Laure and the kids came to visit, and we had a blast in Chicago, eating at restaurants and going to see Michael Jordan play. Macaulay was staying in a different hotel, but we picked him up and took him to the park with us to play. He was a sweet kid but had lived a very different life than my kids. He didn’t know how to play tag or throw the ball around. He was more of an indoor kid and had a lot of adult pressure on him from show business and parents and such. We realized he had formed a friendship with Michael Jackson, because when we picked him up, his hotel room was stacked, literally from wall to wall and ceiling to floor, with toys. Every conceivable toy, as if someone went through Toys “R” Us, took one of each, and dropped them in his room. All a gift from Michael Jackson. It made all of us feel really bad for Mac. My kids had experienced a taste of the distortions that fame can bring, but seeing what Mac’s life was like put things in a different perspective.
John Hughes and I started spending time together, mostly giggling. He was so smart and experienced, and I loved hearing his thoughts on moviemaking. He gave me some of his unproduced scripts to read, one of which was called The Bee—a pure physical comedy movie about a man who is trying to get his work done in his home office, but becomes completely distracted by his determination to kill a bee that has gotten into the house, eventually destroying his entire home. John had been having problems with the structure of the story, how to keep the tension up and not be repetitive. I loved the script and came up with a couple of solutions, and before I knew it, John asked me to come on board as the director to help develop the script and star in it. (We worked on it for the next couple of years, and I even got to spend time at his farm with him, and it is one of my biggest regrets that we never got to make that film.)
The more film they shot of me, the more I had them over a barrel in terms of my contract, especially because they liked my footage so much. With no agent and no lawyer, I negotiated the contract directly with the head of the studio, my friend, Joe Roth. Joe was truthful, respectful, and fair, and although Mac and Pesci got a lot more than me, I did get more money than I had ever made in my life: one point five million and 1 percent gross point of the film. Of course, I still had to pay my former agent 10 percent, and lawyer 5 percent, and accountant 5 percent, and 35 percent for taxes, so I probably came away with five hundred dollars in fresh cash, which was awesome! Having Joe Roth’s confidence and friendship meant the world to me. Our families loved each other, and we had so many laughs together. I respected him so much as my director in Coupe de Ville and now as my studio boss. But his influence on my life as storyteller was just getting started.
ROOKIE DIRECTOR—MIRACLES ON WRIGLEY FIELD
Life was very good. The house we rented in Malibu had fruit trees and a swimming pool and the kids were so happy living there. There was so much activity at the house with the three kids’ schedules, so we hired an incredible young woman named Robin Landon to be our nanny and help Laure manage our life. We started looking for a house to buy and soon found a place we loved—it was at the end of a dead-end road, on an acre and a half, and best of all, it had a path from the backyard directly to a private beach called Little Dume, a surf mecca and the most perfect little family beach you could imagine. The house was kind of shitty, but we didn’t care about that. If “location, location, location” is the ultimate guiding principle in real estate, this was a one-in-a-million opportunity. We were ready to meet the price of one point three million, because I had now saved enough to pay in cash. I still had The Wonder Years paycheck coming in every week, and once we had sold the house on Highridge Drive, we would be in great shape. There was only one problem. Before we could buy it, the house was confiscated by federal marshals, who had arrested the owner for some kind of embezzlement or something. They told us that once the trial was over, the government would probably put it back on the market, but they had no idea how long that would take. We were very disappointed and went back to house hunting but were happy in the rental house and in no rush to move again.
