The Polo Lounge is packed during lunchtime in late March. A boys’ club of agents chomp artisanal breadsticks, and about 15 ladies lunching after a corporate award ceremony gab into the void of a twinkling baby grand piano.
None of them seem to realize that Renny Harlin is sitting nearby, but they’ve surely seen his movies (especially the agent bros). Exceedingly tall with Nordic good looks, Harlin is an architect of the modern action film. While critics have been tough on the Finnish director’s blending of human sentiment and thrashing violence and pyrotechnics, audiences know his brand – consciously or unconsciously.
In early days, his successful entries in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Die Hard” franchises propelled him to the top of every studio’s wish list. The Sylvester Stallone tentpole “Cliffhanger” and the forward-thinking female action flick “The Long Kiss Goodnight” put him over the top. Movie star marriages and intermittent box office bombs tested his mettle. He’s been a teenage film buyer in Cannes, a Shell Oil shill, a Steven Spielberg acolyte and, before COVID, an expat making films his way for 6 years in China.
Above all, he’s been tenacious and uncompromising in his vision for the movies. Variety sat for a wide-ranging conversation with Harlin ahead of Friday’s release of his latest film “Deep Water.” Here, Harlin tells us his story through his credits.
“A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master”
Harlin directed his third mainstream feature in 1988, taking the reins on the fourth installment of the Freddy Krueger franchise. It was a job he barely got, and it changed everything.
They refused to even think about this Finnish kid doing their franchise. The 1987 writers’ strike had started, and they didn’t have a script. I told them I could put together the nightmare sequences in storyboards and create the bones of the movie. They said that was ridiculous, but they ran out of time to hit their release date and had to let me do it. That was pure tenacity – and I couldn’t even get an agent at that point. [New Line Cinema founder] Bob Shaye was very suspicious of me throughout the whole process. I took a very different approach from the previous directors. Freddy Krueger was so well established at that point that we couldn’t really pretend he was super scary. He’s the James Bond of horror, so that’s how I approached it.
It’s funny, [Warner Bros. Pictures co-head] Mike De Luca was an assistant at the company at the time. Mike, producer Rachel Talalay and I would get together every morning and come up with lines the actors would say, and the same after lunch. When the reviews came out, they were some of the best of my career. The L.A. Times, I think, called it a “Kafka-esque nightmare created by Renny Harlin.” The movie opened huge and the first call I got on Monday was from Steven Spielberg. I was living in a motel in Hollywood for $25 a night and he found me there. Bob Shaye invited me to see the film with him in public and he picked me up in a limo. We drove to the Pacific Theaters and there was a line around the block. Bob said, “Renny, they’re lining up for your movie.”
The Lost Spielberg Movie
My first meeting after “Elm Street” was with Steven Spielberg. He told me to come to Amblin, he loved the movie. I met with him and Kathy Kennedy. He wanted to make a movie based on a book about a boy with an ability to become invisible. He explores life with this power – seeing his sister’s early relationships and budding sexuality, his grandfather who is slowly dying, his parents who are having marital troubles. He sees it all. I looked at the film as a character-driven story like “My Life as a Dog,” but Steven wanted to make it more like “Back to the Future,” an action-adventure comedy. I was so idealistic and passionate, and I told him it was not the movie I wanted to make. In retrospect, you think, “How stupid can I be?” But I had to believe in my own convictions. It was suicidal, because he’s a genius. I still think my version of that movie would’ve been very special.
Bruce Willis in “Die Hard 2.”
“Die Hard 2”
Following “Elm Street,” Harlin went into production on the action comedy “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane” with Andrew Dice Clay. Big shot Joel Silver was making the film and it would land Harlin the sequel to Bruce Willis’ commercial breakout “Die Hard.”
I’m having lunch with Joel one day and in walks Bruce Willis. We chat and get to know each other, and an hour later Joel calls to say, “Bruce loves you. He wants you for ‘Die Hard 2.’” I started immediately after shooting “Ford Fairlane” and edited both at the same time. I was scared. Bruce, bless his heart, had just become a movie star from the first “Die Hard.” At the start of production on the sequel, he announced, “I’m not going to do any of that comedic shit anymore. I want this character to be serious.” People came to see “Die Hard” because Bruce was a blue collar, sarcastic everyman. I told Silver that Bruce wasn’t going to do the same John McClane and the movie would die without it. We had a big negotiation where I agreed to do as many takes as Bruce wanted his way, if I got one for me.
Joel and I screened a cut on the Fox lot for Barry Diller, who was running the studio at the time. We’re in a huge time crunch. The movie ends, and Barry gets up and says, “This is a very good movie. Do you have any more of the funny bits?” So I have to explain to him that every joke is in there, even outtakes. If Bruce was on the phone with Demi Moore and smiled for even a moment, I shot it and put it in the movie.
“Cliffhanger”
The Sylvester Stallone vehicle, which has a remake starring Lily James hitting theaters this year, was a watershed moment for Harlin in 1993. The project premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and would mark the biggest financial success of the director’s career, earning $255 million at the global box office.
