Behind the Scenes: Beverly Hills Cop (Brest, 1984) with Eddie Murphy and Judge Reinhold

There are a lot of different versions of the genesis of Beverly Hills Cop. Michael Eisner claims he was the originator of the original idea. He remembers a story when his wife thought she heard burglars in the house and the Beverly Hills Police was in there over their house within two minutes, running all over the roof. Then Don Simpson, who was my partner and at the time head of production at Paramount, said he was driving through Beverly Hills with his old Camaro and was pulled over by the Beverly Hills Police. He thought, what happens if a cop from another city came into Beverly Hills driving this old beat-up car? How would they treat him? So there's two versions on how the story originated. It was in 1977 that I got a call from my agent, Don Simpson, who was an executive at Paramount, and wanted to present an idea to me that he said Michael Eisner had suggested to them and they were excited about writing up as a screenplay. They did not mention comedy at all. They wanted to do something about a cop in Beverly Hills who basically raises a lot of cane. The story for Beverly Hills Cop came to me, actually on the beach in Santa Monica, and I called Don and I said, I have the story and if you want to meet, if you want me to present it to you, I'd be glad to come in and present it. As I was telling the story and before I came to the end of it, Michael Eisner jumped up in excitement at one point. He says, OK, that's enough, that's enough. He says, it's terrific. He said, don't go to outline, go immediately to screenplay. And so that's the way the story began, and I wrote the original screenplay on the basis of their approval of my story. We went in to meet with Jeff Kastner to try to figure out what our next projects were going to be. And Don, who likes to read executives' mail on the desk upside down, read Jeffrey's list of pictures that he wanted to make that they currently were earmarking for production, and one of them was Beverly Hills Cop. So Don said, Jeff, that's my project, that was my idea, we want that movie. You can't give that to anybody else. Jeff said, fine, you guys have it. When I walked into my agent's office subsequently, this was about four years after I had written the screenplay, and he said, guess what, they're making your movie. Since I had written several other scripts by now, I said, which one? And he said, Beverly Hills Cop. And I said, great. And of course, the next question out of my mouth, suspecting this would be the case, I said, who did they have assigned to rewrite me? And of course, they had hired somebody else. So we sat down with, I think it was Dan Petrie, Jr., who kind of worked up Beverly Hills Cop and worked out the framework, the story, the characters. Looking at all of the previous drafts, it was a more straight-ahead action piece. When I was writing my draft, the sort of actors we had in mind, although they were never approached, were Al Pacino and James Caan and Clint Eastwood. Before we hired Dan Petrie, we thought it was a great role for Mickey Rourke. Mickey Rourke was just coming off a body. He was one of the hottest actors in town. We made a holding offer while Petrie was writing the script with Mickey. We paid him, I think it was $400,000 not to take a movie. Of course, it took a little longer to develop the screenplay. The holding deal expired, and Mickey took another movie, and we lost him. I felt that my big contribution to the project could potentially be, and I believe it turned out to be, that I really wanted to push it in the comic direction. Don and I were both major fans of Marty. We saw his student films. We saw his first movie going in style. We really had been chasing him for a number of years on Beverly Hills Cop. Every time we got a draft in, we sent it to Marty, and every time he turned us down. They just beat on me and beat on me, and Jerry Bruckheimer called me around every 20 minutes. I just kept him on the phone for a couple of hours and said, you're not getting off the phone until you agree to do this picture. While he was talking to me, unbeknownst to me, Marty took out a quarter. And I said, you know what, I'm going to flip this coin, and I swear to God, whatever it comes up, I will do. If it comes up, don't do the movie, I won't do the movie. If it comes up, do the movie, I'll do the movie. And I flipped the coin, and it came up heads, which was to do the movie. And I thought, oh, damn. He framed the quarter that had him make the decision to do the picture. The role of the casting director is to bring ideas and options to the director and the producer. That's the simple explanation. And I think it's helping a director come up with a concept of what various roles are going to be like. I always think that every character in a movie has an essence and has a reason for being in the movie. Even if they're just the pretty girl that walks by so the main character turns their head and looks at them, that girl has to be pretty because that's her purpose in the movie. So every person, every day player, everybody has a reason for being there. It's my job to take the submissions and then winnow them down to the ones that make sense or initially that I think make sense. When I was cast, Sylvester Stallone was starring in the film, and it was very much a Stallone-based vehicle. When Stallone was going to do it, I think it was going to be like Rambo blows up Beverly Hills. And more and more these days, the leads are in place before you start. I mean, there's almost no big movie that's made without a lead in place before I get going. My intention with Stallone was to sort of make him a character that would fit that scenario. And I was thinking that if we could strip him down to a real working-class, unglamorous figure, that it could have worked nicely. All of the parts, with very few exceptions, were cast during the Stallone period. When they cast you, you pretty much know that there are some high hopes for this particular picture, and