One day I got a call from Joe Roth. He had a movie for me to direct called King of the Hill, about a twelve-year-old kid named Henry who loves baseball and ends up pitching in the major leagues for the Chicago Cubs. He thought the script needed work, but he wanted to make it in the summer and felt I could make a really good movie out of it. “Do you want to read the script?” My mind was blown. I had been trying to get a movie made as a director for a long time. By this point, I had been hired as a director to develop a script at Imagine Entertainment called Clipped, about a man who gets a paper clip stuck deep inside his ear and suddenly possesses magical powers. I was the original director of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. I worked on that movie for a year, trying to make sense of the story and the script. The jokes were lame and the plot was obvious and hokey, and I finally left the project because I couldn’t see how to pull it off. Well, Jim Carrey was hired after that, and it turned out the script didn’t have to make sense and the jokes could be whatever they were, because a force of nature was unleashed in that movie, and that was the magic element I did not see coming. I had probably developed four or five movies by this point, but none of them felt close to actually getting made. King of the Hill was already a green light. Joe sent me the script and we set up a meeting for the following week to talk about it.
The script did need work, and I dug in. This was another story about Kid Empowerment, one of my favorite genres of filmmaking. Between the two Home Alone movies and all of the great Wonder Years episodes, I had read enough top-notch scripts now to understand structure, character arcs, defining stakes, building comedy moments, and how to get the audience fully invested in a film. When it came time for our meeting, I was fully prepared. I told Joe about all the work I wanted to do on the script—developing the characters, new storylines, and expanding the fun of the kid’s journey into the world of major league baseball. I had page notes, dialogue fixes, and new characters to share, but Joe stopped me.
“This all sounds great, but I really don’t need to know about all of this. You would be the director, and you can make any movie you want to. All I really need are just five trailer moments.”
“Five trailer moments? What do you mean?”
“I need to sell this movie to make money on it, and I need five big moments in the film that we can put in the movie trailer and commercials to make people want to come to see it. That’s how this works.”
Coupe de Ville was an intimate comedy about family and small moments, and I don’t remember him as a director trying to make any big moments that would play well in the trailer. (Maybe that’s why it didn’t do so well at the box office.) But as the president of 20th Century Fox, Joe had his eye on the prize, and it was a great lesson. It turns out that not only are those Five Big Trailer Moments great selling tools, they are also really fun and big moments in the film, helping to make the rollercoaster ride of the movie constantly entertaining. What a gift he was offering! We shook hands on the spot.
I had my first meeting with the writer, Sam Harper, and the producer, Bob Harper, in a conference room at Fox. I told them how much I liked the idea of the film, and how I had some thoughts on how to make it better, and we opened our scripts to page one. Since the film is about an extraordinary season of baseball, I had the idea of the movie starting out on Opening Day at Wrigley and then, through a fly ball, transition to our hero, Henry, and his friends playing baseball in his backyard. This was a very different opening than was written in the script, and my proposal was met with a resounding silence. Another peripheral producer who was in the meeting was the first to speak. “Well, I think the opening in the script works just fine. Are you planning on making changes on every page? Because we will be here forever.”
I said something to the effect of “Yes. Yes, I am. This is what I talked to Joe Roth about. I am going to make the changes that I think the script needs to make it great. I am going to lay out my ideas, and I want honest feedback on what you think. So yes, this is going to take a long time and a lot of work. So let’s keep going.” Bob and Sam were great. This was the first film for both of them, and they trusted my experience. My ideas were strong, well-thought through, and necessary. And once they saw that I was open to their ideas too, the floodgates opened. Sam and I dove into the script, stripped it down, and rebuilt it together.
Movies are successful when the casting is right. I first offered the role of Henry to Jake Gyllenhaal, who was such a sweet kid on City Slickers and was perfect for it, but his parents had different plans for his career. I think we were turned down by the kid from Free Willy too, but mostly we put our energy into a nationwide search for The Kid. The kid who would have the innocence, cockiness, humor, and awkwardness that the role demanded. We watched videotapes of kids from all over the country, and even flew some in for screen tests, but were having trouble finding the right kid to play Henry. My son Henry, who had absolutely no interest in show business, saw me struggling to find the right kid and said that if I needed him to play the part, he would try to do his best. He was so adorable in wanting to help out his desperate dad. Luckily, one day Thomas Ian Nicholas walked in the door. He was so perfect for the role I could barely contain myself. He read all of the scenes with heart and humor and could make acting adjustments when I asked him to. Once we locked him in, the movie came into focus. We just needed to cast our leading man to play Chet Steadman (named after my childhood best friend from Bethesda, David Stedman), the old, washed-up baseball pitcher whose life will be turned upside down by this twelve-year-old boy. We rewrote the character with Sam Elliott in mind, but he turned us down. One day Gary Busey came in to meet about playing the part. I had loved him in The Buddy Holly Story and Point Break but didn’t know too much else about him or his reputation as a bit of a madman. But I found out quick. Gary burst into the room with an energy that only Gary possesses. “Good morning, Mr. Stern! I am Gary Busey, and I am here to bring you the NEWS! Are you ready for the NEWS!? Are you ready for me to bring you the NEWS?”
