The film was panned by critics and underperformed at the box office, grossing just $15.6 million against its $47 million budget.[2] The controversies surrounding the film were detailed in the 1991 book The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood, by Julie Salamon.
Plot
Sherman McCoy is a Wall Street bond trader who makes millions while enjoying the good life and the sexual favors of Maria Ruskin, a Southern bellegold digger. Sherman and Maria are driving back to Maria's apartment from JFK Airport when they take a wrong turn on the expressway and find themselves in the "war-zone" of the South Bronx.
They are approached by two black youths after Sherman gets out of the car to move a tire out of the road. He jumps back into the car and Maria guns the engine in reverse, running over one of the teenagers and they drive away. Sherman initially wants to report the incident to the police, but Maria immediately talks him out of it, fearing that their affair would be publicly exposed.
Meanwhile, alcoholic journalist Peter Fallow, anxious for a story to make good with his editor, comes upon the hit-and-run case as a rallying point for the black community calling upon Jewish district attorney Abe Weiss, who is the Bronx District Attorney seeking re-election. According to Judge Leonard White, almost all of DA Weiss' prosecutions end up with black and Puerto Rican defendants going to prison and Weiss is seeking a white defendant for purposes of convincing the minority-majority community that he is worth re-electing.
Weiss recognizes the press coverage inherent in prosecuting the callow Sherman, who has been discovered as the owner of the car, and therefore presumed to be the hit-and-run driver, in order to cultivate the image as an avenger for the minorities and be propelled to the mayorship of New York City. As Sherman is brought to his knees, New York City fragments into different factions who use the case to suit their own cynical purposes.
Finally, Sherman is left without any allies to support him except for the sympathetic Judge Leonard White and the remorseful Fallow. Fallow gains a tremendous advantage and insight into the case when he is dating a woman who is the sub-letting landlord of Maria's apartment, and knows of secret recordings of conversations in the apartment made by the building owners to prove that the woman is not in fact living in the rent-controlled apartment herself. She discovers information about the McCoy case (where Maria states she was driving the car), which she gives to Fallow, who in turn covertly supplies it to McCoy's defense attorney.
Sherman gets his hands on a tape and plays the recording in court, where it reveals Maria directly contradicting the evidence she has just given, showing she has been perjuring herself and causing her to faint. Sherman plays the tape on a tape recorder inside his briefcase connected to a small loudspeaker that he holds on the desk.
When the judge orders that he approach the bench with this evidence, he asserts that the tape is his (making it admissible evidence), resulting in his acquittal. The people in the court go into an uproar, to which Judge White launches into a tirade that they have no right to act self-righteous and smarmy, or that they are above Sherman, considering Reverend Bacon claims to help disadvantaged New Yorkers but actually engages in race baiting, or that the District Attorney Weiss pushed this case not in the interest of justice but in the interest of appealing to minority voters to further his political career by appealing to their desire to "get even". After the Judge makes his point, he begs the people to be decent and change their ways, letting Sherman go.
A year later, a large audience is applauding the premiere of Fallow's book. Fallow says that Sherman McCoy has moved away from New York City to an unknown destination, presumably to live in obscurity.
In addition, George Plimpton has a credited cameo appearance, Geraldo Rivera has an uncredited cameo appearance, and Hanks's wife Rita Wilson has a small but intense role as the PR woman at the beginning of the movie.
Production
The novel of The Bonfire of the Vanities was a bestseller. Warner Bros. bought the rights from author Tom Wolfe for $750,000.[3]
The film's production was plagued by controversy.[4] Among them were the acting choices. When the project was first pitched and Mike Nichols was attached as the original director, he wanted Steve Martin for the role of Sherman McCoy, but the studio rejected it because they thought Martin was too old for the role.[5] Tom Wolfe wanted Chevy Chase for McCoy.[6]Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise and Christopher Reeve were also considered for the role.[7]
Brian DePalma ultimately came on board to direct and offered the role of Peter Fallow to both Jack Nicholson and John Cleese[8] (Fallow was English in the novel), but both actors turned down the role. When De Palma was unable to deliver an actor, the studio forced him to cast Bruce Willis, who had starred in the successful 1988 film Die Hard.
Walter Matthau was initially offered the role of the judge, but demanded a fee of $1 million. The producers balked at meeting his price and signed Alan Arkin instead for a modest $150,000. Arkin was then replaced by Morgan Freeman when the studio decided to change the judge's ethnicity from Jewish to African American in order to respond to criticism of the film's racial politics, and dialogue was added to have the judge denounce the manipulative actions of the main characters. De Palma said he "didn't want to racially polarize" the film by having "a white judge talking morality to a basically black audience."[9] Arkin refused to waive his payment after being recast. Edward James Olmos was also considered for the role of the judge.[10]
F. Murray Abraham, who had a significant part in the film, chose not to be credited because of a contract dispute. When he was denied the billing above the title that he had requested, he took his name off the picture.[11]
De Palma wanted Uma Thurman to play Maria Ruskin. Thurman tested for the role, but Tom Hanks felt that she wasn't right for the part and, eventually, Melanie Griffith was cast instead.[12]
The studio made significant changes to the source material, making Sherman McCoy more sympathetic and adding a subplot involving a minor character, Judge Leonard White (eventually played by Freeman).
