Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/832212
22 CINEMONTAGE / Q2 2017 traditionally face off repeatedly during a film." Exacerbating these problems was another: Fifty minutes into the nearly two-hour film, Bernie supplants his original stay-out-of-jail goal with another. "Once Bubber comes on the scene, and Bernie learns there is money to be made, Bernie's new goal is to get recognized to try to get the money," Bruskin explains. "Changing the protagonist's goal halfway through might work in a different story, but it doesn't here. Suddenly, the first half of the movie retroactively becomes a set-up for the second half." Bruskin points to Back to the Future (1985) as an example of a successful film in which the first act (usually unfolding over the first 30 minutes) sets up the balance of the story, but the transition was too long delayed in Hero. "By essentially turning the movie's first hour into an overly long first act, you've taken audiences halfway to their destination, only to tell them midway they'll be going somewhere else." Bruskin wrote his coverage of the screenplay. "Projects that are submissions the studio bought and put into development automatically go on the 'weekend read' for studio executives," Bruskin says, "so the latest draft of Hero went with my coverage." The following Monday, Bruskin learned that Columbia chairman Frank Price, who read all the coverage, had praised the Hero coverage, saying that it had finally identified what had been bothering him about the story. Price was perhaps unusually attuned to the importance of story analysts, having worked as one for Columbia in the 1950s. "I read for all the studios at one time or another," Bruskin says, "but he was the only studio head who ever wanted to meet each of the story analysts after he got the job." Bruskin subsequently became "the flavor of the month." Not long after the weekend read, he received a call from Ziskin. "She said, 'I read your coverage. I thought it was really good and smart, and I'd like to meet you,'" Bruskin remembers. "It was like the call from God to come up to heaven or something." In fact, Ziskin's office was in the Irving Thalberg Building on the Columbia lot, but what she said was nonetheless career- altering for Bruskin: The creative producer wanted the story analyst to work for her. He agreed, though he would not begin the job for several months. In the meantime, Hero had been greenlit, and rewrites continued. "As drafts would come in, she would read my studio coverage for each draft and we would discuss it," Bruskin says. "Later, she would mention on occasion that my work had influenced the way the film went, though I never really saw that." In September of 1991, Bruskin joined Laura Ziskin Productions, and in his new job, he visited the set of Hero and observed the film's progress. Hovering over the production, however, were the problems with the screenplay previously identified by Bruskin. "David [Peoples] himself told me he couldn't quite figure out how to fix it," Bruskin says. "It was never completely resolved." Hero opened October 2, 1992, to a decidedly mixed response: Several respected critics, such as Hal Hinson of The Washington Post, saw merit in the film, but many others shrugged their shoulders. Audiences were underwhelmed; the film grossed a little less than $20 million at the box office, according to the website Box Office Mojo. Nonetheless, Hero remains a creative, even ingenious effort — albeit not a model of screenplay structure. "If you think about what the movie is, and all the stuff going on, you can see that the complexity of it sort of trips it up," Bruskin remarks. Bruskin's tenure with Laura Ziskin Productions came to an end on the heels of the film's failure. "After the movie tanked on the first weekend, there was a chill over my little office," says the former Director of Development, who also had not fully understood his role. "What she wanted was somebody who could come up with new projects that she could sell to the studio," he says. "I had one or two projects in mind, but because there were two more senior execs at the company who brought in material, I thought I was primarily a glorified exclusive reader." In December 1992, Bruskin left the position and later the next year returned to story analysis, ultimately working at a succession of studios (including Paramount, MGM, Universal and Fox) before retiring. Although Hero represented a detour in his long and successful career in the field, it was a fascinating detour. And the story analyst remains proud of being part of a stellar creative team that almost solved the challenges of a unique screenplay. "We tried to come up with that definitive solution, but never really did." f MY MOST MEMORABLE FILM David Bruskin, 1990.