WHEN RICHARD MET BRUCE AND JOEL

The Diarist

Tapped to play the villain opposite Bruce Willis in the $51 million box-office bomb Hudson Hawk, a British actor chronicled his close encounters with producer Joel Silver, Sharon Stone, and Sandra Bernhard

RICHARD E. GRANT

Oh, my sweet darlings, where, oh where, do I dare begin to tell this multimillion-dollar EPICwhich, defined by the Oxford Dictionary, means: a long poem in elevated style narrating the adventures of a hero; long novel or film; one containing adventurous episodes; heroic, majestic, impressively great.

Hudson Hawk is all of these, but not quite in the order suggested. Adventurous? With a cast including Bruce Willis, Andie MacDowell, Danny Aiello, James Coburn, Sandra Bernhard, and myself, what else? Heroic? Ooooh, YES, but not quite what you might have in mind. The patience required would test the most Olympian devotees of Prozac. Majestic? The mega-budget spirals like stairways to heaven.

To begin at the beginning. In A.D. 1990, on the 21st day of March, a Wednesday, my agent, of dwarfish stature, announces that an American casting director, Jackie Burch, requires me to meet at the Athenaeum Hotel on Piccadilly in London with the director of Hudson Hawk, a big-budget action comedy which is to star Bruce Willis and Isabella Rossellini. The script is being messengered to my abode. He says. It is. And it reads fast and funny.

Excerpted fromWith Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant,to be published next month in the United Kingdom by Picador; © 1996 by Richard E. Grant.

March 22: Seven forty-five at the Athenaeum. Michael Lehmann (the director of Heathers) is helming this “biggie.” I scan the elderly clientele getting their coats on to cab off to see The Phantom of the Opera, mostly Americans perfumed up for a night of Lloyd Webber Coliseum spectacle, PINGand this time the elevator disgorges two scraggly-looking “students” in the wake of the fur-coat brigade. The shorter one beams, “Hi, so great to meet you. I’m Michael Lehmann and this is Dan Waters, the writer. We did Heathers together. Let’s go sit down and get a drink.” We do. They really do look like undergraduates. I feel overdressed. And over-aged. They are barely 30. Michael and Dan do a double-act description of their script, which they characterize as a tonguein-cheek Bond film. “It’ll be kind of fun, because Bond is already a sort of parody, which we are double-parodying.” The story is the dream of Bruce Willis, who has nurtured it since his days of being a New York barman, before his career took off with Moonlighting on television and rocketed with his movie role in Die Hard and Die Hard 2. Joel Silver produced both, and is repeating the same duties on Hawk.

“We just loved you in How to Get Ahead in Advertising and think you might be just perfect for the part of the villain in this. Kind of like all the Bond Blofelds rolled into one—on mescaline! As it’s Bruce’s baby, he has casting approval, but we would love to work with you. What do you think of Sandra Bernhard for your wife?”

April 5: The Dwarf calls to say I may have to fly to New York to meet Messrs. Willis and Silver.

April 12: I receive a call that is an offer, without having to fly to New York.

June 28: I have got a call to fly to L.A. for a read-through! I am limo’d into the Hollywood Hills to Greg Gorman’s photographic studio, where I meet Sandra Bernhard, as well as Maruschka Detmers, the Dutch actress playing the female lead. I wonder what has happened to Isabella Rossellini, but do not ask. Sandra is having her makeup applied and is about to be transformed into something AWESOME. Her auburn hair has been teased up into a frenzy, until it resembles one of those ice-cream whorls that whip out of a machine onto a cone. Her eyes crane to their right corners, as she cannot turn her head just yet, and she twangs, “HI, HONEYEEE.” She has an instantly discernible trademark sigh, as if everything is slightly exhausting and demanding, and whatever she is doing now is somehow keeping her from something she would rather do. She is perfect to play Minerva Mayflower, the world’s richest, most evil bitch-villainess. Her neck choked with ropes of pearls, gold starfish earrings drooping down her lobes, hair sculpted in waves, and body swathed in a multicolored wrap, she rises to ready herself for the first Polaroid test shot, looking like a tall version of Hermione Gingold. When she cackles, her eyes disappear into slits, and her two gapped front teeth come at you like a 3-D film, sans the specs.