Filming
In one notable scene in the film, Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith) arrives in New York on an Air FranceConcorde. The film's second unit director, Eric Schwab, calculated the time and day when a runway at JFK Airport would line up exactly with the setting sun, to serve as a backdrop, and managed to film in the single 30-second time period when this occurs in any given year, while winning a bet that he could make the scene an essential part of the movie.[13] The 5-camera shot cost $80,000[14] and lasted just 10 seconds in the final cut. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond claimed credit for the shot in an American Cinematographer article.[15][16]
Schwab also directed the opening title shot—an almost equally elaborate and expensive set-up requiring a 24-hour timelapse of Manhattan, from a camera platform beside a gargoyle on top of the Chrysler Building.
The cover of Peter Fallow's book in the film has a similar design to the original first edition of Tom Wolfe's novel from 1987.
Cristofer's original script ended cynically with the supposed victim of the hit-and-run walking out of the hospital, suggesting that the whole scenario was concocted. That ending did not test well with audiences and was dropped.
Locations
Sherman and Judy McCoy's luxury apartment was built on the Warner Bros. stage in Burbank, designed by Richard Sylbert. The Park Avenue exteriors were shot on location late at night, using rain effects and a prop phone booth. The lobby scenes were shot at 77 Park Avenue.[18]
The courthouse interior scenes were shot at Queens County Courthouse, at night.[19] Courthouse exteriors were at the Mario Merola Building / Bronx County Courthouse. The subway entrance was fake — there is no subway station there. Another courthouse scene showing a riot in slow-motion had been shot at the Essex County Courthouse in Newark but was omitted from the film following negative reactions from test screenings.[20]
The 330-second Steadicam shot of Peter Fallow arriving at the Palm Court of the Winter Garden was a tour de force for operator Larry McConkey. He had to track backwards, get on a golf cart, ride it for 380ft (120m), get off it again, track backwards 234ft (71m), get into the elevator, get out again, and track for another 250ft (76m).[21]
The film itself was a critical and commercial disappointment when it was released. It cost an estimated US$47 million to make, but initially grossed just over US$15 million at the US box office.[1]
Critical reception was largely negative. The film scores a 15% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 54 reviews. The critical consensus reads: "The Bonfire of the Vanities is a vapid adaptation of a thoughtful book, fatally miscast and shorn of the source material's crucial sense of irony. Add it to the pyre of Hollywood's ambitious failures."[22] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 27 out of 100, based on 27 reviews, denoting "generally unfavorable reviews".[23] In Leonard Maltin's annual Movie Guide publication, he gave the film a "BOMB" rating, describing it as an "appallingly heavy-handed 'comedy'".[24]
Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.[25]
In its review, Variety magazine stated, "the caricatures are so crude and the 'revelations' so unenlightening of the human condition that the satire is about as socially incisive as an entry in the Police Academy series."[26]Vincent Canby of The New York Times denounced "Brian De Palma's gross, unfunny movie adaptation."[27]Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly called it "one of the most indecently bad movies of the year," giving it a D grade.[28] Rita Kempley of The Washington Post stated "the director has become one with the buffoons Wolfe scored in his bestseller. He has not only filed Wolfe's teeth but stuck his tail between his legs," and called the film "a calamity of miscasting and commercial concessions".[29] In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers wrote, "On film, Bonfire achieves a consistency of ineptitude rare even in this era of over-inflated cinematic air bags."[30]Gene Siskel, in the Chicago Tribune, wrote "preview audiences have hooted the film's revisionist ending, which concludes with a sermon. I didn't hoot because I was too sad. I gave up on the movie well before the ending."[31] In her review for the Los Angeles Times, Sheila Benson called the film, "an overstated, cartooned film for dullards".[32] Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, "Big books have been bastardized by Hollywood before– it's a time-honored tradition that counts Hemingway, Faulkner and the scribes of the Old Testament among its victims– but you'd be hard-pressed to find an adaptation that screws up as royally as Brian De Palma's take on The Bonfire of the Vanities. Miscast, misguided and miserably unfunny, Tom Wolfe's black satire about avarice, prejudice and criminal injustice in the loony-toon town of New York has been raped and stripped of all ambiguity and dimension." He ended the review by saying, "What a mess."[33]
A less hostile review, 2.5 stars out of a possible 4, came from Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. He felt that viewers who didn't read the novel might be confused by critical parts of the plot, and suggested Griffith and Freeman offered the best performances while Hanks was simply ineffective in his role. In Ebert's view, the film lacked the psychological depth of Wolfe's novel but "at least it does work well in a certain glossy way."[34]
