because he was represented by the same agency as the two ladies—Creative Artists Agency, the rising boutique that had been formed by Michael Ovitz and his partners.

After going through many revisions, the Eisner-Gordon collaboration,
A New Kind of Family,
beat the odds by winning a slot on Sunday evenings as the lead-in to
Mork & Mindy
. The show died a quick death and the two women gave up the television business.

Of course, the husbands were doing business together, too. Gordon had set up shop at Paramount when he teamed up with the studio to produce a short-lived television show called
Dog and Cat
for ABC. (The police drama featured a young Kim Basinger.) Gordon already had a deal ensuring that the show would get on the air, so it was something of a favor when he brought it to Paramount. Eisner gave his friend especially nice offices that had belonged to Jerry Lewis and then to producer Ross Hunter, who had meticulously decorated it with wood paneling and marble detailing.

In its original incarnation,
48 Hrs.
was Gordon's idea. The concept was to team a cop and a con—both white. He paid Roger Spottiswoode out of his own pocket to write the script. Gordon tried to set it up with Clint Eastwood as the convict, but Eastwood passed. Next it went to United Artists
with Sylvester Stallone as the convict and Gene Hackman as the cop. The studio—poised to release
Rocky II
—reneged on the deal because of doubts about Stallone's star power. Another version was meant for Burt Reynolds and Richard Pryor, who had some interest in working together. But Gordon couldn't get Pryor and Reynolds to commit.

The project finally got on track when Gordon walked into Eisner's office while the studio chief was fighting with an agent over a deal involving Nick Nolte. Paramount had an option to make a movie with Nolte that was about to expire. Eisner wanted to lock Nolte into a project before he went off to do another film, taking a $750,000 fee with him. When he hung up, he turned to Gordon and asked if he had anything that might be good. Gordon said he did. “Could it be in theaters in December?” Eisner asked. He figured Paramount could use an action film to complement the studio's 1982 Christmas comedy,
Airplane 2
. Gordon said it could. Walter Hill was attached as director; all they needed was a black actor to play the buddy. Having conceived of the role for Pryor, it seemed natural to look for another African-American to take the part.

By this time, Pryor—with hits like
Silver Streak
and
Stir Crazy
to his credit—was too hot to play second fiddle to Nolte, so the producers went after Bill Cosby, who passed. They tried Gregory Hines but he was locked into a stage show,
Sophisticated Ladies
. Finally someone—and many have claimed credit—suggested a young comic from
Saturday Night Live
named Eddie Murphy. Hill, the director, says the idea came from Murphy's agent at the time, Hildy Gottlieb—who happened to be Hill's girlfriend and later became his wife. Another former executive says the idea began with Larry Wilson, who later wrote
Beetlejuice
.

Don Simpson, then still head of production, was enthusiastic about Murphy, as was Gordon's young protégé, Joel Silver. Silver was an intense, portly, curly-haired young showman-in-the-making who made it his business to know everything there was to know about Hollywood and pop culture.
48 Hrs.
would be his first producing credit.

No one expected the studio to go for Murphy because he was only a television comic. But Eisner looked at tapes of Murphy—he wasn't familiar with his work—and quickly agreed to hire him. By now, the studio needed to move quickly if it wanted the picture in theaters for Christmas.

Hill was a little nervous about using Murphy because the comic lacked acting experience. “Eddie didn't always concentrate,” Hill says. “I remember saying to Nick, ‘This is going to be a tough movie on you because this
guy is a terrific talent but he's not a trained actor. This is like working with a kid or a dog. You've got to be great in every take because the one take where he's great, we're going to print.'”

48 Hrs.
was a new blend of gritty action and humor. Eisner expected it to be much more broadly comedic than Hill intended. One source close to the production says Eisner repeatedly asked, “Did you put them in chicken suits yet?” This was a reference to an especially marketable movie moment—perfect for television ads—in
Stir Crazy,
Pryor's 1981 hit with Gene Wilder. “Michael was always very suspicious about me shorting the humor of the movie and leaning on the action part,” Hill says.

Hill and Eisner weren't particularly fond of each other; they had clashed repeatedly when Hill had directed
The Warriors
—notably when Eisner forced Hill to keep some dialogue that Hill wanted to excise. “It was the only time I was ever ordered to do something or be fired,” Hill remembers. (Later, Pauline Kael gave the film a positive review but criticized the dialogue. Hill circled that observation and sent the review to Eisner but got no response.) “The reason [Eisner] is the most successful film executive since—I don't know—the Second World War, is that he's got two advantages,” Hill says. “One, he actually believes in his own taste. And second, he doesn't care what you think about him.”

Now Hill was again resisting Eisner, making a harder-edged film than the studio chief envisioned. Knowing about Eisner's concerns, Katzenberg looked at dailies as soon as he took over from Simpson. He started to panic. He called Gordon and asked to meet with him and Hill about Murphy. “We're having trouble with dailies,” Katzenberg said. “He's not funny.”

According to Hill, Silver had been the first to recognize Murphy's potential as a movie star. In a story that Silver has told to associates for years since, he maintains that he was in New York tending to his dying mother when Katzenberg called to say that Murphy had to be replaced.

Silver maintains that Katzenberg made him go directly from the cemetery to Newark Airport—the beginning of an enmity between him and Katzenberg that would last for years. It should be noted that Silver was so driven himself, according to costumer Marilyn Vance, that Gordon had to force him to get on a plane to go home in the first place. But Silver believed that Katzenberg callously forced him to return—a claim Katzenberg emphatically denies. Indeed, Silver was not high on the totem pole—Gordon was the man responsible for handling this fight and Silver's presence wasn't required. (This is especially true because Eisner disliked Silver and didn't
want him attending meetings at all.) But Silver was clearly passionate about the project and felt compelled to get to Los Angeles at once.

