Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [90]
According to Relyea, “Jack Warner, the guy who built Warner Bros. from the ground up with his three siblings [was out].… In came a Canadian corporation, Seven Arts, and an infusion of corporate attitude and practices.… [T]he difference … [was that] Jack Warner would ask, ‘How are you going to make this picture?’ The new management’s style was closer to that of today’s studios, who rhetorically ask: ‘How are we going to make this picture?’ ”
The Hymans took over day-to-day control of the studio’s operation, with Kenneth Hyman becoming the studio’s executive vice president in charge of production. He was the one Relyea brought the budget to. After going over the cost of making Bullitt, and despite Steve’s string of four consecutive big hits, Hyman felt it would be too expensive to shoot on location and would green-light the film only if it could be shot entirely on Warner’s back lot, which by now was being used almost exclusively for television.
This led to an angry showdown in Burbank between Solar and Warner—more precisely, between Steve and Hyman. After Steve patiently explained to Hyman why he felt the film had to be shot on location, Hyman told Steve that if he wanted to make the picture on location, it was fine with him, as long as Solar put up all of the money.
End of meeting.
Steve immediately called Stan Kamen and told him to get Solar out of its six-picture deal with Warner. Kamen met with Hyman and soon, as had happened with MGM’s three-picture deal after The Honeymoon Machine, the six-picture deal became a one-picture deal; Solar would produce Bullitt and Warner would distribute it, after which both sides would be free of any further obligations. The details of the separation were released to the press by Hyman, who called the split mutually agreed upon and amicable. However, Steve and Solar did not feel the same way. According to Relyea, “After finishing our location work, I received a message from Ken Hyman’s office through the William Morris agency. The studio wouldn’t even communicate directly with us; once we delivered the answer [final] print of Bullitt, Solar must vacate the studio lot immediately. The majority of Hollywood break-ups are usually handled in such a way that the dismissed party can say they ‘left.’ Not this one. There was nothing subtle about it—we were fired. On the day we handed the studio our answer print, the security guys were changing the locks on our former offices and removing our name plates from the parking lot.”
Relyea may have been offended by what was going down, but Steve was overjoyed. He had signed the six-picture deal before he became as hot as he was now, and yet he’d had trouble finding even one project for the deal with Warner until Bullitt. Now he knew he was once more free to produce independently, without a studio breathing down his neck. And as for Bullitt, he could make the film he wanted to make. He immediately set about tailoring the script to his exact specifications.
The first thing he did was to cut out almost all of Bullitt’s dialogue and reduce most of the other characters’ as well. He felt that the film was something to be seen, not heard. It was a subtle but radical decision, and it put the burden on Yates to deliver the plot—which, despite (or because of) its having been pared nearly to the bone, remained overly convoluted and nearly impossible to follow—in between