Commenting on the way Wolfe's story was adapted, Brian De Palma said, "The initial concept of it was incorrect. If you're going to do The Bonfire of the Vanities, you would have to make it a lot darker and more cynical, but because it was such an expensive movie, we tried to humanize the Sherman McCoy character– a very unlikable character, much like the character in The Magnificent Ambersons. We could have done that if we'd been making a low-budget movie, but this was a studio movie with Tom Hanks in it. We made a couple of choices that, in retrospect, were wrong. I think John Lithgow would have been a better choice for Sherman McCoy, because he would have got the blue-blood arrogance of the character."[35]
However, De Palma has been quick to downplay the notion that the movie suffered because of studio interference: "The initial producers, once we had cast Hanks, moved on and went over to Columbia Pictures, so I was sort of left to my own devices and pursued ways in which I thought I could make this movie more commercial and keep some edge of the book... I thought we were going to get away with it, but we didn't. I knew that the people who read the book were going to be extremely unhappy, and I said, 'Well, this is a movie; it isn't the book.' And I think if you look at the movie now, and you don't know anything about the book, and you get it out of the time that it was released, I think you can see it in a whole different way."[35]
The Devil's Candy
The controversies surrounding the film were detailed in a 1991 book called The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood by Julie Salamon, who was the film critic for The Wall Street Journal and wanted to document the novel's film adaptation. De Palma granted her much access to the Bonfire filming.
Among other things, the book describes how De Palma had a difficult relationship with then-rising star Bruce Willis who, in the words of Salamon, "was generally disliked by most of the cast and crew [due to his ego]". In one instance, during the filming of a scene in which Willis was with Alan King (the scene in which King's character dies), Willis challenged the crew to make the whole scene move along faster, allegedly because it was very hot on the set. Although De Palma called Willis out of the set to discuss the event, the scene ended up being considerably shorter and simpler than originally intended.
De Palma described The Devil's Candy as "a very good book. I let Julie Salamon see everything. She portrayed it all very accurately. But I mean, nobody realized it was going wrong when we were making it. We were very enthusiastic about what we were doing."[35] Salamon's book was re-released in 2002 with the revised title The Devil's Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco and additional material (including Bruce Willis' negative reaction to the book). Another updated edition, also subtitled The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco, was published in 2021.
The second season of the Turner Classic Movies podcast The Plot Thickens is named after the book and retells the story of the making of the film. It is largely based on Salamon's book and interviews, and prominently features Salamon as a narrator and participant.[36]
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and screenwriter. With a career spanning over 50 years, he is best known for work in the suspense, crime and psychological thriller genres. His films include mainstream box office hits such as Carrie (1976), Dressed to Kill (1980), Scarface (1983), The Untouchables (1987), and Mission: Impossible (1996), as well as cult favorites such as Sisters (1972), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Blow Out (1981), Body Double (1984), Casualties of War (1989), and Carlito's Way (1993).
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Hanks's films have grossed more than $4.9 billion in North America and more than $9.96 billion worldwide, making him the fourth-highest-grossing actor in North America.
Jackson DeForest Kelley was an American actor, screenwriter, poet, and singer. He was known for his roles in Westerns and achieved international fame as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of the USS Enterprise in the television and film series Star Trek (1966–1991).
Awakenings is a 1990 American biographical drama film based on the 1973 non-fiction book of the same name. Directed by Penny Marshall, it was written for the screen by Steven Zaillian, who based his screenplay on Oliver Sacks's 1973 memoir of the same name. It tells the story of neurologist Dr. Malcolm Sayer, based on Sacks, who discovers the beneficial effects of the drug L-DOPA in 1969. He administers it to catatonic patients who survived the 1919–1930 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. Leonard Lowe and the rest of the patients are awakened after decades, and have to deal with a new life in a new time. Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, John Heard, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter Stormare and Max von Sydow also star in the cast. Awakenings was produced by Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, who first encountered Sacks's book as undergraduates at Yale, and optioned it a few years later. The film was a critical and commercial success, earning $108.7 million on a $29 million budget, and was nominated for three Academy Awards.
Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. was an American author and journalist widely known for his association with New Journalism, a style of news writing and journalism developed in the 1960s and 1970s that incorporated literary techniques. Much of Wolfe's work was satirical and centred on the counterculture of the 1960s and issues related to class, social status, and the lifestyles of the economic and intellectual elites of New York City.