they want to make sure they do everything just right. The thing I remember most about Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson was that there was this day when suddenly they had left and gone to New York. And we knew that there was something going on with Stallone, but we didn't know quite what it was. And then they came back, and we had Eddie Murphy as the lead in the movie. After that meeting, we went back, and the script needed a lot of reconceiving really fast. I remember that James Russo was cast afterwards, because originally that part was going to be Stallone's brother. There were a few other things that were looked at a little bit differently. Obviously, the girl was a love interest in the Stallone period, and she became a friend. By the time they made that big change on me, my only question was, what was I playing? I think we were all in the same boat. My memory is that Eddie came on two weeks before we started shooting. Look at him. He came in and took over the lead in what was, I'm sure, an expensive production, with no notice, with less notice than us, with the whole film riding on his back. You know, this is the cleanest and nicest police car I've ever been in in my life. In the script originally, there weren't that many distinguishing things cop to cop. We were trying to think, what makes a Detroit cop? What makes a Beverly Hills cop? The idea was that all the Beverly Hills cops were supposed to be really good-looking and really off of a soap opera. Except when we started to think about casting all the parts that way, it didn't seem particularly interesting. So the decision was that the guys in the background would be very straight and good-looking, but that there had to be something interesting about those two main guys that you were going to see all the time, Taggart and Rosewood. I mean, you were going to see them with Stallone at the time, all the time, and they had to be entertaining. You know what I keep thinking about near the end of Butch Cassidy, where Redford and Newman are almost out of ammunition? Really? Judge had done some wonderful work before and was really amusing and entertaining, and even though he wasn't the classic soap opera handsome guy, he was straight on, and yet he was more interesting than sort of casting somebody that was more straightforward. And then John just was a good counterbalance to Judge. The chemistry was great from the get-go. From the first audition, it just clicked. Judge was the first one in, and then John Ashton was the perfect sort of Oliver Hardy to Judge's Stan Laurel. We weren't really operating on that principle. I guess it was a little more of Oscar and Felix. They just seemed to have that perfect classic comedy team chemistry that I've always sort of loved and was very anxious to find. Detective Foley, I'm Lieutenant Bogemill of the Beverly Hills Police Department. Do you wish to file charges against Sergeant Taggart? This is some kind of joke, right? Do you wish to file charges against this officer for assault? Look, where I'm from, cops don't file charges against other cops. No, I don't want to do that. Ronnie Cox played Lieutenant Bogemill. We looked at lots and lots and lots of guys for that part. That was the last big role to be cast. We made the deal like Monday, and I think I worked either Wednesday or Thursday. Where are you going now? I'm going to go get my ---- and get out of here. No, big mistake, big mistake. You want my advice? No. You know what I would do if I was you? No, I don't. Go in there and talk and wait for me. Get away from me. I'm going to shoot you, all right? I'm not telling you what to do, but you know what I would do? Paul Reiser, I knew from New York, he had come in to audition for me for Reckless and had badgered me to come see his stand-up act. I mean, he would call me constantly, and I'd say, I don't do that, and I don't go out at night alone to clubs and all this stuff, and he would call me. And finally, I went and saw him, and I just thought he was fantastic. How you all doing today? Hi. I'm fine. My name is Serge, and how can I help you? Yeah, I'm looking for Miss Jenny Summers. She's very busy today. Maybe you give me your name? My name's Axel Foley. And what it's pertaining? I didn't understand what you said. Pertaining, what it's meaning, regarding. Bronson Pinchot had had a small part in Flamingo Kid, which I cast. He was one of the card players who plays poker with Matt Dillon. So when we were looking for people to play this role, I thought of Bronson and called him up, and he didn't come in, and he didn't come in, and he didn't come in, and we actually auditioned a lot of other people, and there was a guy that was going to get this part. Originally, this is another kind of one of those tough things, there were two guys in the art gallery, and this character that Bronson created was so delicious that I had to go to the other actor and say, I'm sorry, we're going to really trim your part down because this thing that Bronson was doing was just opened up a whole new level of possibilities. Who let you in here? I let myself in. How are you doing? I have to ask you some questions about Michael Tandino. And what, may I ask, is your interest in Mr. Tandino? Well, he was my best friend. He came to see me in Detroit a couple of days ago, and a couple of hours after he got there, someone killed him. And? What do you wish to know? Casting the villain in a film like that is really tricky because you need somebody who's sort of very iconic. Stephen Berkhoff was in a James Bond movie that was playing in the airplane as I was flying out to start this job. Having a villain who was not from this country was a way of sort of making it fresh, and I saw a still of Stephen Berkhoff, and it was just sort of riveting. I knew Stephen from his avant-garde theater stuff, but I didn't recognize him when I saw him in the movies. Not going to say goodbye? Why, aren't you guys going to tail me to the city limits anyway? Yes, we are. I figured you would. I was thinking about stopping