I guess I was a little dumbstruck by the question and didn’t quite know what to say, so he continued. “Do you want the NEWS?! Do you even know what the NEWS is!??!”
I was a little taken aback and getting slightly annoyed, so I said something like, “The news is reporting on when new things happen. Right?”
“Wrong!! The NEWS stands for North, East, West, and South! Every direction! And that is how I am going to play this character, from every direction. I am going to bring it from the North, the East, the West, and the South! I will make you laugh and make you cry and everything in between. Now, feel my head.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Feel my head!” He grabbed my hand and placed it on the side of his skull. I didn’t want to be rude and resist too much but he did have to use a little extra force to keep my hand there to complete the examination of his skull. “That is a steel plate you are feeling. I had a pretty bad motorcycle accident a couple of years ago and they had to put this plate in my head. And ever since they did, I have had such a new connection to the world. I am so blessed to be here, and I want to be a part of your movie!” There was more bizarre conversation, and he did some sort of theatrical exit, leaving us all in shock and hysterics at the nonsensical behavior. He looked perfect for the part, was certainly charismatic, and had been great in other movies but, no way, he was too crazy. We made an offer to Nick Nolte, who turned us down, and maybe one other person, but we were getting close to the start of shooting and had to have someone who had some kind of box office track record for the studio to be comfortable. Joe Roth said that if I could handle Patrick Dempsey’s nuttiness, I could handle Gary. And so we cast him.
I had a good cry when it was time to leave the family, upset to have to leave these wonderful people and the complicated and beautiful life we had made in Malibu. I moved back into the Four Seasons in Chicago, into the same two-bedroom suite I had on Home Alone 2. I knew the staff at this point, the jazz clubs, and restaurants, and felt weirdly at home there. The job was intense. I only had a few weeks to get everything ready to start shooting: writing the script with Sam, auditioning local actors, scouting locations, setting the shooting schedule, and hiring the local crew. The talent pool in Chicago is deep, and we put together an incredible cast with actors from Steppenwolf and Second City. The crew was outstanding, bringing their creativity to every aspect of the film, from costumes and props to set building and camera operating. But the most amazing part of the experience was the baseball itself. I loved to play baseball, coached Henry’s Little League team, and went to major league games whenever I could, but I had never seen the game played at the highest level up close and personal. Wrigley Field is the oldest baseball stadium in the world, the Vatican of Baseball, and it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life to get to know every square inch of it as we searched for the best places to shoot our scenes, put our cameras, build our sets, and store our equipment. We hired Tim Stoddard, a former major league pitcher, as our technical advisor. Tim was in charge of training the actors to look like baseball players, as well as helping choreograph the baseball action in the movie. We spent weeks on the field planning the shots, although I did not pass up the opportunity to goof off a little and take batting practice, infield practice, and catch fly balls in the outfield, crashing into the famous Ivy Wall. It was my deepest childhood dream come true. Unbelievable. The baseball players were astonishing. Their skill level, accuracy, strength, fearlessness, and discipline are beyond belief. We had Barry Bonds, Pedro Guerrero, and Bobby Bonilla do cameos, and the way they hit the baseball sounded like gunfire.