A bonfire of the vanities is a burning of objects condemned by religious authorities as occasions of sin. The phrase itself usually refers to the bonfire of 7 February 1497, when supporters of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola collected and burned thousands of objects such as cosmetics, art, and books in the public square of Florence, Italy, on the occasion of Shrove Tuesday, martedí grasso.
Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. Born in Manhattan to future actress Tippi Hedren, she was raised mainly in Los Angeles, where she graduated from the Hollywood Professional School at age 16. In 1975, 17-year-old Griffith appeared opposite Gene Hackman in Arthur Penn's neo-noir film Night Moves. She later rose to prominence as an actor in films such as Brian De Palma's Body Double (1984), which earned her a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. Griffith's subsequent performance in the comedy Something Wild (1986) attracted critical acclaim before she was cast in 1988's Working Girl, which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her a Golden Globe.
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City, and centers on three main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant district attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow.
Elizabeth Alice Broderick is an American actress. She portrayed Zelda Spellman in the ABC/WB television sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996–2003). She also had recurring roles as Diane Janssen in the ABC mystery drama series Lost (2005–2008) and as Rose Twitchell in the CBS science fiction drama series Under the Dome (2013).
Leonard Stone was an American character actor who played supporting roles in over 120 television shows and 35 films.
Jesse James is a 1939 American Western film directed by Henry King and starring Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, Nancy Kelly and Randolph Scott. Written by Nunnally Johnson, the film is loosely based on the life of Jesse James, the outlaw from whom the film derives its name. The supporting cast includes Henry Hull, John Carradine, Brian Donlevy, Jane Darwell and Lon Chaney, Jr.
Raising Cain is a 1992 American psychological horror thriller film written and directed by Brian De Palma, and starring John Lithgow, Lolita Davidovich and Steven Bauer.
Tom Sawyer is the 1973 American musical film adaptation of the Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and was directed by Don Taylor. The film was produced by Reader's Digest in collaboration with Arthur P. Jacobs, and its screenplay and songs were written by both of the Sherman Brothers, Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman.
Edward Walter Hayes is an American lawyer, journalist, and memoirist. He is known for his role in settling the estate of Andy Warhol and representing several organized crime figures. Tom Wolfe's character Tommy Killian in The Bonfire of the Vanities is based on Hayes. Hayes is often regularly featured on different radio stations, in both Ireland and the USA. Most recently, Hayes was portrayed as a character in the Broadway hit, Lucky Guy, starring Tom Hanks.
Isn't It Romantic? is a 1948 American black-and-white comedy musical film from Paramount Pictures, directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring Veronica Lake and Billy De Wolfe. Supporting actors included Mona Freeman, Richard Webb and Pearl Bailey. Although it takes its title from a 1932 song by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, it is based on a novel called Gather Ye Rosebuds by Jeannette C. Nolan.
Wise Guys is a 1986 American black comedy crime film directed by Brian De Palma and produced by Aaron Russo from a screenplay written by George Gallo and Norman Steinberg. It stars Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo as two small-time mobsters from Newark, New Jersey, and features Harvey Keitel, Ray Sharkey, Lou Albano, Dan Hedaya, and Frank Vincent.
"Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast" is an essay by Tom Wolfe that appeared in the November 1989 issue of Harper's Magazine criticizing the American literary establishment for retreating from realism.
Fred C. Caruso is an American film producer known for his work on such films as Network and Blue Velvet.
Julie Salamon is an American author and journalist, who has been a film and television critic for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. She is the author of twelve books, for adults and children. In 2021, she was co-host and writer of Season Two of TCM's The Plot Thickens, based on her book The Devil's Candy. Since 1999 she has been board chair of BRC, a NYC non-profit that provides housing, medical care, job training and social services to New Yorkers who have become homeless.
Burton Bennett Roberts was an American judge. He served as Bronx district attorney before his election as a judge, later serving as the chief administrative judge for the New York Supreme Court in the Bronx until his retirement in 1998 after 25 years on the bench. His no-nonsense manner as a prosecutor and in court made him the model for the character Myron Kovitsky in the 1987 book The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.
↑ Golden, Tim, via The New York Times. "Bonfire Controversy Fueled By Satiric Touch", News & Record, December 21, 1990. Accessed July 8, 2022. "Warners paid off Arkin's six-figure contract and promptly hired Morgan Freeman, who had been considered earlier, to play the part as a black judge named Leonard White. 'I didn't want to racially polarize it,' De Palma, 50, explained. 'I didn't want a white judge talking morality to a basically black audience.'"
↑ Owens, Mitchell (January 2000). "Vincent Fourcade - Celebrating The Pleasures Of Magnificent Excess". Architectural Digest. Vol.57, no.1. p.169. one of twenty-five persons named by the magazine "Interior Design Legends".
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