Hill—working in a swirl of rumors that the film was about to be shut down—cut together some scenes for Eisner and Katzenberg, hoping they would see that his approach was working. Tension was high when Gordon and Silver showed the footage in a screening room on the lot and awaited Eisner's reaction.

“Have you seen the black guy in
Airplane 2
?” Katzenberg asked, referring to Clint Smith, a friend of Murphy's who was then filming the sequel to Paramount's hit. Clearly he was suggesting that Smith was funnier than Murphy. Gordon was annoyed that he had been called into the meeting at all and bristled at the idea of reshooting Murphy's scenes. “Who would we replace [Eddie] with?” he demanded. “It's ridiculous. You guys are crazy.” Hill wanted to know how the studio expected him to reshoot all the footage with a new actor and still stay on time and on budget. The conversation soon heated to a point where no one wanted to continue the discussion.

It became obvious that replacing Murphy wouldn't offer any easy answers, so, at Eisner's insistence, the producers provided him with an acting coach. “That was all just kind of papering things over,” Hill says. “Eddie didn't pay attention to him, nor was there reason to.” But according to Vance, the costume designer, much of Murphy's dialogue had to be rerecorded after the film was finished because he didn't have his pace through much of the shoot.

Eisner and Katzenberg weren't done. From the start, Don Simpson remembered years later, “Michael chopped [Gordon] on budgets—he ground him.” This was astonishing to Simpson because Gordon and Eisner were friends. The relationship with Gordon seemed to be Eisner's most genuine bond in the industry. But he wasn't going to change the rules because of that. “It was endless,” Simpson said. “I'd say, ‘What are you doing? He's your friend!' And he'd say, ‘This is how business is done.'”

The pressure to cut costs didn't diminish as filming progressed. “Every day, it was something,” Hill says. “Paramount in those days was a very unpleasant place to work. That was their style.” Hill was convinced that Eisner's friendship with Gordon seemed to make things worse. “I think Larry felt that being Michael's friend put him on a much higher crucible than anyone else—that Michael was determined that he would not be taken advantage of. No special favor was ever going to be given.”

Gordon and Silver used a band called the Bus Boys to perform a song
called “The Boys Are Back in Town” for a scene in a black club. They spent a good portion of their music budget to have the song recorded in a studio—a process that would enhance the sound and the performance. Later, the plan was to make a studio recording of a country-and-western band for a parallel scene in a white bar. Katzenberg wouldn't hear of it. “You used up your budget on the other version,” he said. “Do it with a jukebox.”

Silver tried to explain that the point of the scene was to have Murphy create a disturbance by throwing a glass, causing the entire room to stop in its tracks—including the band. That element was crucial to the atmospherics, underscoring the incongruity of the one black man in the ocean of white faces. “Have someone pull the plug out of the jukebox,” Katzenberg suggested.

“Why would someone pull the plug on the jukebox?” Silver demanded.

Gordon and Silver managed to get a live band to record in a studio, but Hill says some other element had to be cut to keep the film on budget. As the filming neared completion, however, it was becoming apparent that the picture was starting to gel. After the bar scene was filmed, Hill turned to Silver and said, “I think we're rich.” Still, Silver felt the studio—which was expecting a lot from
Airplane 2: The Sequel,
opening soon after
48 Hrs.
in December 1982—did not do justice to the film, booking it in inferior theaters and only grudgingly showing it to the media to generate publicity for it.

A test screening in Long Beach showed that
48 Hrs.
was likely to far outperform the
Airplane
movie. Paramount offered Murphy the role in a project it was developing then called
Black and White
and sent him a check for a million dollars. The deal turned out to be a tremendous bargain for the studio. Murphy was teamed with Dan Aykroyd and the film was released in 1983 under the title
Trading Places
. The picture—which involved a poor street hustler changing places with a wealthy commodities trader—was a smash. Murphy would go on to make a string of hugely successful films for Paramount, including the
Beverly Hills Cop
series.

Silver and Gordon could console themselves, however, with the success of
48 Hrs.
It grossed $82 million, and by the end of its run, the studio would net more than $22.3 million in pure profit. With its combination of menace and violence with big laughs,
48 Hrs.
became the model for a series of huge successes from
Die Hard,
which Gordon and Silver later produced for Fox, to the
Lethal Weapon
series, which Silver subsequently produced for War
ner. Meanwhile, Eisner's favored project,
Airplane 2,
managed to clear only a $4 million profit.

 

DESPITE LARRY GORDON'S
success with
48 Hrs.,
his relationship with Eisner was doomed. Gordon's next project was a film called
Streets of Fire,
the tale of a rocker kidnapped by a biker gang. The screenwriter was Walter Hill, who, after his experience on
48 Hrs.,
was fed up with Paramount. Besides, Universal was offering more money for
Streets of Fire
. Gordon was worried about how Eisner would react when he heard the project was going elsewhere, but the choice was Hill's. Sure enough, when the deal went to Universal, Eisner was livid. He felt that he should have gotten the project because both Hill and Gordon had offices on the Paramount lot. Actually, Gordon's overall deal with Paramount was only for television and the studio had already decided not to renew it. But Eisner was so angry about losing
Streets of Fire
that he barely spoke to Gordon.

Gordon was also setting up
Brewster's Millions,
the second remake of the 1935 British film about a man who has a month to spend a million dollars. Gordon decided he would like to direct. Eisner agreed, but only if the budget did not exceed a certain number. Gordon resisted this provision and got Universal to make him a better offer. With Eisner out of town, Katzenberg called and asked Gordon to tell him whether Paramount was getting the film. Gordon, who later said that Katzenberg explicitly said Paramount would not object if the movie was made elsewhere, said he would make the deal at Universal.