Marilyn, the costume designer, kits me out in Cerruti gear, and Greg snaps and lights and Polaroids. The pictures are for a Vanity Fair-style cover for a scene in the film. We pose with the imagined arrogance of the world’s richest couple. June 29: Nine A.M. at the Warner Bros, studios. The readthrough is an odd biscuit: no producer, no lead actor; Maruschka, Sandra, myself, and Donald Burton, who plays the butler. Writer. Director. Coke and doughnuts. Read in requested Texan drawl. By midmorning this request is withdrawn, and “Why not try it in like a snotty British accent?”

Four P.M. to Paramount studios to meet Bruce Willis and Joel Silver. Willis is finishing on The Bonfire of the Vanities. We arrive too early. I am entertained by Suzanne Todd, the fasttalking blonde associate producer. In her early 20s, with a double-torpedo bust, which I admire out loud, for which she thanks me, laughs, and then says, “Let’s go onto the set and see if we can find him.”

Joel says to us, “This time next year-you watch-/fawA will be bgger than Die Harder.”

When we find Bruce, he disarms me with a bear hug and a gimmefive-brother hand slap. Molto friendly, and I am instantly won over. He tells me how funny he thought Withnail and I and Advertising were, and says, “Welcome aboard. We are gonna make one hell of a movie! Have you met Joel?” I “not yet” my way back to his trailer, where he shows me pictures of his baby and wife and does everything to make me feel at ease and relaxed. “You gotta meet Joel.” Suzanne is trying to reach him on a mobile phone, and, when she gets through, takes notes fast and replies even faster. “That’s Joel!” says Bruce. And all our energy seems to be vacuuming toward the imminent arrival of this reputed Human Hurricane. Suzanne is still talking to him on the phone as his car squeals up and he invades the trailer. He is the energy field. Full and fleshly furnished, bearded, curly-haired with dark eyes, which constantly dart behind big-rimmed glasses, and the VOICE: a raspy runaway train of command and cajole. Bulletspoken and POSSESSED OF EVERYTHING TO DO WITH THE MAKING OF MOVIES. I am at once transfixed and terrified. Although he is probably only a few years my senior, I feel like guppy bait to his shark. The buddy-buddy camaraderie between Bruce and Joel has a distinctly different metabolic rate from that of the young writer-director duet I was with all morning. I can’t think when I have ever met two humans so obviously BRIMMING with self-confidence.

Conversation is dollar-thick with the projected box office for their latest joint venture, Die Hard 2. “You coming to the premiere?” demands Joel.

“I’m booked to fly home Monday.”

“Nah, you wanna come? You gotta see this. Change your flight. Suzanne! Do it!” She does and I do. Not that I am forced against my will, you understand, but there is something unavoidable about Mr. Silver when he issues a command.

July 2: L.A. premiere of Die Harder. Suggested orders from on high that Sandra and I go together as we are to play in the team’s next BIGGIE. Barracuda-length limos are congested outside the cineplex. Air-raid lights sweep the sky. Photographers yell the first names of their starry prey to get their shots. Sandra, a veteran of late-night chat shows, has a sassy quip for every comer, blase-ing her way along the press corridor with aplomb.

“Who’s the guy?” they shout.

“My co-star in the next big one from Bruce and the boys.”

As the credits roll there is whooping and cheering and clapping and everyone is 16 again. It’s as if we have all been plugged into a high-voltage “hit” circuit. Joel says to us on the way in, “This time next year—you watch—Hawk will be even bigger than this one.” Before the end titles have rolled, before the lights have brightened, the audience is ERUPTING. Human lava flows over the backs of seats, scrambling to get within reach of the volcanic center of this HIT. Namely Willis and Silver Inc. I meet the financial and physical muscle of Tinseltown in the persons of Mr. Stallone and Mr. Schwarzenegger, who are taking turns bear-hugging Bruce.

The party is at Joel Silver’s house at the discreet residential end of Hollywood Boulevard. He is a collector of houses—those of architect Frank Lloyd Wright—and has invested huge amounts of both passion and greenbacks into restoring these sites. Soft music, sashaying waiters with wooden leaf-shaped platters offering Thai canapes, and we are in the pages of Architectural Digest’s celebrity-home feature. One question has lodged itself in my brain and will not budge: How does a man like Joel, who makes big, noisy, actionpacked, live “cartoon” films, equate with this opposite order of things? Joel seems to enjoy my obvious astonishment at all this and gives me a quick tour of his Obsession.

Demi’s bore-through-your-skul green eyes kick-start male-hormone circulation from 0 to 60 in seconds.