My date to Cannes was my mom, because she’s always been my biggest supporter. When we walked out of the festival palais, coming down the huge stairs, there were thousands of people screaming. The film’s score was blaring. They had fake snow falling on the carpet in mid-May. I had my mom in one arm and Elizabeth Taylor in the other. Sly Stallone leans past my mother and said, “Renny, remember this moment. It will never get better than this.”
I still get goosebumps thinking about it. It reminded me of many years before, when I was a film student in Finland. I was working part-time as a marketing executive and film buyer for a Finnish distribution company. We had no money, so I went to Cannes and stayed in the red light district. I went to the very first American Film Market, which was in 1982. I bought the rights to “Blood Simple” and “Evil Dead” and we were very, very successful. The best was this amazing movie with Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu. They were both in their twenties in this smoldering, sexy movie called “Loulou.” I called my boss in Helsinki and told him we had to buy it. I get this great idea to bring Isabelle to Finland because, now, I’m in love with her. She came for three days and I was her guide. She’s the biggest emerging star out of Europe, and I go to her hotel to pick her up in the presidential suite and she answers the door out of the shower wearing a towel. I couldn’t believe it was real. I was shaking like a leaf. At the end of the trip, I took her to the airport and she gave me a gift. A hand-bound leather book with empty white pages. She wrote on the first page, “Dear Renny, this book is for you to write down your dreams – and they will all come true.”
Matthew Modine and Geena Davis in “Cutthroat Island.”
Andrew Cooper / Everett Collection
“Cutthroat Island”
As often happens in Hollywood, Harlin’s professional peak was met by a steep valley. He and former wife Geena Davis set out to make a pirate adventure for the whole family. It wound up a record-breaking flop. Made for close to $115 million, it grossed a measly $16 million.
You go to every movie with your highest ambition and passion, wanting to do something great. “Cutthroat Island” became a kind of symbol for excess and failure. There have been many, many, many other movies that have much bigger flaws. But that was a heavy hit on me. I don’t like filmmakers that blame marketing and distribution, but in my career I’ve had many moments of being in the right place at the right time. This was the wrong place at the wrong time.
Our producer, Carolco Productions, was going out of business and trying to rescue themselves. They made an output deal with MGM, which went up for sale as we were finishing the edit. They didn’t want to spend a dime or take any risks. It was a Christmas release, which meant we had to pay a ton on marketing. Michael Douglas was signed to play the lead role. He dropped out right before production for personal reasons. I was left there with my then-wife Geena Davis. We were both attached to the movie and tried to get out. The part went to the great actor Matthew Modine, and all due respect to him, but he wasn’t at the level of Michael Douglas. All signs said we were doomed. I spent $800,000 of my own money having the script rewritten by Marc Norman (“Shakespeare in Love”). Some things don’t work out.
“The Long Kiss Goodnight”
Only a year after “Cutthroat Island,” Harlin and Davis both got a shot at redemption. Harlin took his tested action formula and mapped it over Oscar-winning Davis, propping her up as an amnesiac schoolteacher who discovers she was once an expert CIA assassin. The film got mixed reviews and wasn’t profitable, but became a beloved library title on cable for decades – especially for a female-centric action thriller.
There was a bidding war for this script. New Line got it. I had proven myself, and our screenwriter Shane Black was a name. Having a female at the lead of the film was always the point, and it was ahead of its time, but it turned out to be a challenge. It’s the movie that brought me the best reviews of my career. I became really good friends with Samuel L. Jackson, and we’ve made four movies together. I’m not sure [New Line] knew how to market “Long Kiss Goodnight.” We needed young men who loved action, but also women who wanted more story. It wasn’t commercially successful but I’m proud of it.
Aaron Eckhart in “Deep Water.”
Courtesy of Magenta Light Studios
“Deep Water”
Harlin’s latest will hit theaters on Friday. Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley star long-haul airline pilots in a battle for survival on numerous fronts. A mispacked lithium battery sets fire to a massive jetliner, causing it to crash in exotic, shark-infested waters.
We once had smart dramas, star-driven movies and thrillers and romantic comedies. There are very few nowadays, because they’re not based on IP that can break through the noise. The studios need to spend $100 million in marketing, and they only want to do that on something giant. I think I’m still working because I helped define that kind of middle-ground movie. I think people enjoy watching action thrillers set in extraordinary circumstances with an emotional center. My new film “harkens back to that premise. It’s my “Poseidon Adventure,” where everyone is stripped of their values and facing an ultimate test. I spent six years living in Chine making these kinds of movies, and after COVID I came back and am lucky to still have opportunity.
I worked really hard on creating the biggest plane crash ever filmed. So much went into research and detail. Everything Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley do in this film – every button they push – would be exactly to the real protocols. It’s also knowing that, sometimes, filming the bolts ripping out of a row of seats before it’s sucked into the sky through a hole in the plane? That can be more powerful than a building exploding. Sometimes it’s the splinter under the nail.