off and getting something to drink, though. Yeah, we sort of figured you would. Does that mean you guys are going to join me? Uh, I don't think so, Axel. We're still on duty. Well, I don't think one beer's going to kill us, Billy. Working with Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer was always tremendously fulfilling and fun, and they're like super producers. As a team, they had an amazing concept of picking people that was not necessarily based on what they had done or what they had proven, but they would pick people based upon what they felt a person could do if a gun was held to their head. My introduction to Don was the first day of shooting, and I believe on Beverly Hills Cop, he showed me his collection of automatic weapons in the trunk of his car, which I was both impressed and terrified of. Don had a reputation of being a wild man and a crazy man, but I loved him. The thing I loved about him, that he was so honest about everything. He and Jerry were such a great team. Don was a wild man and Jerry was kind of like the quiet guy, so they were like the good cop, bad cop thing, you know? Don was grandiose, and everything he did was big, and Jerry was and is very measured, very watchful. They definitely played good cop, bad cop. I've never been in a cell that had a phone in it. Can I stay for a while because I ordered some pizza? As soon as the camera was on, Eddie just transformed. He had the self-assurance of an actor twice his age. Eddie's a funny guy, and he'd change things around, and he's a very talented kid. Eddie and I became kind of friends. You have to, in order to have that kind of repartee and to work that quickly in a really different way than I'd ever worked. You had to like each other. Eddie, and all the other actors, but Eddie, historically and sort of legendarily, is an amazing improviser. No matter where Eddie would go in his flights of improvisation, he would always bring me back to my line and feed me a line that would absolutely put me right back on point so that I could say what had moved the plot along. Eddie was a god. He was a comedy god. Jesus Christ! He almost gave me a heart attack. You know, it says here that by the time the average American is 50, he's got 5 pounds of undigested red meat in his bowels. Well, the scene climbing over the wall, that was totally improv. I mean, Marty just came up to Judge and me and said, just have a hard time getting over the wall. Okay, okay, okay. Those two guys, I think they're just amazing. The bickering that goes on between them and the dynamic between them. What a great cast. What a fun cast. These people came in, knew their job, and did it. John and I improvised a lot when we were together, but whenever we were with Eddie, it was kind of more like us just reacting to what Eddie was saying. There were times we had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth. We were shooting in the Beverly Hills Police Department set, and it had no air, and Eddie was getting really tired. And Eddie was very pure, you know, never drank coffee, nothing. And he decided that he was getting so groggy in this set that he would relent and have a little coffee. Being that his system was so pure, the coffee sent him through the roof. He's spinning this story about how Taggart and I ended up saving the day at the strip club, and he talks about how we're super cops and how we're really cops with capes. I did not know what was going on. I was watching the show having fun. I'm still freaked out by it. You must have a sixth sense. I don't know what you teach these fellows, but they're not just regular cops, okay? They're super cops. And the only thing missing on these guys are capes. And I had to stick my hands in my pockets because I had blown a couple takes because it was so funny. And I squeezed myself, I pinched myself so hard. When you see the scene, you'll see my hands were in my pockets because I couldn't blow any more film. And he was so funny in that scene that I ruined the first couple of takes by laughing. And finally I had to hide behind the camera with a thing, and I kept ruining takes. You give Eddie a scene, and you say, these are the key plot points, this is what you got to get in the scene, the rest is up to you. So you just point Eddie in a direction, and he just vamps with it and goes with it. Another great example of Eddie's invention, Marty told him at one point, when he drives up to Victor Maitland's private club to park his car, the first take, he just got out of the car, the valet took it, and Marty said, Eddie, we need something because it's kind of dead air. Can you give me something when you get out of the car? And he says, sure. Backs up, drives in, gets out, and he says, Can you put this in a good spot? Because all this ---- happened last time I parked here. Thank you. Well, Marty just loves to, he likes to do a lot of takes, you know, and he likes to get at it as it's scripted, and then, okay, we got that. Now let's just play and have fun. And then a lot of that stuff gets in the movie. The thing I love about working with Marty is he really does care about character. Character development and character nuance to me is the thing that I find most intriguing. Just because it's on the page and just because the actors say it doesn't mean it's right for Marty. Marty will go to any degree to make a scene work. If you had questions, certainly about character, and more often than not about plot, because we were jumping all over the place and doing all the ad libs, he clarified, and you really could have gotten lost. Marty was a great audience. He believed completely in us as a cast. He felt that he had a great cast. He was wildly enthusiastic, contagiously so, and was a tremendous audience. For me, very easy to work with. We got along very well. We have very similar sensibilities about stuff. I had a great time. Beverly Hills Cop was lots of fun to work on. I want to mention Mikey's name to Maitland. That's when Maitland went nuts and had me thrown out. Axel, you look like a hoodlum. You