Meet Danny Aiello, who plays Bruce’s partner in crime in Hudson Hawk, and blow some fan smoke up his nethers about his great work in Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing. Followed by Demi MOORE-“YOU PRONOUNCE rr D’MEE,” she says, correcting my “Dimi.” Her voice is extraordinarily deep.

“You sound like a ruptured carburetor,” I say, which makes her laugh. She has the kind of bore-through-your-skull green eyes that kick-start male-hormone circulation from 0 to 60 in a couple of seconds. “Bruce and I loved Withnail and Advertising. Funny stuff. Have you met everyone?” She takes my arm and wields me round the throng. Talk is not the usual Will-it-won’t-it-be-a-hit? but How-big?-How-much?-How-soon?

My wife and I have bought an ancient little pile in Provence and prepare for our first holiday there. I am contracted to Hawk for a total of 22 shooting days over three months. Plans to commute between Rome and Nice. The first sign that something is awry is a phone call from the Dwarf. “Your start date in Rome has been delayed. Shooting in New York has not gone according to schedule, so you are on hold for a week or so. Enjoy your holiday.”

August L‘ Flight to Rome. Taxi through pouring rain to the Hotel Excelsior. Locate Ms. Bernhard, who is in the Hotel D’lnghilterra, below the Spanish Steps. We arrange to have dinner with a director friend of hers and two jerks. No matter, because Sandra is firing on all cylinders, ENRAGED. Turns out she has been alone in Rome for more than three weeks to bond with the dog that is her constant companion in the movie. The dog is supposed to be called Bunny, and Sandra has been Bunnying the mutt every training session and flinging balls about. With no discernible result.

August 2: Eleven A.M. rehearsal call. Bruce and Joel et al. have arrived, and we are going through the dialogue and camera setups for the interior of a stretch-limousine scene, to be shot tomorrow, circling the Colosseum. Hot as a hellhole. A deeppurple ’56 Chrysler saloon has been specially customized into a “stretch” and shipped over from New York for filming. It is the setting for the first meeting between Hudson Hawk and Darwin Mayflower (my character). Lots of discussion and general farting about. One thesp, and there is always one, has taken it upon himself to act as interpreter between some of the American crew and the newly incorporating Italians in his pidgin lingo. He is a chainsmoking old guinea fowl who finds his own stories windbagfully hilarious and is today’s front-runner for Bore of the Century.

Some mildly obscene comfort to be had from encountering him being iced by James Coburn in the makeup van. Coburn eyed him, bared his Magnificent Seven fangs, and grunted some dismissal. With his voice, gallon-deep, and the requisite cigar jammed into the corner of his mouth, he is as Movie Icon Cool as it’s possible to get. Only, his hands are arthritic, and he explains that the agony of this disease has kept him from working these past few years. But he is in love with Paula, who is his constant companion, and as charming and dropdead gorgeous as you’d expect of this cinematic gunslinger.

Bruce has two bodyguards in tow, ex-Israeli armyites who shadow his every move, plus his own makeup/hair person. Bruce has an untouchable King Midas aura about him, and is buoyed up by the boxoffice bonanza of Die Harder, which has taken in more than 100 million bucks in the U.S.A. alone. Hudson Hawk is his movie, and what he says goes. The campy, cartoonish style of the script demands a somewhat overthe-top attitude. “Go out there, man,” encourages Bruce. “Don’t hold anything back.”

August 3: Camera crew are pissed off about the purple Chrysler, as they claim that, while “customized,” it has not been designed to accommodate a crew PLUS actors. Worst of all, it has no air-conditioning. With lights, windows closed for sound recording, generator, cables, and eight fully grown men all breathing in close proximity, things get VERY sticky VERY quickly. Bruce is demanding that I go “stark raving mental,” despite my reluctant excuse that if I start this “wigged-out” there will be nowhere left to go in my subsequent scenes of dementia. “You can’t be insane enough in this movie.” During a break, Michael Lehmann sidles up to the window and says to ignore this advice and to “do less.”

Things get real speedy when news comes through that the private jet standing by to take Bruce and Joel to Nice for the weekend has to leave by 8:30 P.M. AS I do not work again for another week, Bruce and Joel generously offer me a free flight. Madonna is on tour in Nice, and they want to go see her. How Sandra will respond to this getaway plan might best be described in military terms: she’ll go ballistic. Especially as Madonna is involved (about whom she is territorial). Especially as she has now clocked up some weeks in Roma and not yet worked a day.

