Vanity, Thy Name Is Disaster

Tell me if this sounds familiar: Despite all advice to the contrary, the big-time movie star uses his clout to get a film made that otherwise would be stashed deep in the catacombs of development hell. He’s totally wrong for the part, he kicks in part of his salary when the film goes over budget, and when the film is released, the critics gleefully boot it around like a soccer ball.

Naturally, we could be talking about “Battlefield Earth,” John Travolta’s hapless sci-fi clinker that’s already an early favorite for Stinker of the Year (if not the century). But the pet-project-gone-bad-scenario is actually based on “The Swimmer,” a 1968 film made by movie legend Burt Lancaster. As recounted in “Burt Lancaster: An American Life,” Kate Buford’s immensely readable new biography of the fabled actor, Lancaster spent two years preoccupied by “The Swimmer,” a glum John Cheever short story that Lancaster saw as “ ‘Death of a Salesman’ in swimming trunks.”

Lancaster was famous for playing virile, self-confident heroes; no one wanted to see the likable actor as an alienated loser adrift in decadent suburbia. The movie opened to a chorus of critical hoots. Time said Lancaster sounded like he was “reading ingredients from a bread wrapper.” The New Republic said the actor “who’s supposed to be a Madison Avenue smoothie, looks like a longshoreman at a union picnic.” Needless to say, the picture was a flop.

Since the collapse of the studio system in the late 1950s, all sorts of actors have used their star leverage to get projects made that were close to their heart. Their track record: mixed at best. Yet Elie Samaha, the producer behind “Battlefield Earth,” has made a splash in Hollywood wooing A-list stars (Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone, Kevin Costner, etc.) by making their long-stalled pet projects and giving them a piece of the action, saying “if you give stars 25% of the profits, they get out of the trailers faster.”

But more often than not, actors are bad judges of their own appeal, in part because they are surrounded by so many yes men that they rarely hear a dissenting opinion. When Demi Moore dropped everything to do “The Scarlet Letter,” did anyone say, “Are you kidding?” Travolta was so out of touch with reality that he was regaling press-junket reporters about plans for a “Battlefield Earth” sequel while Warner Bros., which distributed the film, was so panicked that the studio secretly bused in several hundred Scientologists to pack the house at the movie’s premiere.

After reading Samaha’s business strategy, a studio chief suggested we check out the track record of star-driven vanity projects. There’s a good reason, the executive said, that most of them have been dead on arrival. Most of them aren’t worth making. A look at Hollywood history supports that theory.

Taking the Good With the Bad

Lancaster was one of the first stars to start his own production company, which had hits when Lancaster played a feisty hero (“Vera Cruz”) and misses when the star stepped out of character (“The Devil’s Disciple”). Even Lancaster’s “The Sweet Smell of Success,” now lauded as a godsend from Hollywood’s glory days, drew mixed reviews and was a box-office disaster when it came out in 1958.

Lancaster’s pal, Kirk Douglas, had success with personal films like “Spartacus,” the movie that helped break the blacklist. But other stars didn’t fare as well. After passing on innumerable commercial projects, Marlon Brando directed himself in “One Eyed Jacks,” a solemn, self-indulgent failure. Having just triumphed in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Paul Newman insisted on making “WUSA,” a political farce that he called “the most significant film I’ve ever made.” New Yorker critic Pauline Kael called it “a garish example of liberal exhibitionism.” Newman’s fans stayed away in droves.

In 1969, Newman, Barbra Streisand, Steve McQueen and Sidney Poitier--all then at the height of their stardom--formed First Artists, a mini-studio essentially dedicated to making the actors’ favorite artistic projects. It was, in today’s studio lingo: pet projects, meaning the stars were given the money to do pretty much what they wanted. The results were not pretty. While the company had a few successes, most notably McQueen’s “The Getaway” and Poitier’s “Uptown Saturday Night,” most of the films were duds like McQueen’s “Tom Horn” or forgettable fluff like Streisand’s “The Main Event.” By 1979, the company was out of business.

