Joey’s ambitious. He’s competitive. He’s a player. Joey looks around and sees his friends, who are stars, or big directors, or big players even, and says, “Why not me? Why not me?” Hitting his chest with his fist! Why not? Coming from 6th and Lincoln, a corner of Little Italy in Wilmington, Delaware, Joey and his guy friends all outdid themselves, each in his own field. It’s the American way. This is the story of how I, basically, destroyed Joey’s dream. He blames it all on Bruce Willis, but I played a major role as director of his film, which starred Bruce and Maura Tierney, in Wilmington, Delaware, Joey’s hometown, in 1997.
The script was by a young talented married couple, the story of an over-the-hill pro hockey player, banged up from too many games, who gets so loaded one night that he makes his way back to his old childhood home and passes out in the doghouse in the yard. The house is now occupied by Maura Tierney, a single mother and the sister of his boyhood friend, her nine-year-old daughter, and her seven-year-old son. A love story, of course—how this charming bum wears down the resistance of this tough, smart, but vulnerable lady. Perfect casting, and a charming, fresh story.
Joey sent the script to Bruce in Idaho. The invitation to go to Idaho to talk with Bruce Willis about our movie was the clarion call Joey had waited for. He had a commercial script, ready to go. If he could attach a star like Bruce Willis to it, the money to make it would come through. Joey would join his friends Michael Douglas, Michael Phillips, Danny DeVito—the charmed circle of producers who were one after another getting their films made, and that he, with all his ambitious heart, longed to join.
Bruce was no stranger. We’d known him as a charismatic bartender at Café Central in New York, from charismatic boyfriend to our Dinah for a couple of months, to breakout charismatic TV star. Bruce got the TV show Moonlighting and became a big star; the rest is history.
He was now a movie star, with a little dip in his career, but very bankable. He was represented by Arnold Rifkin, an important agent at the time, and the brother of one of our best friends, Ron Rifkin.
Joey and I traveled to Idaho. I felt a little out of my home waters. The Italian kid from 6th and Lincoln and the Jersey boy found common ground.
Out on the sparkling blue, blue lake in Bruce’s motorboat, I felt detached. Bruce was a big deal now, a big movie star, looking to raise his actor image a bit. Joey was looking to fulfill his life’s dream. I felt conflicted. So much depended on the director with this huge male star.
On the other hand, Joey knew better than to even dream of handing this film to a better-known male director. Our marriage would be over.
When Bruce asked me, sitting in his den, how I saw his character in the movie, I told him, “There is nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know better than I do. You’ve lived this; you’re a working-class kid from Jersey. You’ve charmed and hondled your way up from bartender to movie star. Use it. Who better to play this part than you?” I meant it.
He said yes.
Joey put the package together. Andy Vajna, who used to share office space with Joey and was now a big producer, put up the $28 million.
I hadn’t thought yet about casting the woman, but Bruce said, “If I do it, I want Maura Tierney.” Once I’d seen her TV show NewsRadio, I wanted her as much as Bruce did. Maura was funny, real, fresh, very pretty, and sexy in a nice-girl way.
Joey decided to set up the movie in his old neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware. All the streets had great character. Germantown, the Jewish section, the duPont estates, and of course the Italian section, his family’s house at 6th and Lincoln, where Rachel, his mother, was on an oxygen machine, staring all day at the TV. Living in the house with Rachel were his twin sister, Phyllis, and his brother, Ralph, who became a driver on the movie.
All around were Joey’s best friends from childhood to today: Peter Pappa, Albert Vietri, Richie Zambanini, Verino Pettinaro. All neighborhood guys who made good, moved into mini mansions, made their working-class families proud—his mob.
Now Joey was showing them all. He was a movie producer, dragging the great carcass of a $28-million-dollar movie into the cave with Bruce riding it.
Joey’s last partner in the commercial business, Billy Fraker, a legendary DP, was coming on board as cameraman. Carol Oditz had done costume design on many films I’d directed, and Doug Kraner was a brilliant production designer who had done No Place Like Home with us. The editor I longed for, Sam O’Steen, with whom I’d never worked but admired, finally said yes.
We opened production offices in Wilmington. Doug started building the house we were to use as Maura’s house, Bruce’s old family home. Roberta Morris, who is transcribing these words now, was in production in our offices, as she’s been on all my films.
St. Anthony Parish was electrified. The community was welcoming us to use their homes, cast their children, and they catered our meals. All were on board: the priests, the sisters, the Catholic schools that Joey had attended and dropped out of. He was the center of attention, admiration. Joey was the star.
