Hasitha Fernando revisits 8MM on its 25th anniversary…
Filmmaker Joel Schumacher has churned out an impressive slate of movies in the past, that include the likes of St. Elmo’s Fire, The Lost Boys, Falling Down and The Client. However, one of his most underrated efforts celebrates its anniversary today and that film is none other than 8MM. The movie, which takes a deep dive exploration into the seedy world of snuff films, proved to be unpopular with critics but struck a chord with audiences going on to earn a cult status. As 8MM celebrates its anniversary we take a look at what went down 25 years ago, during the making of the divisive crime drama…
Sony had concerns regarding the script they’d bought
Writer Andrew Kevin Walker has churned out scripts which dealt with dark subject matter in the past, but the scribe simply outdid himself when he wrote the script for this film. The movie follows Tom Welles, a private investigator who is tasked with determining the authenticity of an 8MM film, depicting the horrifying murder of an innocent girl. The character’s journey takes him deep into the dark underbelly of the illicit snuff film industry, leaving him scarred for life and questioning his own sanity. Although the studio purchased the script, they were confused with what they had, fearing the content was too dark and the film would be a box-office flop. Because of these reasons studio exec Amy Pascal took a lot of heat at the time for green lighting the polarizing effort.
David Fincher was the first choice to direct the movie
That’s right. The auteur filmmaker himself was the first to be courted to helm the movie, as per the studio’s preference. Having successfully directed Walker’s script for an equally dark affair with Se7en, to great acclaim, Sony thought that Fincher would be the best fit to tackle the controversial themes explored in Andrew Kevin Walker’s script for 8MM. In addition to Fincher the studio also looked at William Friedkin (The French Connection) and Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop) as potential candidates to direct the movie, but nothing fell into place.
Joel Schumacher was on a sabbatical when he was contacted about the movie
After wrapping production on the much-maligned Batman & Robin film, Joel Schumacher was set to helm Runaway Jury, a John Grisham adaptation for Warner Bros. However, even with the involvement of A-listers like Edward Norton, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Sean Connery the filmmaker declined the offer, opting to instead take a sabbatical to Mexico to recover from the burnout he experienced directing his last Batman outing. When he returned, Schumacher contacted his agency regarding potential job offers that eschewed summer blockbusters and was informed that Sony’s Amy Pascal and John Calley were on the lookout for a filmmaker brave enough to take a crack at a property they described as “dangerous”, and this aroused Schumacher’s interest. Shortly after he agreed to undertake the challenge and the movie was officially green lit.
Russell Crowe expressed interest in the project early on
After his breakout role in the 1992’s Romper Stomper Russell Crowe gained international recognition for his starring role in the 1997 neo-noir crime thriller L.A. Confidential. Crowe showed a keen interest in working with director Joel Schumacher on 8MM when the film was slated to be a “dirty, handheld gritty thriller”. However, when Nicolas Cage’s agent contacted Schumacher and told him that Cage wanted to do the film as well, the filmmaker faced a tough choice; should he do the movie as a low-budget handheld thriller with Crowe, or should he work with Cage along with a probable bigger budget? Schumacher then contacted John Calley at Sony and told him to resolve this dilemma, and Calley agreed that the latter option would be the best way forward.
Andrew Kevin Walker was a huge in-demand writer back in 1999
1999 was a helluva busy year for screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker. The scribe wrote or worked as a script doctor for a total of three movies that year. First to open was 8MM, which was followed by Fight Club where Walker rewrote a whole bunch of material at the request of Brad Pitt and director David Fincher, both of whom he’d worked with during the production of Se7en. The last film he worked on that same year was the Johnny Depp gothic horror flick Sleepy Hollow, which was released in November while Fight Club debuted the month prior. Talk about being involved with some truly unique efforts all in one year.
Creative differences & behind the scenes drama
From the get-go the studio expressed their concerns regarding the dark subject matter of the film. Sony even asked Andrew Kevin Walker to change the script in order to lighten its tone and make it more audience friendly, but that didn’t sit well with the scribe. Once Joel Schumacher entered final negotiations to direct Walker felt rewriting his script would no longer be necessary. But nothing could be further than the truth because Schumacher also supported the studio’s idea to water things down a bit and with the help of writer Nicholas Kazan, he did just that. This infuriated Walker so much that he literally walked away from the film and started to disown the effort even later, despite its popularity two decades later. Of course, Schumacher politely brushed off Walker’s behavior by stating, “he was in a bubble and in-demand with other projects at the time.”
The plot bears similarities to several movies that debuted before
Whilst Andrew Kevin Walker’s script was an original work it seemed that the writer was certainly influenced by several efforts that hailed from the past. The plot of 8MM bore an eerie resemblance to the George C. Scott vehicle Hardcore which debuted in 1979 which saw a private detective attempt to track down his daughter after seeing her in a porno movie. The film’s story also bore some similarities to the 1996 Spanish movie Thesis, which also dealt with the world of snuff films.
The film was originally rated NC-17
Let’s face it 8MM was quite a disturbing movie that dealt with some heavy subject matter, so it came as no surprise that the movie originally received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA. It took director Joel Schumacher and his team multiple rounds of editing and a fair amount of effort to tone it down to an R-rated film that would be acceptable by the MPAA. But this whole MPAA drama does make one wonder, how dark and disturbing Andrew Kevin Walker’s original version of the script was if the movie based on the rewritten script ended up getting an NC-17 rating. Food for thought.
Negative reviews, box-office success & cult status
8MM was made on a moderately large budget of $40 million headlined by one Hollywood’s bankable stars at that time, and in spite of the R-rating and the dark themes explored in the film it ended up with a worldwide box-office haul of over $90 million, which was essentially double the movie’s production budget. This was a total win-win for everyone involved but sadly the flick didn’t receive glowing reviews from film critics.
In fact, a vast majority of the reviews skewed towards the negative but the effort did garner a big fan in the form of Roger Ebert who summarized his thoughts about the movie in this manner, “I know some audience members will be appalled by this film, as many were by Se7en. It is a very hard R that would doubtless have been NC-17 if it had come from an indie instead of a big studio with clout. But it is a real film. Not a slick exploitation exercise with all the trappings of depravity but none of the consequences. Not a film where moral issues are forgotten in the excitement of an action climax. Yes, the hero is an ordinary man who finds himself able to handle violent situations, but that’s not the movie’s point. The last two words of the screenplay are ‘save me’ and by the time they’re said, we know what they mean.”
Over the past two decades 8MM has gone on to achieve a cult-like status that no one expected, especially with a movie of this nature. However, the flick’s unusually mesmerizing quality has lured hardcore fans to revisit and reappraise the property from time to time. Even director Joel Schumacher had said, in later interviews, that he was immensely proud of what he accomplished with the film, and we couldn’t agree with him more.
What are your thoughts on 8MM? Let us know on our socials @FlickeringMyth…
Hasitha Fernando is a part-time medical practitioner and full-time cinephile. Follow him on Twitter via @DoctorCinephile for regular updates on the world of entertainment.
