My First Million: Clint Eastwood and Kelly's Heroes

By the late 60's and early 70's, Clint Eastwood was becoming one of Hollywood's biggest stars.  Thanks to the world wide success of Sergio Leone's Man With No Name Trilogy (where he actually has a name, in each...), Eastwood was paid hefty sums in the $500,000 - $750,000 range for World War II action fest Where Eagles Dare and the awesomely excessive western musical Paint Your Wagon, co-starring fellow cinema badass Lee Marvin.  But his first million dollar paycheck came for, I believe, 1970's Kelly's Heroes.  Re-teaming with Eagles director Brian G. Hutton, Eastwood would receive top billing this time around, heading up a talented cast that included Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Carroll O'Connor and Donald Sutherland.  What initiallyally started out as a Comedic Adventure Caper, Heroes would suffer a tumultuous shoot that was originally slated for 9 weeks but went on for 6 months in Yugoslavia.

The script, originally titled, The Warriors, by Troy Kennedy Martin, sold to MGM for a cool $250,000 clams.  The story of a group of G.I.'s in France who go behind enemy lines to steal $16 million of Nazi gold, The Warriors had all the potential trappings of a great anti-war adventure film.  Director Hutton saw it as a comedy while Eastwood saw it as a satirical adventure caper.  At first thinking they could shoot it in northern California, production moved to Yugoslavia where original World War II weapons and vehicles were still abundant.  Throw in the offer to demolish a small town and the newly retitled Kelly's Heroes was off and running.  To kick things off, Donald Sutherland was struck down with a case of Spinal Meningitis and spent 5 weeks in an English hospital.  The tone of the script was tricky to pinpoint as Eastwood saw it as a reflection of his own military service where he spent most of his time as a swimming instructor and his views on the Vietnam conflict.

Kelly's Heroes is one of my all time favorite Clint Eastwood flicks.  It's big, funny, weird and fun.  There's everything World War II movie aficionados love: Thompson sub-machine guns, tanks, minefields, a motley crew of smart ass G.I.'s, dog impressions, negative waves, Lalo Schfrin score, celebrating villagers, Tiger Tanks, snipers, wine and cheese. Eastwood is in typical serious form as the fed up soldier who sees his shot and takes it.  Sutherland gets the award for Best Hippie in World War 2 while O'Connor is hilariously blowhard as the general listening to the caper on the radio, thinking it's actually some motivated campaign to break enemy lines.  It's a men on a mission flick that isn't as long, serious or slow burning as The Guns of Navarone or The Dirty Dozen (which are both great, just different).  It would be interesting to see what the original version would have been like as Hutton and Eastwood fought and lost to the studio's recutting of the picture to remove most of the anti-war satire.  Eastwood would later comment on the film having the potential to be great but in the end was just a bunch of screw offs running around.  Kelly's Heroes had the unfortunate distinction of being prepared, produced and released under 3 different studio regimes at MGM.  In a bid to fight off the growing threat of television, Heroes was released in the over sized 70mm format.  The film took in $5.2 million, less than Where Eagles Dare but a decent hit nonetheless.

Eastwood was only 2 films away from another career defining film, the anti-establishment cop thriller, Dirty Harry.  Director Brian G. Hutton's output would slow tremendously before eventually retiring.  Donald Sutherland had just come off the smash hit MASH and still had  Klute, Animal House and Ordinary People in his near future.  Kelly's Heroes would be one of Carol O'Connor's last film credits before finding huge success on television in All in the Family, Archie Bunker's Place and In the Heat of the Night.  Telly Savalas had already established himself as a great character actor in roles ranging from the psycho soldier in The Dirty Dozen and as a Bond villain in On Her Majesty's Secret Service before becoming TV's Kojak.

That's your problem!

My First Million: Jean-Claude Van Damme & Universal Soldier

Following the success of 1988's Bloodsport, Jean-Claude Van Damme was in high demand.  Tom Pollack, then head of Universal studios, called JCVD wanting to work with him.  Unfortunately, the young Muscles From Brussels had signed multiple contracts with smaller independent studios, using snippets from the unreleased Bloodsport as his calling card.  Now that he was hot, everybody came looking; starting with the man behind the melee, Cannon Film's Menahem Golan.  Golan had JC locked into a low paying contract that paid him $25,000 for Bloodsport, then $50,000 and $75,000 for two more pictures that ended up being 1989's Cyborg and 1990's Death Warrant.  Each of these low budget actioners would gross 10 times their production costs, thus making Van Damme a safe investment.