In New York, we had taken over Madison Square Garden and made a deal with the National Hockey League for a five-camera shoot of a hockey game between the New York Rangers and the Pittsburgh Penguins. One of the lead players, who had a build like Bruce’s, wore a jersey with Bruce’s character’s number on it to intercut with the close-ups in our movie.
We’d rented ice-skating rinks in Delaware and Pennsylvania for casting and practice sessions and hired a seasoned skating choreographer who worked for weeks on the young Bruce’s skating. He advised us on choosing young athletes from junior teams from New York to Pennsylvania. Tom Bernard of Sony Pictures Classics, a serious hockey player himself, became a great resource for the hockey segments. We hired his entire hockey team to play a rival team in the movie, along with his son, who was a great skater and the right age for some of the childhood scenes.
It was exciting.
We were working with the young Bruce look-alike on a frozen pond we’d built to resemble an ice-covered swimming hole. We’d shot scenes on the ice that had to do with Bruce’s character’s past with the young skaters—all stuff we could shoot without Bruce.
Finally Bruce arrived. Maura arrived. Her new husband was home in California.
We had a table read, which was delicious, and a day or two of rehearsal for me to get a sense of staging with Billy Fraker. Good. First day of shooting, our editor, Sam O’Steen, called. He’d decided to take another job. That was a blow.
I went to the trailer that Bruce’s hairdresser was using. I knocked on the door. The young woman who was doing his hair came down the stairs. “He doesn’t like to be asked about his hair,” she said.
“Huh?” I said. We were doing camera tests that day, makeup and hair. I was sufficiently paranoid about my own looks to understand another actor’s paranoia. But I didn’t exactly know how to approach this. Bruce was a regular-looking guy, not stereotypically handsome, but a turn-on in most people’s books, hair or no hair.
Bruce Willis has something actors die for: authenticity. He’s authentic. Comfortable within his own skin, and charming on film. Like Gable, like Tracy, like Clint Eastwood. But while making our movie he was going through a transition; he was insecure and bored, a deadly combination for any actor, in particular the star.
We did the camera tests. Bruce bald. Bruce with close-cropped hair, a good hairpiece. He asked what I thought. Either was fine with me, but what would make him most comfortable?
“The hairpiece.”
“The one you have on? This one?”
“Yeah. Do you want to see the others?”
“I don’t think we need to, Bruce. What do you think, Billy?”
“Either way.”
I wish I’d said bald. The hairpiece became such a focus. I should have been the first to recognize it. During the five weeks we shot, the hairpiece changed slightly every other day.
In the meantime, I found I could hardly get out of bed. I was sick with something. We’d rented a charming, many-bedroomed white house in the suburbs. Mary Beth had a bedroom. So did our chef, Steve, whom we had found in South Carolina while we were shooting Staying Together.
I was lying in bed, fully dressed. Joey and Mary Beth were looking down at me. “I can’t get up.”
The smart young doctor said, “Your thyroid is out of whack.” Apparently, the gland that supplies energy was not working. He gave me pills. It helped, but not enough. I felt slightly underwater for the whole film. One thought behind. One blink behind. One step behind.
When you do film, you’re up at five a.m., especially if you’re directing. You and camera are planning the day’s shots. I would have preferred doing them at the end of the day, but Billy Fraker didn’t want to. I didn’t want a conflict, so I agreed.
• • •
Behind the scenes, Dinah was in her eighth month with my first grandchild; Roberta, in the production office, had a miscarriage; and Belinda got into a car accident on a slippery bridge and broke her foot.
Then there began to be other factors, the main one being that the newly married Maura was not flirting with Bruce. He was becoming turned off, taking a private plane after work on weekends to party and play with his band, missing his coaching sessions with the pro skater we had hired. On set, Bruce seemed irritated and disinterested.
The spark between them, the one this film depended on, was definitely dimming. We filmed a less than exciting ice-skating excursion, where he teaches Maura and the kids. I had begun to feel his boredom, and he didn’t like the kid we’d hired as Maura’s son.
Life for an actor in Wilmington is deadly. It’s not Jersey. It’s not Hollywood, or New York, or Idaho. Joey was not available for Bruce to play with; the second week Joey checked himself in and out of the hospital with heart pains.
I was not helpful. I was not inspired. I was tired and irritated. In one scene Maura feeds the dog, putting dry food in his dish. Bruce suggested that she have her back to him and bend from the waist to fill the dog dish. Doggy style? Maura looked at me, hard.
“That’s tasteless, Bruce . . .” I said.
He argued. He was looking for a way in, the wrong way. He needed a comfortable, Bruce-funny way into the part, an outrageous-Bruce way in, and that’s what I was looking for, too. He was critical, not involved. An awful place to be as an actor. I’d like to ask him why. I’d like to ask Maura what she felt happened, or didn’t.
