Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [86]
STEVE’S NEXT real project came from the William Morris Agency, via a script Stan Kamen sent to Steve directly and which Neile claimed to have discovered among another two hundred or so screenplays that she read while on the lookout for a suitable project for her husband. After she showed it to Steve, who glanced quickly through it, she told him it was the perfect follow-up to The Sand Pebbles—a 180-degree turn in which he would play an urbane, sophisticated, fashionable American James Bond—a real stretch for Steve, who had never before even worn a tie in a film. The Thomas Crown Affair was an offbeat caper film with a lot of twists and turns, something Neile believed audiences would love to see him in.5
Steve called Stan Kamen about the possibility of starring in the film and also making it one of the six he had to deliver to Warner, but Kamen told him to forget it—Norman Jewison had already put it in development with the Mirisch brothers at United Artists. No problem, Steve said; Norman and he could work out some kind of a deal with Solar. Not possible, Kamen replied, as Jewison already wanted Sean Connery or Jean-Paul Belmondo to play the lead.
It was true, Jewison thought Connery was the perfect Thomas Crown, but after much back-and-forth, Connery finally said no, fearing the role was too much like Bond—and instead did another Bond film, Lewis Gilbert’s You Only Live Twice. (Years later Connery expressed regret at having turned down The Thomas Crown Affair, and in 1999 he did a not dissimilar film for Jon Amiel called Entrapment) Belmondo eventually passed as well, preferring to work with French filmmaker Louis Malle on his planned caper film, The Thief of Paris. Jewison next approached Rock Hudson, who wanted to do it but was already committed to John Sturges’s Ice Station Zebra. At this point, Jewison considered using Steve, and invited him to come over and talk about it.
By the end of an afternoon spent standing and talking on Jewison’s front lawn, Steve had agreed to play Thomas Crown in a joint venture between Solar and UA, for $750,000 in salary and Solar profit participation.
Everything was in place until the film’s screenwriter, Alan R. Trustman, hit the ceiling. In his mind, Steve McQueen was the worst imaginable choice to play Thomas Crown. Trustman was an interesting case, a real-life reflection of the character he had dreamed up while sitting around bored in his law office in Boston, Massachusetts. One day he put some paper in a typewriter and banged out a fifty-nine-page script treatment about a suave, handsome, wealthy, and bored investment advisor who pulls off complicated capers just for the fun of it. Trustman sent his script over the transom to the William Morris office in New York, where it eventually fell into the hands of Stan Kamen, who thought it would make a great project for both Jewison and Steve, until Jewison optioned it and openly stated his intention to get Connery, casting that Trustman thought was perfect. When he learned about Steve, it didn’t matter that he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, coming off a string of highly successful and profitable films and an Oscar nomination—Trustman insisted he could not be in the film.
Kamen and Jewison convinced Trustman to at least think it over. In typical lawyer fashion, Trustman asked for and was given every Steve McQueen film, and screened them over and over again until he began to see what it was about McQueen that was special—his cool demeanor, sly smile, and confident look. Then he set about tailoring his script to fit McQueen’s specific range of emotions and strong physical presence. Crown thus became less suave, more mysterious, quieter, and more of a lover.
Jewison placed another jewel in his cast, the lovely Faye Dunaway, who had struck gold playing opposite Warren Beatty in her third film, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, which had just been released. After a shaky start, and thanks to several second looks by major critics, it was making its way from cult status