Our cast was terrific, but we didn’t have any major movie stars in it, and the studio asked me if I could play a part in the movie. They thought my connection with the target family audience from Home Alone might help get some butts in the seats. I told them I really had my hands full trying to direct this very complicated movie. Besides, there wasn’t really a part for me. But when they told me they were willing to pay me seven hundred thousand dollars to be in it, I was suddenly inspired to write one, and that is how the baseball coach Phil Brickma came to be born. Since the movie was an homage to baseball, I thought it would be fun to have an oldtimey character like Brickma, who has maybe taken one-too-many fastballs to the head in the pre-helmet era of the game. (There is a scene in the movie when Brickma is taking batting practice, fouling balls off the top of the batting cage and having them ricochet back and hit him in the head. I had gotten pretty good bat control from taking batting practice, and it took a few takes, but I finally got a couple of them to actually come back and hit me in the head. It was such a tiny moment, but one of the most satisfying I have ever filmed, combining my love of athletics and physical comedy, with the pressure of the whole film crew watching.)
The other thing I wanted to accomplish with the character was to have him not be in too much of the film. I wanted to be behind the camera when we were filming, and not have to be in front of the camera focused on my acting. So I came up with the idea of having Brickma get himself trapped in various places, so that he would miss all the big games in the movie. It was so fun to come up with new ideas and have the crew carry them out so perfectly. I was in my hotel suite when the idea of getting trapped in the tiny space between the two doors of the adjoining rooms hit me and made me laugh. I told the set designer the next day, and in three days, they had built the set and we filmed it. The production designer and crew were so good and flexible.
It dawned on me that a great model for the film was The Wizard of Oz. Henry Rowengartner slipping on the baseball, breaking his arm, and then being able to throw the ball so hard that he winds up playing for the Cubs is the tornado that takes Dorothy to Oz, and they both enter worlds beyond their imaginations. So I asked the set designers to make the doors to the Wrigley clubhouse look like the doors to Oz. Sure enough, when we came to the set to shoot the scene of Henry entering his Oz, they had built doors just like the originals. We played the scene as an homage to that film, including the gatekeeper saying the famous line, “Well, why didn’t you say so? Now that’s a horse of a different color!” I saw the Ray Charles Pepsi television commercial one night after shooting and thought it would be great to have Henry Rowengartner become so famous that he does the same ad. Before I knew it, Pepsi had given us permission, the crew had built the set, found backup singers, made the kid’s tuxedo, and we filmed the scene, which turned out to be another big “trailer moment” in the film. What a gift directing is, leading a collaboration of so many brilliant people in a coherent direction to tell a story to an audience. It was everything I hoped it would be and so much more.
But you do have to be the leader. The very first shot of the very first day of shooting, I looked to Jack N. Green, the Academy Award-winning cinematographer.
“So where do you think we should put the camera?”
“Where do you think we should put the camera?”
“I’m not sure. I thought you were the cinematographer.”
“You’ve been working on this script for months and seeing each scene in your mind. So you know the story better than anyone. I just got here a week ago and I’ll be gone when we’re done shooting. This is your story. So when you have been imagining this scene, where was the camera?”
It was such the perfect thing to say, empowering me in a way that has informed the rest of my work and my life, and it made me take the reins of the film in just the right way.
I loved the actors. I embarrassed myself more than once on the set as I cried watching their performances. Directing Gary Busey was a bit challenging, but he gave a great performance and I grew to like him a lot. But one day I lost my shit on him. The Cubs had a doubleheader and had granted us twenty minutes between games to film on the field, with a real sellout crowd in the background. It was an amazing opportunity for a Big Trailer Moment for our little film, but twenty minutes is not a lot of time. We rehearsed a lot and knew we had to execute our plan perfectly. Our movie crew and cast stood in the runway to the field as the first game reached the bottom of the ninth. The only one missing was Gary Busey.
“What the fuck is going on? Where’s Gary?” I asked the assistant director.
“Gary is having a problem and doesn’t want to come out of his trailer.”
“Well, tell him to get out here now! We’re about to start!”