First Artists had a crucial flaw: Its stars made hits for other studios, but flops for their own. McQueen, for example, went off to 20th Century Fox to make “The Towering Inferno,” which not only was a huge success, but nominated for best picture. The star’s next First Artists film was “Enemy of the People,” a misbegotten attempt by the action star to tackle Ibsen. Streisand did the same, making a lackluster drama (“Up the Sandbox”) for her own company, then making “The Way We Were” for Columbia Pictures.

To be fair, not all personal projects are duds. Almost no one believed in “Dances with Wolves” except Kevin Costner, who directed it himself and won an armful of Oscars. Ditto for Mel Gibson and “Braveheart” and Warren Beatty and “Reds.” However, for every hit, you can trot out an armful of misses. Costner’s “The Postman,” a three-hour snoozer, was just as much of a labor of love as “Wolves.”

Bruce Willis put up his own money to get “Breakfast of Champions” made; it bombed. Bette Midler produced and starred in “For the Boys,” another bomb. Ditto for Goldie Hawn and “Swing Shift.” Kim Basinger’s labor of love was the recent “I Dreamed of Africa,” another flop.

The stars with the worst track record are comedians itching to be taken seriously. Having made millions for Columbia doing “Ghostbusters,” Bill Murray persuaded the studio to bankroll his 1984 remake of Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge.” It tanked. After “When Harry Met Sally . . . ,” Billy Crystal got Castle Rock to make “Mr. Saturday Night.” Oozing with sentimentality, the film hit box-office bottom. The same thing happened to Robin Williams’ failed Holocaust fable, “Jakob the Liar.”

The stars who have the best track record with labors of love are the ones with real producing acumen. An early example is Kirk Douglas, who surrounded himself with talented writers and directors while making films like “Spartacus,” “Lonely Are the Brave” and “Lust for Life.” Michael Douglas did as well as his dad, producing and starring in such memorable films as “The China Syndrome” and “Romancing the Stone.”

Clint Eastwood, who’s been making movies at Warner Bros. for decades, has practiced the “one for Warners, one for me” philosophy. His personal projects (“Bronco Billy” and “White Hunter, Black Heart”) weren’t always big hits, but whenever he strayed too far from his fan base, he’d do another “Dirty Harry”-type project for the studio to even things out. And one of his most personal films, “Unforgiven,” turned out to be both a commercial and critical smash and won a best picture Oscar.

A Certain Balance Is Required

Studio chiefs who regularly deal with movie stars say that things often go wrong when the balance between the risk takers (the actors) and the risk reducers (the studios) is out of whack. In a mass-audience medium, most artists function best when they have someone to test their ideas against. They need boundaries; given free rein, their movies often spin out of control.

The passion that inspires a great film can also be the passion that provokes disaster. “The problem is that you’re dealing with people who are so obsessed with a project that they’ve lost all objectivity,” says one studio head. “And when you lose objectivity, you’re blinded to the problems that might arise along the way.”

In fairness to actors, many failed personal projects have been efforts by actors to break away from the stereotyped roles they’re encouraged to play. If it were left up to the studio brass, Brad Pitt would always be a charming pretty boy and Julia Roberts would always be a feisty romantic heroine, not gloomy “Mary Reilly.”

Once an actor earns some box-office clout, many are eager to try something new. It can be artistically healthy, even if fans and critics often cringe at the results.

Virtually every studio passed on “Battlefield Earth,” convinced that Travolta’s fans had no interest in seeing him as a grumpy alien with bad hair and platform shoes. Samaha took the risk--the estimated budget for the film was $75 million and it took in only $11.5 million in its first weekend--and lost. As one former studio chief explained, the power of a star sometimes allows people to ignore their common sense. “You think, geez, I’ve got John Travolta, who’s opened all sorts of less-than-stellar movies. You fool yourself into thinking maybe it’ll work this time too,” the former executive said.

Don’t worry about Travolta. He’ll survive this debacle just as he survived “Staying Alive” and “Perfect.” Remember, one year Dustin Hoffman was in “Ishtar,” the next year he won an Oscar for “Rain Man.” Life goes on. But if you want to win more bets than you lose, when a movie star comes your way, pet project under their arm, do a Nancy Reagan: Just say no.