The problem when you are a star, when the money rests on you as an actor, is that your freedom to fail is gone. You can’t take chances. If you can’t take chances anymore, what kind of actor are you?
One morning, as Billy and I were figuring out the shots for the day, Bruce showed up and demanded a shot list, a written list of all the camera moves. This was a bad sign, a sign of distrust of me.
Bruce had brought a pal to hang with, I’ll call him Salvio, whom he made a producer on the film. Salvio went off with him on weekends. Every weekend he took off in his plane, ignoring that we had a professional skater standing by to work with him. One weekend, it was to Bali, where he was opening a Planet Hollywood. Bruce saw the dailies each night; now he wanted to see the film cut.
No editor. Right. No editor had been hired to replace Sam O’Steen. Big, big mistake. No argument there.
We hired an available guy and cut a couple of scenes together. Arnold Rifkin and Demi Moore came down to watch them with him.
“Do you think it’s sexy?” he asked them. “Do you think I’m sexy?”
“No,” Demi said. “I don’t.”
And that, folks, was that.
Arnold called a meeting with Joey and me at our house. “Bruce feels you’re losing control, Lee. He needs a strong hand.”
The next day I went into Bruce’s dressing room to talk to him and Arnold. Bruce was happier than I’d seen him in ages. “I love you, Lee, but it just didn’t work out.”
“Bruce, the scenes are charming. They work.” And they did. The tension between Maura and Bruce actually paid off. They were supposed to be wary of each other, of course, before they fall in love. What else do you do in an hour-and-a-half film? There was one scene of Bruce by himself on a balcony. It was snowing. Suddenly he climbed the railing and howled like a wolf into the wind. It was shockingly fresh and original.
• • •
Bruce asked another director, Dennis Dugan from Moonlighting, to come down to Wilmington to take over as director. Arnold and Bruce had made some behind-the-scenes arrangement with Andy Vajna, who’d put up the money. Bruce took responsibility for the eighteen million. Joey and I were fired.
LOS ANGELES TIMES, MARCH 13, 1997:
The Fight Over ‘Broadway Brawler’
Bruce Willis’ latest film is shut down 20 days into production after director Lee Grant and others are let go.
Scrapping a big star production once filming has begun and millions of dollars are already on the line is rare in Hollywood.
I don’t know if this had ever been done before—the star walking out on a picture three weeks into an eight-week shoot. Eighteen million dollars of a $28-million budget already spent. Then firing the producer and director and taking charge himself. Was he desperately insecure and unhappy and frustrated? Or was it the great news that he was offered Armageddon and had a three-picture deal with Disney, his future was secure again, so we were disposable? I think maybe both. I think when I walked into his dressing room, both Bruce and his agent were happy men, with a big movie in the bag, maybe, and they were both insecure about our movie—on the one hand, legitimately, not having seen a cut, but on the other hand, without reason. Well, maybe some reason I don’t know.
The little boy of about seven and the girl of nine who played Maura’s children in the film broke down and sobbed when they heard the news at lunch. There was a terrible, empty, cold fear in the pit of my stomach. It was unreal. Joey was ravaged. He wanted to kill Bruce. He’s still ravaged by it. He’d put the whole film together and now he had nothing. His big chance—the gold ring—was gone. Mary Beth remembers riding back to New York with me and my saying, “That was it, I’ll never be asked to direct a film again. It’s over, that part of my life.” I felt it very matter-of-factly. When it was happening in Wilmington it was like a nightmare—falling, falling into an empty, cold, endless black well. I was still waking up in the mornings, going through practical days, but inside I was falling and I was humiliated.
When the heads of each department in the production company quit, the world stopped spinning and began to settle down. Those were the professionals. They all needed this job; they were leaving their paychecks and their own creations. It left Bruce and his new director without a crew.
Everyone but Bruce’s friend Salvio quit, from camera to food. They all walked out. Went home. Left Wilmington, Delaware. Would not work for Bruce. Joey is still devastated. He felt betrayed and humiliated in front of his whole hometown.
I didn’t. Bruce was carrying the picture. He needed a hit to stay in the business. He was away from Demi, and I think he really needed a buddy/director, someone he could play with or chase girls with, a guy’s guy.
Bruce insisted that every piece of film be given to him, never to be seen. That was cruel for us. I liked the work a lot and wanted to finally edit what we had, to redo it with someone else. To prove how wrong he was—about me, about himself—especially for Joey, who was mortally wounded. We just didn’t have the kind of money it would take to fight this in court.
Then he made Armageddon and The Sixth Sense and became a huge star again.
Arnie Rifkin doesn’t represent Bruce anymore. I don’t know if Salvio is still a friend. We’ve all moved on. For Joey, what happens to a dream deferred?
It still hurts.