August 8: Iraqi troops have invaded Kuwait. Call to fly back to Rome. Get there and am told that I am not needed until Monday. Dinner with Bruce, Joel, Sandra, and the gang. No one goes about in pairs or trios, but in a phalanx, invading a restaurant and ordering most of the menu. Bodyguards, friends, assistants, actors, babes—tout le monde. So while Saddam insanes his way into Kuwait, we hear the doodlebug news that Maruschka Detmers is being “replaced.” Hear that the reason for Desperately Seeking Madonna was to ask if she would take over. Impossible, as she is mid-tour.

August 13: Mussolini’s old headquarters. As Sandra and I play Minerva and Darwin Mayflower, the world’s most obnoxious couple, the Fascist architecture is deemed appropriate. The Mayflowers are lunching on their terrace with the double-crossing Coburn. Messrs. Willis and Aiello burst through and fling themselves over the balcony, land below, LIVE!, and roll down the endless steps, still fighting,THISIS A CARTOON.

What might normally take 3 or 4 hours to complete ends up eating 11. The problem is threefold: Bruce, Joel, and Michaelall have differing ideas. As Bruce has conceived this whole story, he reserves the right to rearrange the dialogue, add jokes, watch the playback of each take on the TV monitor, suggest different line readings, discuss the Art of Comedy, all of which takes time. Joel’s personal chef provides culinary relief in the sanctuary of his trailer, to which Sandra and I are invited. You can tell just how off-kilter things are today by the degree of vibration in Joel’s leg. He is on the mobile phone to the States, and his leg is jumping before he has even made the connection. Frustrated by the eight-hour time difference, he looks ready to levitate, “WHAT THE FUCK IS FUCKING WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY THAT IT SHOULD BE EIGHT FUCKING HOURS AHEAD OF

EVERYWHERE ELSE? ANSWER ME, YOU FUCK!” For one boneshattering second I think he is asking me, his eyes just happening to flick my way for an instant, “ANSWER, FUCK!!” Someone picks up the phone, and the “wake-up call” he gets is a CLASSIC. As in a five-act classical opera sung at full Aida pitch by Giuseppe Silver, ATOMIC. My fork has fixed midway to my mouth, my jaw gaping and heart POUNDING lest this INFERNO redirect itself toward my pasta-filled chops. This is the Silver from which Legend is mined.

“YOU TELL THAT FUCKING DICKBRAIN THAT IF HE HAD ANY DECENCY HE WOULD HAVE RETURNED MY CALL INSTEAD OF ACTING LIKE HIS SHRIVELED OLD DICK WAS ALREADY IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF FUCKING! WE COULD HAVE HAD A DEAL. WE COULD HAVE DONE THE FUCKING DEAL. NO, YOU LISTEN TO ME, YOU GET ALL OF THIS? PROBLEM IS HE IS JUST TOO FUCKING OLD. YOU GOT THAT? FINE, FINE! FADE IT!” All of which hurtles out in one angry breath. As his finger stabs the off button, he is already all sweetness and light, and I could swear he has hugely enjoyed this. Followed by pasta which he hoovers down with equal ferocity. I have never seen this kind of human explosion firsthand, misguidedly believing it exists only in Marvel comic books. But this is KERPOW, ZAAAAP!, SPLAT, and KA-BOOM! for real.

August 15: “All Saints’ Day in Rome” could be the theme song for what is happening to us, as in “all our saints go marching home.” The German cinematographer and camera crew have left. As has the first assistant director. Dante Spinotti is taking over the photography, and Andie MacDowell flies in to save us all!

“We would love to work wHh you. What do you think of Sandra Bernhard for your wife?”

August 17: Cinecitta studios. Joel Silver’s office has been decorated with faux Roman frescoes and columns and drapes. It is the setting for a photo shoot involving Mr. and Mrs. Mayflower and their psychotic butler in sadomasochistic poses and leatherwear. These pictures are to be a joke for a later scene during which we are showing Hudson Hawk slides of our business activities, which have been inadvertently mixed up with scenes of our proclivities. Standing about in “Varga Girl” high heels, leather panties, brassiere, stockings, and lipstick, like a lost member of some touring Rocky Horror Picture Show, at this exact moment I know—beyond all reasonable DOUBT-THAT THIS MOVIEIS A ONE-WAY TICKET OUT OF MY MIND.

Fly to France. Fortnight free to wait.

