Dark Nights Of The Producing Soul: Brian Grazer Puts 'American Gangster' On His Back, Carries It Into Theaters Himself

Dark Nights Of The Producing Soul: Brian Grazer Puts 'American Gangster' On His Back, Carries It Into Theaters Himself
When roughly $22 million worth of Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington fans show up at the multiplex on long-gestating, twice-aborted Universal feature American Gangster's opening weekend, not even the succession of credits reading "Produced by Brian Grazer," "Based On An Idea By Brian Grazer To Do A Movie About A Magazine Article About A Drug Kingpin From The 70s" and "A Ridley Scott Film Shepherded By Imagine Entertainment's Brian Grazer, Who Simply Refused To Let This Crazy Dream Die" will give moviegoers an adequate appreciation of the Herculean efforts undertaken by the spikey-haired superproducer to finally bring his passion project to the screen. The LAT chronicles the mogul's heroism in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles (budget overruns! eight-figure kill fees! cost-controlling script rewrites that ripped the very soul out of the story!), here recounting the dark moment when a momentarily defeated Grazer had to tell original director Antoine Fuqua that Gangster had been shelved:

The loss cut deep.
"Everybody thinks they're making a movie and are ready to start, then suddenly they're all going home and packing up all the stuff," Grazer recalled. "We had hired every department head. The extras were cast and fitted for wardrobe. We had floors in a building with thousands of changes of clothes for the actors. We had locked locations and had all the props to make it viable to shoot."

Fuqua was devastated: "It goes without saying that the experience was painful."

Grazer was embarrassed when he heard from Washington's agent that the movie had been canceled, his first and only film ever to be shut down.

"It was such a failure. I don't like costing people money," he said. Over the last two decades, Grazer has produced 58 movies -- 40 of them for Universal -- with his production partner, director Ron Howard, including the Oscar-winning hit "A Beautiful Mind."

After a week of feeling defeated, Grazer decided to call Washington. "I said, 'Look, this is really uncomfortable, but if I can figure out a way of reapproaching this will you stay involved?" he said he asked. Washington told him yes.



The rest, as they say, is history: Grazer eventually found a new director in Ridley Scott, convinced Universal to fork over the $100 million it would take to fully realize his vision, and used his mystical soul-hearing powers to mesmerize longtime collaborator Russell Crowe into joining the project, finally making the years of suffering he endured in the pursuit of his greatest superproducing challenge to date pay off. And once Grazer completes his four-hour retelling of his Gangster odyssey at the movie's gala premiere, the standing ovation will be defeaning.
Published 10/16/07 by


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