Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [126]
Filming was completed September 11, 1974. Postproduction went smoothly and The Towering Inferno opened three months later, on December 18, 1974, perfectly timed for Christmas. It received ho-hum reviews for its script but raves for its production. Vincent Canby’s New York Times review called it a “suspense film for arsonists, firemen, movie-technology buffs, building inspectors, worry warts,” and went on to conclude that it appeared “to have been less directed than physically constructed.… [It] is overwrought and silly in its personal drama, but the visual spectacle is first rate … a vivid, completely safe nightmare.” Russell Davies, writing in the Observer, correctly identified the real incendiary aspect of the film: “It all boils down to the moment when Newman and McQueen face each other over a packet of plastic explosive.”
The combined star power of McQueen and Newman proved irresistible, and the critic-proof film grossed more than $116 million in 1974 dollars ($500 million today) in its initial domestic release, enough to make it the top-grossing film of the year.13
The Towering Inferno won three Academy Awards—Best Cinematography (Fred Koenekamp and Joseph F. Biroc), Best Film Editing (Carl Kress and Harold F. Kress), and Best Song (“We May Never Love Like This Again,” written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, sung by Maureen McGovern). It was nominated for Best Picture but lost to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Part Two.
After the film’s gala premiere, which they attended, Steve and Ali retreated to the privacy and solitude of Trancas. Steve believed he had done it—found the picture that would financially allow him never to have to work again. As far as he was concerned, he had gone out on top and was finished with making any more films. Of course that meant Ali had to be too.
Only Ali didn’t see it that way at all.
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1 Self-funded documentaries, like On Any Sunday, have never figured into the arc of stars. They are considered vanity productions whose numbers, good or bad, don’t really measure into a star’s true box office worth.
2 Junior Bonner was the only Steve McQueen film that actually lost money; by ABC-Cinerama’s tally, the film lost $4 million. According to box office returns as listed by Variety, the top five films of 1971 were William Friedkin’s The French Connection, Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, and Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show. Junior Bonner finished out of the top one hundred.
3 The top ten highest-grossing movies of the year were The Godfather, Irwin Allen and Ronald Neame’s The Poseidon Adventure, Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, John Boorman’s Deliverance, Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc?, Sydney Pollack’s Jeremiah Johnson, The Getaway, Sidney J. Furie’s Lady Sings the Blues, Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask, and Martin Ritt’s Sounder.
4 Charrière’s nickname was Papillon, which means “butterfly” in English, and refers to his reputation in prison to be able to escape confinement by simply “flying away.”
5 Steve did sign a $1 million deal to star in a series of commercials for Honda, with the stipulation they only be shown in Japan and stress safety. They were never shown in America.
6 Some sources report the “reading fee” was as high as a million dollars.
7 Billy Friedkin’s The Exorcist was number one, earning an astonishing $204 million. George Lucas’s American Graffiti came in second with $115 million. Robert Clouse’s Enter the Dragon, starring the late Bruce Lee, came in fourth, with $25 million.
8 For money. Steve had a “creative” project he wanted First Artists to make for his second of three films: a filmed version of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. First Artists turned down the project, claiming it could not afford to make something with so little commercial potential. Steve put it aside and then decided to make his big blockbuster and use that money to self-finance An Enemy of the People. His first film for the