“The man knows, the man knows!” – Eddie “Hudson Hawk” Hawkins. It’s been an incidental Bruce Willis tinged summer as I watched hit 80’s show Moonlighting for the first time then read the excellent oral history collected by Scott Ryan. David Hughes’ The Unmaking of Hudson Hawk was next, a surprising dive into the big budget, high profile star vehicle that flopped at the box office 35 years ago but became a cult classic. Willis, the born in Germany, New Jersey boy by heart turned New York City musician, bartender and budding actor met pianist and singer Robert Kraft when Willis started playing harmonica from the crowd during a Kraft performance. The two made fast friends and had the inkling of a “James Bond before he became James Bond” character called Hudson Hawk. Cut to years later and Willis made a huge splash with Moonlighting playing a not very good private eye with wry wit, a smirk and terrific chemistry with Cybill Shepherd. Their “will they, won’t they” dynamic mashed with zany cases and usually a chase scene, made for a critic and viewer hit that is still highly entertaining and weird today.
Willis made the jump to movie star with 1988’s Die Hard that deftly utilized his everyman quality, sense of humor and non-bodybuilder physicality. Die Hard 2: Die Harder followed in 1990 and at the height of his Hollywood heat, got Hudson Hawk made at Tri-Star. Moonlighting writers Ron Osborn and Jeff Reno took the first crack at Willis and Kraft’s story before Commando and Die Hard scribe Steven DeSouza and later Heathers’ Daniel Waters got involved. Super producer Joel Silver (Predator, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon) was on board so Hawk sure seemed like a good idea at the time. With $12 million already sunk on pre-production, Tri-Star had spent too much to question stopping. Heathers director Michael Lehmann took the helm and the story of a just released from prison cat burglar who gets mixed up in a job to steal Leonardo da Vinci work to make gold began production.
Shooting in New York, Rome and Budapest, Hudson Hawk had action, romance, government types named after candy bars, operatic art dealing villains and the quest for a cappuccino. The cast is stacked with the likes of Danny Aiello, Andie MacDowell, James Coburn, David Caruso and Frank Stallone. There’s musical numbers and surprisingly vulgarity and violence because Rated R just doesn’t mean the same thing anymore. Aiming to do something uber hip and modern, Willis is said to have exerted his influence with a penchant for watching every take and making adjustments for the next, causing production to blow past its original budget and schedule. There was also the more leisurely pace of Italian filmmaking and language barrier in Hungary. Apparently European Pepsi is a different recipe so producer Silver had cases shipped in from the US, an example of excess or just expensive taste.
The cartoony yet fun end result was a target in the press long before its May 24, 1991 release where it grossed a paltry $17 million compared to Die Hard 2’s $117 million the summer prior. Like Arnold and Stallone, Willis had international appeal and the global box office helped take the sting out of a lackluster domestic performance. Willis shrugged off the press beating and stayed a movie star for several decades. And now Hudson Hawk has so many defenders you get repertory screenings, Kino Lorber’s special edition disk and a book. Now that’s just the right amount of foam.