Behind the Scenes: Hard Times (Hill, 1975) with Charles Bronson and James Coburn

Now, tell me, how'd you make money? I knock people down. You mean like a prize fighter? No, they're pick-up fights. The money's made on bets. What does it feel like to knock somebody down? It makes me feel a hell of a lot better than it does him. 1933. America had hit the skids. People were out of work and out of luck. Third refill costs a nickel. Life was as tough as a cheap steak. Suppose you've been down the long, hard road. It hasn't. It was hard times. I got a husband in jail. No job and no prospects. I don't look past the next bend in the road. A man had to live by his wits. Well, my man's just starting out. It's good, but I have to get long odds. What kind of odds you talking about? Five to one. Three to one. D! Or by his fists. Columbia Pictures presents Hard Times. Starring Charles Bronson as Cheney. A drifter. When I get enough change in my pocket, I'm gone. A loner. Are you gonna stay the night? Not this time. A man who spoke soft. I barely know you. Yeah, but would you like to? And hit hard. James Coburn as Speed. A born con man. 50-50 on all scratch bets and expenses. All side bets, I keep 75%. That's how it works. Who can make a fortune in a day. I propose a toast to the best man I know. Me. And lose it in a minute. I'm flat broke. I need some money fast. What the hell are you doing? You don't want no trouble. Just you pay your debts. Speed was the hustler. It was too damned easy. There ain't no rules about that, except who wins. Cheney was the hitter. You ever get scared when you do your work? I don't think about it. Together, they just couldn't be beat. You give us our damn money now. If you want that money, take it. Use it. You want to see another? Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Jill Ireland, and Strother Martin. They're a knockout. In hard times. I had started a young director named John Milius. Gave him his first directing job on a movie called Dillinger. He was a big screenwriter. He would work for the small writer's deal that we were able to offer at American International Pictures. To get a chance to direct, he cut his screenplay price. I did it very successfully with him. Decided I would try with another big screenwriter, and that was Walter Hill. I had bought a script from two young writers called Street Fighter. It was not a very good script, but it was a good idea. That became the idea for Hard Times. Walter had written The Getaway, a famous Steve McQueen movie, for Sam Peckinpah. I was writing The Drowning Pool for Paul Newman. He had a very good reputation as a nice, solid citizen. I called him in, told him what I wanted to do, and he said okay. I had a three-year deal at Columbia, overall deal. This was one of the first projects that I bought under my deal. That's how it ended up at Columbia. They had the first shot at anything that I wanted to do. This was a project I presented to them that they liked. Well, Columbia was on its ass. The stock was way down. It had a new head of the studio, David Degelman, who made the deal to bring me over from AIP. They were desperate for movies, thank God. I had a deal to make low-budget movies. We were thinking about making this with an actor named Joe Don Baker, who had been in a movie called Walking Tall, successfully a low-budget movie. We were thinking in terms of Joe Don. Then we got the idea, what about Charlie Bronson? Charlie Bronson, he doesn't have a movie right now. He's the biggest star in the world. When I went over to pitch this to David Degelman to tell him and his staff we were going to go after Charlie Bronson, everybody laughed. They said, you'll never get Charlie Bronson to work with a first-time director. It's never going to happen. If you want to waste your time, go ahead. I said, we want to waste our time. Yeah, we want to try it. He had an agent, a very highly respected agent, and we sent the script to him. He liked it and gave it to Charles to read. To our surprise, amazement and shock, Colin said that Mr. Bronson would meet with us and discuss the project, which the Columbia executives could not believe we'd gotten that far. It was a tense meeting because Charlie made you tense. Charlie had his persona and all of his movie parts at that time was toughest guy alive. He had that face that made you say, this is one tough guy. One of the first things he said was, what makes you think I can play this part? I'm not that big. He wasn't like a big man. He wasn't much taller than I am, but very ripped. He was very muscular. But the face is what made you think Charlie Bronson could do what he did. And his kind of iconic style, to the point about everything. The rapport became better as we went along. It started out a little rough, but once it went along, I think Charlie knew he was making a good movie. And he hadn't been thrilled with the movies he'd been making, even though they paid him a lot of money. And he knew he was doing great work and that we were doing good work. And so the relationship got better. He