September 12: Fly to Milan. Picked up and driven to Rimini, on the coast. None of the film unit about. They are shooting at some castle location an hour’s drive away. Mosey down into the marbled, be-palmed lobby of this Art Nouveau hotel and unexpectedly meet Demi, baby, and nanny. We joke about the tabloid EXCLUSIVE PICTURES of Bruce kissing Andie MacDowell and the accompanying “scoop” that it was Demi who said about Ms. Detmers, “Either she goes or I go.” All of which is so much hog, as she has never even met Maruschka and this is her first visit to the set since we started, seven weeks ago. The EXCLUSIVE kiss pics, taken with a telephoto lens, suggest some clandestine clinch. If the lens had not been so EXCLUSIVE in its focus, it would have revealed a wider view that included about 75 technicians and camera crew in the immediate vicinity. “Since the day we got married, they have been printing stuff that we are on the brink of breaking up. The hard part is for our families, because we have to phone around and reassure them that it is all bullshit.”

Bruce is transformed and exceptionally cheerful to have his family here. However, the schedule is a veritable Hydra: every time a day is lopped off here or there, two others seem to grow back in its place, and we are now seriously behind. The script resembles a Crayola color chart, as every amendment is committed in a different hue. Not that this is unusual. It’s just that this film has more than I have ever seen before. My death scene in the original version involved a fight between Bruce and me in the back of the purple limousine, ending in stand-up fisticuffs through the sunroof. This reveals that the car is hurtling down the interior corridors of the Kremlin before it crashes into a vast statue of Lenin, which topples forward, resulting in the decapitation of Darwin Mayflower by Vladimir Ilyich himself. For a variety of reasons, all of this has been kiboshed and the finale rewritten to take place atop the Mayflower castle in Italy. Hence Rimini (the closest big town to the location). And the seriously insane news is that we are still scheduled to go to Budapest to shoot Italian interiors inside a Hungarian studio owned by a producer living in Los Angeles. This seems like the logic of a deranged baboon, but I know that everything is dictated by the dollar.

With the latest rewrite, the Hawk-Mayflower confrontation in the purple Chrysler has been altered. It’s now a semi-finale involving a fight between Danny Aiello and me. This fight takes place in a stationary position, the movement simulated by out-of-shot crew members rocking the car. No sooner is this completed than my stunt double and the driver’s have to leap out of the runaway vehicle and roll away to safety. Everyone is out to watch the car “double” going over the cliff and being detonated by remote control. It also means the death of the Aiello character, as he is trapped inside the car— but not before my character taunts him on the car phone for one last demonic, cackling Arrivederci.

However, the prospect of not being around for the Happy Ending has set Danny a-thinking and a-scheming. Just how his character could possibly survive an exploding limousine would defy most logicians. But hey!—this is a movie. Danny has concocted a plotline in which his character secretly escapes. I assume this proposal is a joke. But clearly he has given this a lot of thought, and actually succeeds in getting this “suggestion” legitimized. Having escaped the nuked-limo inferno, he is next seen astride a donkey, joining the hero and heroine for one last cappuccino before the credits roll.

“Don’t give me that animal-rights crap,” says Sharon Stone. “Mink is farmed just like leather.”

Comes the Big Day, comes the Blowout. Our protagonist emerges from makeup and wardrobe with appropriately post-car-explosion smoking clothes and black-patched face ready to mount the unsuspecting donk. However, Danny’s hairdo is, as the Italian hairdresser would say, “Rossano Brazzi.” (Full blow-wave and set.) Joel, upon seeing this “oversight,” marauds into the makeup trailer to berate the ladies therein for not giving him the Electrified Topsy look in keeping with the rest of the post-explosion apparition. It transpires that Danny feels this would be over the top. At which point the last vestiges of sanity surely take flight. Discussion ensues among director, producer, and star, and within a very short overture’s worth, La Scala’s fiercest notes are screaming through the air, culminating in a command that HAIR MUST BE MUSSED. This causes something to short-circuit below the Rossano Brazzi, and Danny is OFF and SCREAMING, NOBODY has the right to challenge his hair decision. This is surely the result of many weeks’ frustration, and instead of punching live flesh, a lighting truck is preferred for the actual “fisting.” First aid and bandaging follow, as does remorse and follicular “compromise.” (Half a Brazzi.) In no time, Danny’s good humor and equilibrium restored, he has transformed this debacle into an “epicdote” worthy of a guest spot in Vegas. In the retelling, he punches the air with both fisticuff and guffaw.

