‘Deep Water’ director tells us everything

The Polo Lounge fills up at lunchtime in late March. A men’s club of agents munch on homemade breadsticks, and about 15 women eating lunch after a corporate awards ceremony squeeze into the cracks of a gleaming baby grand piano.
None of them seem to realize that Renny Harlin is sitting nearby, but they’ve definitely seen his movies (especially Agent Brothers). Tall and with Scandinavian good looks, Harlin is the architect of modern action cinema. Critics have been harsh on the Finnish director for blending human emotion with intense violence and pyrotechnics, but audiences, consciously or unconsciously, know his brand.
Early successful appearances in A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Die Hard series put him at the top of every studio’s wish list. Sylvester Stallone’s standout “Cliffhanger” and the forward-thinking women’s action film “The Long Kiss Goodnight” catapulted him to the top. A movie star’s marriage and intermittent box office bombings tested his mettle. He was a teenage film buyer in Cannes, a Shell Oil Company employee, a Steven Spielberg acolyte, and, before the coronavirus, an expatriate who had been making films his way in China for six years.
Above all, he was tenacious and uncompromising in his vision for the film. Variety had a wide-ranging conversation with Harlin ahead of Friday’s release of her latest film, Deep Water. Here, Harlin tells his story through the credits.

“A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 The Dream Master”
Harlin directed his third mainstream feature film in 1988, helming the fourth installment in the Freddy Krueger series. It was a job he barely got, but it changed everything.

They refused to even consider this Finnish kid doing their own series. The 1987 writers’ strike began, and they didn’t have a script. I told them they could storyboard the nightmarish sequences and create the bones of the movie. They said it was ridiculous, but time was running out before the release date, so they had no choice but to let me do it. It was pure obsession – and I couldn’t even find an agent at that point.[New Line Cinema founder]Bob Shea was very suspicious of me throughout the whole process. I took a completely different approach from previous directors. Freddy Krueger was so established at that point that we couldn’t pretend he was super scary. He’s the James Bond of horror, so that’s how I approached it.

Interestingly,[Warner Bros. Pictures co-head]Mike De Luca was an assistant at the company at the time. Mike, producer Rachel Talalay, and I met every morning to come up with lines for the actors to say, and we did the same thing after lunch. When the reviews came out, they were the best of my career. I think the LA Times called it “Renny Harlin’s Kafkaesque nightmare.” The movie opened with a bang, and the first call I received on Monday was from Steven Spielberg. I was living in a motel in Hollywood for $25 a night, and he found me there. Bob Shea invited me to watch a movie with him in public, and he picked me up in a limousine. We drove to the Pacific Theater and there was a line around the block. Bob said, “Lenny, they’re lined up for your movie.”

lost spielberg movies

My first encounter after Elm Street was with Steven Spielberg. He told me to come to Amblin, he loved movies. I met him and Kathy Kennedy. He wanted to make a movie based on a book about a boy with the ability to become invisible. He uses this power to explore life, witnessing his sister’s early relationship and budding sexuality, his grandfather slowly dying, and his parents having marital problems. He sees everything. I envisioned the film as a character-driven story like My Life as a Dog, but Stephen wanted it to be more like an action-adventure comedy like Back to the Future. I was so idealistic and passionate that I told him this wasn’t the movie I wanted to make. When you look back, you’ll think, “How stupid of me.” But I had to believe in my beliefs. It was suicide because he is a genius. I still think my version of that movie would have been very special.

“Die Hard 2”

Following Elm Street, Harlin began work on the action comedy The Adventures of the Ford Fairlane with Andrew Dice Clay. Big hitter Joel Silver is producing the film, and Harlin will be the sequel to Bruce Willis’ commercial hit Die Hard.

Some days I’m having lunch with Joel or taking a walk with Bruce Willis. We started chatting and getting to know each other, and an hour later Joel called me and said, “Bruce loves you. He wants you to be in Die Hard 2.” I started right after shooting the Ford Fairlane and edited both at the same time. It was scary. Fortunately, Bruce had just become a movie star with the first Die Hard. When he started working on the sequel, he declared, “I’m not going to do anything like that comedic thing anymore. I want this character to be serious.” People came to see “Die Hard” because Bruce was a blue-collar, cynical, common man. I told Silver that Bruce wasn’t going to play the same John McClane and that without him the movie would be over. We had a great deal and agreed that if Bruce got me a take, I would do as many takes as he wanted.

Joel and I screened a cut of the Fox lot for Barry Diller, who was running the studio at the time. We have a lot of time on our hands. The movie ends and Barry stands up and says, “This is a really good movie. Are there any other funny parts?” So I have to explain to him that every joke is in it, including the outtakes. If Bruce was on the phone with Demi Moore and laughed for just a second, I would film it and put it in the movie.

“Cliffhanger”

The Sylvester Stallone vehicle, which will be remade this year starring Lily James, was a turning point for Harlin in 1993. The project premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to gross $255 million worldwide, becoming the biggest financial success of the director’s career.