was a difficult man to work with. Very difficult actor for us. And put us through our paces on a daily basis. You know, letting us know that we didn't know that much, and he did. Very impatient, wants to shoot all of that. Didn't like waiting at all. And you could hear him in the background. He was very private, go sit by himself. Take his chair and go over and sit by himself. I'd talk to anybody, read the paper. Smoke a cigarette, sit over it. But you'd hear him go, shoot! Shoot! In other words, I'm ready, let's go. What are you waiting for? Shoot! So, you know, we rolled with the punches and got it done. He was a great guy to work with. A lot of fun. Wonderful character. And did a great job in the movie. We had one meeting with him where he was playing the gong. He used to play a gong in his house. He was a very laid-back guy, to say the least. And we went in to see him. He was playing the gong in his living room. And robes. It was quite something. They worked together on maybe more than one movie. Yeah, they did Magnificent Seven. They did The Great Escape. Yeah, so they knew each other quite well. But the roles were kind of reversed. When they worked together, Coburn was probably a bigger star than Charlie. And now Coburn was coming in as a second banana. So there was a little bit of payback in Charlie. He couldn't resist. Struthers is one of the great character actors of all time. And what a privilege to work with him. Cool Hand Luke and all the stuff that he's done. He was sensational to work with. He'll give you anything you want. That's when Charlie wanted to play his girlfriend. And we didn't have the strength to say no. Being beginners, we were lucky. I think if you wanted him, he made it clear that she would be, as he said, perfect for the role. And we agreed. Well, it was written for New Orleans. And I think Walter had some locations in his mind. But we had good people, location managers, people showing us around. And we had no problem finding a great location. Which was great for me because I went to Tulane University and this was my homecoming. And on a daily basis, I had all kinds of visitors and friends I went to school with and close friends. And it was fantastic. I loved the city and knew the city very well. We ended up, the last scene was shot in a oyster warehouse where they shuck oysters. That big warehouse where they'd be last fight. Phil Lathrop, wonderful, fantastic person. And he was a choice of Walter's. And I certainly agreed with it. Father, son, teacher, student. He was just a sensational guy. Terrific, great cinematographer. We had a wonderful stunt gaffer named Max Clevin. A very experienced stunt gaffer. Walter chose him. He and Walter were the stuntmen that we used. And to a lesser degree me, I was there. But they choreographed the fights. And it's very difficult when you're choreographing fights that involve the biggest star in the world. Because he has his ideas and, you know, some of them are not so good. But I thought Walter did a great job of working out the fights with Max and filled it with a cinematographer. And Roger Spottiswood, our editor, became part of the team that makes sure we get the right coverage for the fights and so forth. And, you know, it worked out great. Walter knew what he wanted to do. He worked on the script at night and worked on the storyboards and knew what he was going to shoot to a degree. And pretty much knew what he wanted it to look like. And he got what he wanted. We shot for 42 days. It was very short. And we only went over, I think we ended up at 43 days. And the budget paying Charlie $3 million was the highest paid actor in the world at that time. I think the movie was about, it was under $4 million, I think. I think we only made the movie like a million dollars or something like that. I'm not sure what the budget was, but it wasn't very much. Most of it was Charlie's salary. Walter and I used to laugh about it because I would say, Walter, if I brought you the script today, now that you're a big shot director, you'd be laughing at me. But we did what we had to do. It was how many days we could get them to give us. And so we made it work. We had a couple of issues in post-production, but we worked through them. And we liked the movie very much. We were very pleased with it. And we really thought and still think it's the best movie Charlie ever made. But he didn't like it when he first saw it. It wanted all kinds of cuts. Things changed. And he was very upset. We cut quite a bit of Jill Allen out of the movie, and he didn't like that, among other things. And so we stuck to our guns, and the studio didn't make us cut anything. They liked the movie. At this point, they thought it was great. And so we basically got the movie that we wanted to make, and Walter shot. I think secretly, he sat down. He knew it was really a good movie for him. A great role. And people liked it. They had a very good reaction. You know, in those days, it wasn't like it is now. You're opening 5,000 theaters, and the whole world goes crazy. The