September 17: Fly back to Rome. News arrives that the Budapest schedule has been delayed until the end of the month. Messages from Sandra. The kind you might normally expect to find in a bottle washed up somewhere remote, the bleep for HELP long dead. Turns out her New York agent is still quivering from the “explosives” detonated in his ears by Joel Silver. Why? I ask. “Why? Because he got to hear stuff I’d said about the movie in L.A. these past three weeks and he’s threatened to fire my lily-white gay arse.” She gives a garbled replay of her agent’s version of events: ‘You tell that f-ing Bernhard bitch she can go fuck herself and I will fire her if she says another word about this movie while it’s still shooting and who the fuck does she fucking think she is?”

October 8: Sandra does some Prostration and Bandage work on Joel.

October 11: To Cinecitta studios, where once Fellini reigned omnipotent. Within a vast soundstage, they have built a monumental conference room that feels like it belongs in You Only Live Twice. As it is the Mayflowers’ headquarters, the table is a three-dimensional M. Everything goes just tickety smoochy, and the atmos is relaxed and productive. Joel, Bruce, and Michael give their approbation to Sandra and me by saying every now and again, “You two are funny.” What takes time is getting Bunny to perform. The pink-tracksuited Dog Expert is forever blowing his little whistle and prancing about, trying to get the wretched canine to follow instructions. Something quite ridiculous about seeing nigh on 100 adults, lights, camera, and ACTION concentrated on the activities of a four-legged creature. I need hardly tell you that Bunny clearly feels the pressure of this moment, and upon hearing ACTION bolts for the nearest exit.

The whiff of budgetary hysteria is ever present. What would surely induce coronary thrombotics in any other man seems to FIRE JOEL UP. He challenges the executive panic with the bravado of a seasoned gladiator. After he’d had one particularly heavy brawl on the phone, I happened to be in his flight path and was slipstreamed off to an ice-cream parlor with him and Suzanne, the associate producer. He does something I have always fantasized about doing, which is to order EVERY SINGLE ICE-CREAM CONCOCTION ON THE MENU. “Don’t bother to choose something. I’ve ordered the lot.” My disbelief is exactly matched by the waiter’s. Our table of three is STACKED with every variation of banana split and sundae while Joel scoops and tastes each glass like a man condemned.

The weekend exodus is upon us again. Bruce has gone to New York. Joel has gone to Paris. All this travel flurry creates a kind of mild panic—making you feel left out of the club if you’re not bound for somewhere, anywhere, other than old Roma. At this desperate juncture, Sharon Stone—“Shaz,” as she was instantly nicknamed—blonded her way into our orbit. She is here working on a thriller flick, and is an old friend of Joel’s. Turns out her plan to fly to Paris with him has been aborted at the last minute, so she, too, is at a loose end. She is incredibly stylish and sophisticated in a somewhat self-conscious way, as if she has watched a catalogue of Grace Kelly movies a little too closely. Voice sounds all the time as though she has a slight cold. Sandra and I meet her in her rented apartment before going out to find some lunch. It’s nearly three P.M. by the time we hit the restaurant trail. Near the Pantheon we attempt to lasso the attention of the about-to-close restaurateur. Sandra motors in first, and her protestations of febrile hunger are met with a tut-tut no-no. “ Watch this, ” says Shaz, with the winky glint of a seasoned assassin. And in she swishes to lay on her “deadlies.” Sandra is not easily impressed and says we are wasting our time. No sooner has she uttered this than Shaz emerges with the beguiled and smiling proprietor in tow, who is now concave at the prospect of cooking us up anything we desire. From here on outward and into various shops, we are in her total control. And we are her perfect audience, going with every whim and flow of her fancy, including visits to her favorite stores. Soon we are in a leather shop, and she is trying on coats and sashaying up and down before the mirror, and the assistants are quietly preparing themselves for a big commission, such is the conviction of her shopping technique. Having exhausted their repertoire, we leave empty-handed. “Would you wear fur?” I ask. “Of course. Don’t give me that animal-rights crap. Mink is farmed just like leather.” Now it’s an interior-design emporium, and Sandra is starting to lose it. Shaz yodels about a large terracotta column top that she thinks would be perfect in her dining room with a glass tabletop. The afternoon is passing by like some bizarre rehearsal for superstardom. Along the way, I ask whether she has had an affair with Joel. To which she demurs, but then says that she likes a “cuddly producer.”