My date to Cannes was my mother. Because my mother has always been my biggest supporter. As we left the Festival Palais and descended the grand staircase, there were thousands of people screaming. Movie music was blaring. In mid-May there was fake snow falling on the carpet. I held my mother in one arm and Elizabeth Taylor in the other. The sly Stallone leant down next to his mother and said, “Remember this moment, Lenny. It’s never going to be better than this.”

I still get goosebumps thinking about it. It reminded me of many years ago when I was a film student in Finland. I worked part-time as a marketing director and film buyer for a Finnish distribution company. I didn’t have any money, so I went to Cannes and stayed in the red light district. I went to the first American Film Market in 1982. They bought the rights to “Blood Simple” and “The Evil Dead,” which were huge successes. The best part was the wonderful film with Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu. They were both still in their 20s in this smoldering, sexy movie, “Lulu.” I called my boss in Helsinki and told him I had to buy it. I had the bright idea to take Isabel to Finland because I am now in love with her. She came for 3 days and I was her guide. She’s Europe’s biggest starlet, and when I pick her up at her hotel in the presidential suite, she comes out of the shower wrapped in a towel and answers the door. I couldn’t believe it was true. I was shaking like a leaf. At the end of the trip, I dropped her off at the airport and gave her a gift. A hand-bound leather book with empty white pages. She wrote on the first page, “Dear Lenny, this book is for you to write down your dreams, and they will all come true.”

“Cutthroat Island”
As is often the case in Hollywood, Harlin’s professional peaks were met with steep valleys. He and his ex-wife Geena Davis began their pirate adventures as a family. It ended in a record-breaking flop. It cost nearly $115 million to make, but grossed just $16 million at the box office.

You go into every movie with the highest ambition and passion and want to make something great. “Cutthroat Island” became a kind of symbol of excess and failure. There are plenty of other movies out there with much bigger flaws. But it was a big shock to me. I don’t like filmmakers who blame marketing or distribution, but I’ve had many moments in my career where I was in the right place at the right time. This was the wrong place at the wrong time.

Our producer, Carolco Productions, had gone out of business and was bootstrapping. They signed an output deal with MGM and once we finished editing it was sold. They didn’t want to spend a penny and they didn’t want to take any risks. Since it was a Christmas release, we had to spend a lot of money on marketing. Michael Douglas was signed on to play the lead role. He left the project shortly before production due to personal reasons. I was left there with my then-wife Geena Davis. We were both into movies and trying to get out of it. This role was given to the great actor Matthew Modine, and although much respect was given to him, he was not on the level of Michael Douglas. All signs pointed to us being doomed. I spent $800,000 of my own money to have Mark Norman (Shakespeare in Love) rewrite the script. Sometimes things don’t work out.

“Long Kiss Goodnight”
Just a year after “Cutthroat Island,” Harlin and Davis both had a chance at redemption. Harlin applied his tested behavior to Oscar-winner Davis, casting her as an amnesiac schoolteacher who learns she was once a master assassin for the CIA. Although the film received mixed reviews and failed to make a profit, it became a beloved library title on cable TV for decades, especially as a female-centered action thriller.

There was a bidding war over the script. A new line has arrived. I had proven myself, and our screenwriter Shane Black was famous. Casting women in leading roles in movies was always the point and was ahead of its time, but it turned out to be difficult. This is the movie that brought me the best reviews of my career. Samuel L. Jackson and I became really good friends and we made four movies together. (I don’t know if New Line knew how to market “Long Kiss Goodnight”). We needed young men who loved action, but also women who wanted more stories. It wasn’t a commercial success, but I’m proud of it.

“Deep water”
Harlin’s latest film opens in theaters on Friday. Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley star as long-haul airline pilots fighting for survival on multiple fronts. A giant jetliner catches fire due to a mispackaged lithium battery and crashes into exotic shark-infested waters.

Once upon a time, there were smart dramas, star-starring movies, thrillers, and romantic comedies. There are very few of them now as they are not based on IP that can break through the noise. Studios need to spend $100 million on marketing, but they only want to do it on huge things. I think the reason I continue to work today is because I was able to contribute to the definition of such intermediate films. I think people enjoy watching action thrillers that center around emotions in unusual situations. My new work “reminds me of that premise. It’s my ‘Poseidon Adventure,’ where everyone is stripped of their values ​​and faces the ultimate test. I lived in China for six years making this kind of film and came back post-coronavirus, and I’m lucky to still have the chance.”

I worked hard to create the biggest plane crash ever filmed. A lot went into research and detail. Everything Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley do in this movie, every button they press, will be following exact real-life protocol. We also know that sometimes bolts are photographed tearing from a row of seats before being sucked into the sky through a hole in the plane. It could be more powerful than a building exploding. In some cases, debris under the nail may also be the culprit.