movie had to build and grow, and Charlie had too many movies out. And it was kind of like a little Bronson fatigue at that point. But we did it quite well. The studio ended up making money. We made some profits on it. And it's a favor to people. People walk in my office, they see the one sheet, and they always say, oh my God, I love that movie. Walter and I have made seven films as producer and director, and we've never had a real argument to speak of, and that's kind of unusual. We're still friends, and that's great. And I love his writing. His writing is always sensational. And a wonderful director, and just a good friend and a great collaborator. Walter is a very, extremely well-read individual, and just a very deep thinker. And he's a very considerate, kind man, and a gentle man. I used to say, and I still say, if I could have made all my movies with Walter, I'd probably live about another 25 years longer. He's the ideal collaborator in this business of people who don't like to collaborate sometimes. And I never saw him mistreat anybody. Seven movies, a lot of movies to work together. A lot. And I never saw him misbehave. I never saw him mistreat any crew. The great thing, he never mistreated anybody above the line or below the line. Crews loved him. Because he was crew. He was an AD. He was a PA and an AD. So he loved the crew, and the crew loved him. And that was a great experience. I haven't had it too many times in my 50 years of doing this stuff. And every time I got to work with Walter, it didn't really matter whether the movie worked or not. It didn't really matter. It was going to be a good experience. And I was going to be with an old friend and getting along with an old friend. And we disagreed on things, but it was never contentious. It was never nasty. It was always people who respect each other disagreeing. And somebody giving in. But it was never, you know, I'm the director, you're the producer, you're the new guy, I'm the big producer. It was never anything like that. It was always I did my job, he did his. And it turned out pretty well. We got some pretty good movies that we're proud of and stand the test of time. Well, Larry was an executive at AIP, and I was a young screenwriter. By a mutual friend. And we went to lunch, we talked. We talked about the kind of things that maybe we'd like to do. He knew I wanted to direct, and he knew I wanted to be an action director and what they used to call an action director, do action films. And he wanted to be, he was already a very successful executive, but he really wanted to produce. He wanted to see himself as one of the regular suits that run studios and things. He's always been back and forth a little bit ambivalent about that, but he wanted to produce. So he made a deal soon thereafter at Columbia Pictures he was to make low budget action movies. And he called me, called me up. It was the I want you to write the script for absolute minimum, and we'll pay you absolute minimum to direct, but I'll let you direct. And he said, at least that way I'll get a good script and hopefully. And he said, you know, you can't be any worse a director than most of them I've been working with. That was Milius accepted. He had had a success with John on Dillinger. He wanted to, it was off the strength and bounce of Dillinger that he made his deal with Columbia. And they wanted to repeat those kind of successes. I came into directing having directed nothing. I mean, nobody was less qualified. I had not directed a play, a commercial, a television show. I had directed absolutely nothing. I had never worked creatively with actors. I had been, as an assistant, I'd been on sets. I'd worked and made a living as a writer for just a few years, but I knew how to, I knew how to talk to directors. I wasn't, but I knew actors, you know, it wasn't like they were total strangers to me or something like that. I think the biggest thing that being an assistant helped was I was not intimidated when I went to the set. I think a lot of first-time directors, you know, what's a gaffer? What's a grip? What's a, like, you know, what are these, what do all these people do? How do they do it? How do I fit in in the, you know, how do I take charge without offending everybody? And, you know, it's the old, how do I get my way, whether it's quietly or otherwise? I think I understood the protocols of working on set. And I think that had to do with me having been an assistant on several movies and I think that was very helpful. The most, the most fun I ever had talking about directing, I had an afternoon with Raoul Walsh. That was, that was a good time. Interesting. Peckinpah, certainly, he and I would discuss directing, but he, he was rather enigmatic in his, and cautionary in his advice and, you know, you sure you want to get into this? And, kind of approach. Well, Raoul Walsh was a great director and he was a particularly, I think, great American director in that his films embody so many of what seems to me to be the, the virtues of the American cinema. A kind of clean