Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [124]
At the same time, 20th Century Fox acquired the rights to a novel by Richard Martin Stern called The Tower, about a fire that destroys a commercial high-rise. It was based on a real-life disastrous fire that had taken place at One New York Plaza, a Manhattan high-rise. The book drew a $390,000 option price from Warner Bros. for its relatively unknown author because big-budget, star-studded disaster movies were in vogue after Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure. The key elements were a big-name Oscar-winning ensemble, a horrifying disaster, the terrifying uncertainty of who was going to live and who was going to die that kept audiences on the edge of their seats, terrific special effects, an Oscar-winning song, and heroics by the dozen.9 The Poseidon Adventure went on to become the second-highest-grossing film of 1972, taking in nearly $43 million in its initial domestic release, second only to The Godfather. The Poseidon Adventure eventually earned $160 million (including world and ancillary rights). Considering The Poseidon Adventure cost $5 million to make, every studio wanted its own big disaster movie.
Meanwhile, Irwin Allen had bought the rights to a similar novel, The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson, intending to make his own competing tragedy-in-a-tower.10 Gordon Stulberg, having moved from Cinema Center to Fox, feared the two films would cancel each other out at the box office, and called Ted Ashley at Warner, who agreed. The two worked out a deal to co-finance one film that would be an amalgam of the two novels, to be called The Towering Inferno, with Irwin Allen to produce and direct. The cost of the film would be split between Warner and Fox; Fox would have the domestic release, Warner the rest of the world.
When Freddie Fields brought the script to Steve, he was at first interested in playing the architect, who is called in to help the firefighters figure out the interior of the brand-new building so they can rescue those trapped above and get themselves out safely. The other major role, the fire chief, was slated for Ernest Borgnine, one of the stars of The Poseidon Adventure. Although the fire chief only had about ten pages of dialogue and action in the film, Steve knew it was a key part and wondered if it wasn’t in fact a better role than the dry, intellectual architect.
While he was trying to figure it out, he was caught up in a real-life fire that not only changed his mind about what part he wanted in the film but became a gift of Method preparation. In May 1974, while Steve was working with Los Angeles Battalion Chief Peter Lucarelli, the film’s technical advisor, a fire broke out at the Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood. Lucarelli allowed Steve to go along on the call. Ali was with him that day, and she too went to the fire site. When they arrived, the soundstage, where endless movies and TV shows had been filmed, was engulfed in flames. Several people who happened to be working that day, actors, actresses, and technicians, were all trapped inside as two hundred firefighters tried desperately to rescue them. Steve put on a helmet, jacket, and boots and followed Lucarelli into the inferno. He stayed inside for the better part of an hour before emerging covered with soot, his eyes red from smoke, and fell into Ali’s arms.
At home that night, as he recovered Steve became convinced that the up-from-the-streets battalion commander of the San Francisco Fire Department really was the better of the two lead roles in the film, the architect being a little too sophisticated and well-educated for him. He decided to call Neile and run it by her. She fell quickly and comfortably into her familiar role as Steve’s advisor and reassured him that it didn’t matter which role he played, as long as he was there at the end for the film’s exciting climax. That made sense to Steve, who decided he’d choose the role of the character that had the final line in the film, the fire chief.