October 15: Second conference-room scene. All activity has been torpedoed by the absence of Bruce, who is still in New York. We shoot around where he should be. We do the dialogue to a “double.” Cruise into Joel’s office at lunchtime to borrow Variety Joel says, “COME IN, COME IN. SO I hear you were asking what it’s like to fuck a fat old Jew.”

My knees go first, followed by the rest, slumping fast into the sofa. Ears ringing. Nervous system approaching meltdown. One word dries out of my mouth: “SHAZ?”

Hawkisthe dream of Brace Willis, who has nurtured it since his days of being a New Ybrk barman.

I don’t know if he says “Yeah” or “You betcha” or what, because I am retracing my afternoon with Shaz at Road Runner speed, coming to a standstill at Have you had anaffair with Joel?— which are the words that came trotting out of me, as past and present simultaneously combust. He starts laughing, and says not to take it so seriously.

“ARE YOU KIDDING?

I ASKED IF SHE HAD HAD AN AFFAIR WITH YOU. NOT ‘FUCKED A FAT OLD JEW.’”

“I am a fat old Jew,” he roars. “She’s history. Over and outta here.”

I never spoke to Shaz again. I also wonder whether these were her actual words, or whether Joel was giving me a dose of the fear, knowing I would nuke on cue.

October 17: Cinecitta studios for the Rutherfords Auction House sequence. This is supposedly in New York and features most of the main characters, bidding for equine antiquities. Bernhard and I attempt to outbid each other, then make a hasty exit as the auctioneer explodes, followed by the entire room. All the usual delays involved in rigging falling columns, explosions, and non-English-speaking extras, plus the wretched Bunny and its human “trainer.” About as close to incarceration in an Italian lunatic asylum as you are likely to get.

October 25: Unit exodus to Budapest. I fly to London for a week’s break. This is theoretically my final day on the film, according to my original contract. The reality is another month to go in Budapest. What follows is something that I suspected might unhinge my brain. And it did. There are diary entries to prove it. Be warned.

October 31: Ten A.M. to Budapest. Nothing works. Three and a half hours east of London and it truly is the Eastern bloc. My luggage is lost. The Ramada hotel where we are impounded is appropriately on an island in the middle of the Danube, between Buda and Pest. People cough a lot. I start, too, and fear I have contracted lung cancer. Bruce is back in New York, Joel has yet to arrive. In other words, things are in the hands of us lesser mortals.

November L My fourth wedding anniversary. I’m picked up and trekked out to the far-flung Mafilm studios to shoot interiors set in Italy. The studios are located in the middle of wasteland, in a barely heated jerry-built dump. The rewritten scene is a cue for everyone to offer an opinion. Michael, the director, has one idea, James Coburn another; David Caruso, playing Kit Kat, one of Coburn’s flunkies, and up until now silent (having chosen to stay dumb but not deaf, and miming everything, as his character has had his tongue bitten off), has released himself from this self-imposed Method Act and is offering his idea of how we might progress. I have not had any significant interaction with him so far, as he has resolutely stayed “in character” on set and off. I am completely taken aback when he confronts me in the makeup room, saying that I have been “ignoring him.” As an “apology” trips forth from my tongue, my head somersaults around the real insanity that has begun to prevail. “But, David, we have hardly ever spoken, on account of your playing this guy who has had his tongue cut out, right?"

November 8: The set is the vast and impressive Gold Machine room, where the Mayflowers’ da Vinci alchemy plans are reaching fruition. Even to mention old Leonardo in the current context induces rectal cramp.

Our dressing rooms are on the top floor of this “studio.” Lurch below for Bruce’s close-ups for our off-camera dialogue, originally shot without him present. This requires lens changes, lighting readjustment, followed by the delay of watching the replay on the video playback. Leaving no one in any doubt as to who rules this precinct. What Bruce wants, Bruce gets.

He’s incredibly energized when it comes to bullying a scene into action, and seems to thrive on staying in his trailer until the last minute, until a scene has been set up, lit, and worked out. Then he bounds in, joking and backslapping everyone along the way, and rejects the lighting, moves floor marks, and redirects the entire shebang, which means starting all over again. Yet as exhausting as all this gets, when Bruce chooses to spotlight you with his charm and attention, it is difficult not to be won over. He is totally charismatic and accessible.