and visceral storytelling. He had an artistic principle, I don't, don't know he ever expressed it, but one that I've always admired, I've never been able to live up to it, but that every shot progresses the story, progresses the narrative. There's no wasted there's nothing wasted in Raoul Walsh. And I think this is really fundamental to the American approach to making films and I think he did it, you know, much better than, than most of his peers and contemporaries. They're no-nonsense movies and I actually think I probably came closer to the Walshian ideal. I, again, don't want to throw myself in the side of the gods, I fell considerably short, but I probably came closer to the Walsh principles in hard times than I think I ever did after that. I thought a simple and direct style, but one that was not overstated in any way would serve the, would serve it best. And so I used very laconic actors, obviously, who were very comfortable within that style. Charlie was, I don't want to take too much credit for Charlie being in the movie because the truth is I resisted the idea at first. Although he was, he was a gift and I would be less than honest if I didn't say that out of his performance and what he gave the film, in the long run I think it gave me a career. You know, the movie was a success. It did pretty well financially. And for an action movie and for a Bronson movie it was very well received. But I just thought he was too old for the part. I mean, it wasn't, I admired Bronson. I thought particularly in the Leone film, but I had seen Charlie do any number of things when I was a young fella. And he certainly had a style of acting that I thought if used properly was very effective. I love actors that can throw a look and command a moment just off a look. And I always thought that he, above all, had that quality. And I really appreciated, this sounds like a joke, I really appreciated the kind of flat line readings because I thought it was very real. I thought it was a kind of non-theatrical approach. I don't think Charlie always thought so. And I don't think he would appreciate my description of it. But the kind of flat, laconic style of delivery, I thought could be very effective in certain places. And it's counterpoint to what you usually expect. Well, street fighting was illegal. It was during the depression. These were, I think, the hard times was really kind of based on, I'm not talking about the origins of the script now. It had gone through many phases before I got in the picture. But stories that I heard from my grandfather and my father about things that would happen back in the 30s, the kind of desperate times that people had and the things that they would do for money. If you look over on the wall over there, you'll see a wonderful picture taken of my grandfather in the 1920s on a drilling rig in, I believe it's in Taft, California. He was very fond of telling the story. They had a guy in the oil fields who was their big tough guy. My grandfather was rather an athlete. He had been something of a tramp athlete in his school days and had boxed a little. But they had a guy in the oil fields that was their local champion who would fight for money against the champions of other drilling outfits or other oil fields down the road, that kind of thing, other oil patches. And there was some guy that showed up, Hobo, who was looking for some food and he said, happened to see the fight or something, said, you know, you guys feed me for a while and I'll take care of the other guys. I'll fight and I'll take care of them. You guys will win your bets. And he said, you know, the son of a bitch. It was true. He won two or three fights. They won money. And they woke up one morning and he was gone. And that was it. He had jumped on a train or something like that. My grandfather never, you know, he never got tired of telling this. They had absolutely no idea what ever happened to this guy, young guy. You know, the ghost. Jimmy really didn't particularly want to be in the movie. He didn't want to play second lead. He had been a lead in many things. He found out that I had written the part for Warren Oates. I don't think Jimmy thought that he should be taking parts that were designed for Warren Oates, shall we say. He didn't particularly want to be in Charlie Bronson movie either. Not that he had contempt or anything for Charlie, but he had been in a lot of Bronson movies while they were young actors coming up the character parts together. I think two or three times they had worked together. And suddenly, he who had been his peer was now number one on the call sheet and Jimmy was no longer number one. He didn't particularly want to do the movie, but he needed money. I always thought the character, there was a couple of problems. I always thought the character was a lot seedier than Jimmy. Jimmy always looked good. I mean, it was just something about you could put him in crappy clothes and all that. He just looked good. He was very slim. He had a natural elegance about him. And especially when you stood