The game ended and we jumped into our first shot, a huge Steadicam shot of Henry taking the mound for the first time, the camera circling him and taking in the visual power of the sold-out stadium. The crowd got into it and started chanting his name, and it sealed the deal for the authenticity of the film. The next shot was going to be when Busey’s character comes out of the dugout to talk to Henry on the mound and calm his nerves. But Busey was still not coming out of his dressing room. I got on the walkie talkie, had the poor assistant director hold his walkie up to the window of Gary’s trailer, and proceed to rip him a new asshole. “Get your fucking ass out here in thirty seconds or I am going to fire you and then beat the shit out of you. You are so lucky to be in this fucking movie, and if you fuck this up for me, I will fuck you up forever!” Or something like that. Thirty seconds later, a golf cart carrying Gary pulled onto the field next to me, and Gary got out and started apologizing. I didn’t give a shit about his apology, I just wanted to shoot the scene. But he had removed the fake mustache we had him wearing. (I still had Sam Elliott’s image in my mind and wanted him to look like that. But Gary couldn’t grow a mustache, so he wore a fake one.) I was under so much pressure and so pissed that I grabbed the mustache out of his hand, smushed it onto his upper lip as hard as I could, and told him to just do the fucking scene. Of course, the scene ended up being great. We got amazing footage that day that made our little film look so much bigger than the budget should have allowed. I have run into Gary many times since then, and he always tells me that that was one of the great moments of his life, and that he loves me for having been totally real with him and forcing him to be a professional when he was lost in his own head. Go figure.
We finally finished shooting the movie. I said goodbye to the beloved Chicago friends I had made and headed back to LA to edit the film. This was when we were still editing actual film, with a splicer and tape, on little Moviola editing machines. The editor cut the film on one editing machine and I would be on the other machine, going through all of the footage and different takes and marking which ones to use. We had shot so much baseball footage that they let me hire a second editor, the genius Raja Gosnell, who I knew from when he edited the two Home Alone movies. Raja cut all the baseball sequences brilliantly, cutting between action shots, emotional moments, and crowd reactions to build tension and tell the story, showing me a movie that I hadn’t even realized I’d shot. Suddenly we had a great movie on our hands. The studio decided to invest a little bit more money, and we hired John Candy to come in and play the sports announcer in the booth. We built a beautiful press room set on the soundstage, three stories high with a huge backdrop to make it look like he was really at Wrigley Field. We wrote out a whole new script for John, adding in new jokes and narrating the action on the field, and spent three days filming him. I had met him when he did his scene in Home Alone, but getting to direct him was a chance to see his greatness up close. He was so funny, kind, creative, and fully committed, and he added so much to the movie that it is hard to believe that his entire role was an afterthought.
The test screenings went well and helped make the film better. We make the movies for audiences, so it was fun to be in a give-and-take creative partnership with all of these unknown people—something I didn’t expect to enjoy, but did immensely. When we locked the film, it was time to hire a composer to write the score, and when Bill Conti said he was interested, I jumped at the chance. Who better to write the score to my heartwarming, underdog, sports-themed movie than the guy who composed the score to Rocky? Bill and I went through the film together a few times, deciding where there should be music and what the feeling of that music should be. I waited anxiously for about three weeks until finally Bill invited me over to his house to hear the score. I was nervous and excited to see how the film played with the new music he had written, but when I got to his house, I realized there was no film to watch and no music recorded. I asked him what he had been working on all this time and he said, “The themes.”
“The themes? Not the score?”
“You can’t have the score without the themes.” Bill sat down at the piano and said, “Here is Henry’s Theme,” and proceeded to play about five or six single notes. Bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum. “What do you think?”
What I thought was, “What the fuck? I have been waiting for a month for you to write the score to the film, which opens in six weeks, and all you have is Bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum?! I’m fucked!” I didn’t say that, but I registered my surprise that it was in such a rudimentary state.
He said, “How about this one?” and played me another six-note sequence, which he informed me was the Theme of Baseball. “And this last one is for his mother, Mary’s Theme.”