Joel is noticeably preoccupied and seemingly obsessed with getting the pre-Xmas trailer for the film cut to entice the punters with just the right ker-pow and guffaw quotient for this epic. But even he seems to have that end-of-term enervation about him. Gone are the communal feasts. Gone is the air of Swash and Buckle. Bruce declares, “I’m gone. Getting outta here! I ain’t staying in Budy longer than next weekend.”

November 12: My wife, Joan, calls from London. Exhausted. Our baby daughter, Olivia, very ill and not responding to antibiotics. I’m pulling my hair out. Or what’s left of it. HELPLESS!

According to the front page of Variety, the film could cost as much as 60 million greenbacks.

November 17: Bruce’s last day. Gives Sandra and me a stash of oral notes about the remaining filming before hotfooting out of here.

November 19: FINAL FINAL FINAL WEEK IN HUNGARY! The End is in sight, and energy erupts. Briefly. I am told by the director that tomorrow, Tuesday, will be my last day. I cannot wipe the smile from my chops, ALL DAY.

November 20: Sandra has become a one-woman travel agency and knows every detail of every flight currently networked out of Eastern Europe to New York. Today is the day I get to be smothered in molten gold and killed off. And shoot my final, world-dominating speech to Bruce Willis. Only we shot his reactions last week. Now I am giving an Ethel Merman-size rant to his stand-in. Anything to get this over with.

That this final day has finally arrived is, predictably, not the cathartic release you imagine it might be. Nay, nay, just the exhausted, spent, bleached dull relief that it has come to its end. Buy the crew a crate of Hungary’s best champagne to toast and thank them for the ride. They drink from plastic cups. The best costs $20 here, and rather than this feeling like a bargain, it merely underlines how tacky the whole thing is. Olivia is on the mend. Final drive from the Stalag studios back to Budy and a farewell dinner with Ms. Burnt-out.

November 22: Final indignity: another note at the hotel, “GET YOUR OWN TAXI TO THE AIRPORT. FILM UNIT DRIVERS HAVE BEEN LAID OFF.” A lunatic in a Lada is my charioteer. He embarks upon a diversionary route that promises to take in the Russian Steppes and possibly the outer Ukraine. What he does not realize is that I have checked the going rate for the trip to the airport, and spend the journey trying to imagine what expression will cripple his glee-filled features when he discovers what money I don’t have to hand over. Finally, farting and belching smoke (the Lada, not me), we jerk to a halt at the terminal and get my bags onto a trolley. When he points to his meter of multiple numerals, I stuff the exact true fare into his paw and utter what I hope will be my last word here: “KURSE-N-IM” (Hungarian for “thank you”). A torrent of abuse issues from his face, to which I calmly shrug and repeat the one word I know and now relish: “KURSE-N-IM.” Indeedy.

Today I get to shoot my final, world-dominating speech to Bruce Willis. Only we shot his reactions last week.

The plane is delayed. No matter. To top this day of release, the euphoric headlines smashed across every London paper, when I land at Heathrow, declare that THATCHER is OUT. Me too, Margaret. And none too soon. She, no doubt, “out of her mind,” and me, equally unhinged with JOY to be FREE! OF HUNGARY,HAWK,AND HER!!!

Fast forward to May 17, 1991: Press junket in L.A., for which the pre-game tactic talk is “WE ALL HAD F-U-N, RIGHT? RIGHT!!!” Like crates of flat Coca-Cola, we are wheeled in and assaulted by tableloads of press, who are unable to disguise their hatred.

May 18: Andie MacDowell and I, with our agents, are whisked off to Columbia studios for a screening, as we are the only ones who have not seen the “result.” We are unable to look at each other afterward. My agent says, “You and Sandra were—”

“Please, I beg of you, don’t say another word. Please. ” Absolutely sure I will never work in this town again.

May 21: PREMIERE. Same time, same place, as Die Hard 2 last year. The special effect of a human lava flow heralding a hit is awesomely reversed: tonight 1,000 people have been made to disappear so that by the time the houselights are up, the seats are bare. The party postmortem is held at Asylum, where very soon waiters outnumber the guests.

May 24: Memorial Day weekend. Film opens on 2,000 screens, and returns are $7.5 million, whereas more than four times that was hoped for. What began as a spoof Bond-type caper ended up a capon—the film named Turkey of the Decade by the Alternative Academy.

And a one, two, three: DO DO DODO DUM, DI-DUM, DI-DUM,

DO DO DODO DUMB, DI-DUM DI . . .