go barging into his office without an appointment. You're carrying a gun. If you barged into my office and I didn't know you, I'd throw you out. Lisa was really charming, really, really outgoing, a lot of fun to work with. I feel bad for her because she had to wear those big 80s hairdos. I ended up having to go to the set before I was actually due to work. And I spent 2 days doing hairdos. Inspector Todd gave me a message for you. Want to hear it? I don't think so. He says if you're out here investigating the Tandino murder, you needn't bother coming back. He tells me if we inform him you are working on this case, he'll have you brought up on charges and fired. Now one last time, what are you doing? I'm on vacation! Ronnie Cox was rather extraordinary because he had a couple of big dialogue scenes in the movie that I literally delivered. I would get up at 3.30 in the morning and take all the different drafts from all the different writers and cut and paste and add. And then the typist would pick it up, in those days before computers, the typist would pick it up at 5.30 or something, type it, Xerox it, give it to everybody. And Ronnie Cox was always getting these 5-page scenes in make-up. And being the super-trained professional, really trained actor that he is, he always pulled it off. I remember Eddie looking at Ronnie Cox working and he said to me, man, don't ever give me 5 pages in the morning, forget about it, but look at that guy go. The fun of acting really is reacting, and it's when you're getting to react to really good people who know what they're doing. That's the real joy of acting, because then all you have to do is be present to win. I was real excited about working with Ronnie Cox because I admired him a lot. I admired his work in Deliverance, the movie Deliverance. We were always egging him on to take his arm out of joint like he did in the movie. In the movie Deliverance, he washes up on a rock and it looks like his arm is broken. He's double-jointed so he can take his arm out of the sock and we're always saying, Ronnie, take your arm out! When we were scouting Detroit locations, I went to the Detroit Police Department because Eddie Murphy was a Detroit cop and I was looking around and I saw this guy. There was something about his bearing and I went over and started to talk to him and he was the head of Homicide. I guess he was a lieutenant or captain of detectives in Detroit and his name was Gil Hill. Marty Breast interviewed and talked to him and he said, God, he's a great character. We've got to use him in the movie. So I started talking to him more and more and more and I said to him, you know, would you like to read for a part in the movie? And he said, yeah, why not? Since I wasn't involved in the Detroit sequence, which they shot first, he kept telling me, you won't believe who I found to play Eddie's boss. He's this highly decorated Detroit detective. This guy is great! Gil turned into a fine actor. Marty worked with him along with Eddie and he got the part and now he's running for mayor of Detroit, which I think is the irony of the whole thing. I just spoke to him and said, you started it all. We spent, I think, the first week or two in Detroit, filmed part of the car chase there and the big truck going down the street with all the cars being destroyed. That was done in Detroit. You know, we called that truck, we called it the train because it was unstoppable and because it had to do all that bashing, the front bumper of it was fitted with a steel I-beam, a construction beam. So when that thing was going, it was unstoppable. And it was a very, very complicated shot that took a very long time to set up where, and it was only going to be done once, where that truck comes down this block and starts banging cars out of the way. When we finish the movie, you normally have what we call an industry screening where you invite all the agents and actors and, you know, friends, and we're sitting in the theater and we're in the back and nobody's laughing. I mean, it is dead silence. I walk out, Eddie walks out, Barry Dillard's sitting next to us, and Eddie said, I don't drink, but I want to get a drink. This is a disaster. And Barry looked at us and he said, no, these people just don't appreciate it. You watch, this is going to be a big hit. It changed the way cop movies, before that movie, it was like cops were, you know, go ahead and make my day, you know, and Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood, and after that movie is when cops started having little wisecracks, and after that movie is when all the cops tried to be kind of funny. The very first time we ever showed that movie to an audience, it scored the highest score of any movie in the history of Paramount. The exact opposite of the Hollywood screening, and Don and I, from that moment on, said, why are we torturing ourselves showing our movies to Hollywood? Let them pay money to go see them. People stood up during the movie and yelled at the screen. They yelled at characters on the screen. It was an insane screening. It was like a rock concert. I mean, the kids were exploding with laughter, and they were just having the best time, and Eddie had a thrill sitting in the back of the theater watching. The kids really enjoyed it. I could see the big grin on his face. And then there were lines around the block for months, lines around the block. How could I have a bad day? It was extremely gratifying to get that kind of audience response. A week before Beverly Hills Cop opened, I had to show two pieces of ID at the bank that I'd had an account at for like five years. And a week after it opened, there was a Spanish family on the freeway pulled up to me on the freeway asking me to pull over so I could sign autographs. It was a profound change in my life. That movie was really an original type of action comedy. It was one of the first ones to really, really, really be successful. And that's what, if you're involved with something that's original, you'll always go back and try to rehash it.