him up next to Charlie, who was a much shorter and compact. Jimmy had that smile. so he kind of could make any moment rather elegant. so I was terribly worried that he was a little too elevated for the thing. Because the man was meant to be a desperate man. And it worked out fine. I mean, it was, you know, director paranoia. you know, happens every film, doesn't it? Brother Martin, wonderful performance. I had written the part just the way it is in the film, and we couldn't find anybody to play the part. We read actor after actor. It just sounded so phony and so hollow and so pretentious. And we just couldn't just couldn't cast it. And finally we went to New Orleans and we were starting the movie. And we still were stuck. I said, I remember saying to Larry, I said, maybe I should just rewrite the part and make it kind of a more normal guy or something like that. And Larry comes into the trailer about an hour later between shots and says, would you go with Brother Martin? Brother Martin read it, wants to play the part. And I went, Brother Martin, yeah. Great. Put him on the plane. And he arrives the next day. He walks in and he's Brother Martin. I'd never met him before. And he says, well, I really admire the script. I'd like to play it like I was Tennessee Williams. I said, great. He said, do you want me to rehearse a little? I said, no. I think I know what you mean. Let's get you going in costume and all that. So we got him a little Tennessee Williams. And then we had a little tiff towards the end of the movie. He had gotten a little angry at my direction, I think. And he kind of jumped at me and he said, oh, you always just say the same thing. Do it less. Cut it in half. You always say the same thing. Don't worry about it. And I never had a harsh word with him. So I think I was kind of bruised. And he then came to me the next day. It was the last day. And he thanked me and he gave me, I've got it over there in the bookcase, he gave me a book of Whitman's poems with a beautiful description that he wrote. And he said he was sorry that he just, and we got along great. We saw each other a couple of times. We never got a chance to work together again. And he got pretty sick not too long after the movie. But, again, I was a very lucky fellow to be able to be associated with him and what he, you know, what these people give you sometimes is so extraordinary. And I can honestly say this, that I cannot, and I think it's the best thing you can almost always say about an actor, I can't imagine anybody else playing the part. Phil Lather probably, you know, I'm now an old director. At that time, I was very, I don't think I ever really learned more about being a director from any one person than Phil Lather. And Phil, I did my first two movies with Phil. He was a very calm and gentle and gentlemanly person. He was a real master of low-key color lighting. And I had hired him because I liked his work on Point Blank so much. He, I remember a rather nice moment that I had with Phil. It was, he came by to say hello when we were getting the equipment together and you know, packing up the trucks to go to Louisiana and all that. And he was supervising the camera equipment and he stuck his head in the office to see me and he kind of caught me in a mood and he said, you seem a little down. And I said, well, yeah, I think somehow the enormity of this is kind of catching up with me. And he said, well, what are you worried about? And I said, well, I'm not sure that it's going to turn out all right. Is it going to cut together and will I make the right kind of decisions? And he said, look, stop. He said, this movie is going to look fine. He said, I'll make sure of that. He said, this movie is going to look fine and it's going to cut together. He said, I don't shoot movies that don't cut together. And he said, if we shoot something and the editor can't cut it, I'll come down to the editor and I'll cut it for him. He said, so you don't have to worry about is this movie going to look good and you don't have to worry that it cut together. And he said, it's not my department, but as far as I can see, we have a very good story here, a very good script and we have a good cast. He said, the hard thing about being a director is making everybody get along and you get your way, is making sure that everybody is working on the same movie and everybody, and he was absolutely 100% right, that most of what is technically perceived to be so difficult about movies, you have a lot of people helping you, but the real critical thing is getting everybody to, the hardest thing is directing yourself and the next hardest thing is making sure that everybody is on the same page as you and doing what you need them to do to get there, to get your ideas across. And Phil was absolutely right about that. He taught me the best lesson I think that, I think maybe intuitively I knew it, but hearing it made me feel so much better. Also I loved hearing, don't worry, it's going to cut together and it's going to look good, so. That's So if you have any