By the time Van Damme got out of his low paying contracts, it was time for a step up.  Along with Bloodsport co-writer and now trusted friend and director Sheldon Lettich, the two developed Double Impact, the tale of reunited twins who team up to exact revenge on the mobsters who killed their parents.  Produced in name only by Academy Award winner Michael Douglas (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and long time associate Moshe Diamont, Double Impact would be a bigger and classier Van Damme affair that showed a different side of the karate guy.  The budget?  Roughly $15 million.  A far cry from the $1-3 million that Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Cyborg, Death Warrant and Lionheart each cost.  Released by Columbia Pictures in August of 1991, Double Impact would become Van Damme's highest grosser yet, raking in $30 million at the U.S. box office.  His fee?  $600,000.

Around the same time, Mario Kassar of Carolco had previously paid Sylvester Stallone $16 million for 1988's Rambo III and just handed over a slightly used private airplane worth $14 million to Arnold Schwarzenegger for 1991's Terminator 2:  Judgment Day.  Sly and Arnie were already the undisputed kings of action cinema which meant challengers to the crown were inevitable.  Kassar sent the script for Crystal Knights, an action romp about reanimated dead soldiers that had stalled out under Andrew Davis (Steven Seagal's Under Siege) to Van Damme with an offer worth a cool $1 million.  Kassar also recruited Hollywood and real life tough guy Dolph Lundgren to the play the villain.  Lundgren had made a splash opposite Stallone in 1985's mega hit Rocky IV but struggled after with enjoyable duds like 1987's Masters of the Universe, 1988's Red Scorpion, 1989's I Come In Peace and 1991's Showdown In Little Tokyo.

Fresh from Germany director Roland Emmerich was hired to take the reigns as he had just walked away from helming Stallone in the still yet to be made Isobar.  Kassar only gave Emmerich one caveat, make the "mini-Terminator" for $20 million.  Working with friend and co-writer Dean Devlin, the two rewrote the script, renamed it Universal Soldier and headed to Nevada and Arizona to shoot the film.  For Van Damme, it was a chance at the big time.  A studio picture with a talented director, ample resources and known co-stars could elevate him beyond the low budget, video market karate pictures he was known for. 

The story of two soldiers who kill each other in Vietnam and come back in the present day part of a government program as elite yet blank, zombie-esque killing machines; Universal Soldier stands as one of the great action flick examples of the 90's.  It's big, loud, violent, fast and funny.  Big machines, big guns, big guys, big action, big fights and big explosions, it's all there.  While it may play as a knock off of Robocop and Terminator to some, Emmerich and crew deliver a film with it's own vision, scope and attitude that highlighted Van Damme and Dolph's attributes while putting them in an actual "movie" where they're part of the attraction instead of the only thing on display.  Van Damme plays Luc Deveraux as simple, innocent and childlike while also utilizing his karate prowess to beat up a room full of thugs and slug it out in the rain against Dolph.  Lundgren goes for it as the psycho Sgt. Andrew Scott and plays a wonderfully sinister and dark humored antagonist complete with human ear necklace.  It's an 80's and 90's action fan's dream come true as familiar faces like Simon Rhee (Best of the Best), Tiny Lister (No Holds Barred) and Ralf Moeller (Cyborg, Best of the Best 2) pop up to blow shit up.

Released in July of 1992, Universal Soldier would mark Van Damme's first $10 million opening on it's way to a $36 million total and continuing his filmography trend of performing better than his last picture.  Overseas the flick excelled and Unisol also became VD's first $100 million grosser.  In an essence, it really was a "mini-Terminator" as Arnie and James Cameron had roughly 5 times the money to spend on T2 and earned roughly 5 times as much.  Van Damme's next picture netted him over $3 million on his way to a career high (and start of decline) of $7 million for 1994's Street Fighter.  But that, is another story...

You're discharged, sarge!