The Ironically Troubled Production of The Money Pit (1986)
People Magazine, August, 1996
Hollywood history is full of infamously troubled productions, from
Apocalypse Now to
Heaven’s Gate to
Ishtar. And among these ignoble productions was 1986’s
The Money Pit, starring Kelsey Grammer and (eventually) Dianne Keaton. In a case of life imitating art, a story about two well-meaning people attempting to restore an old house with everything going expensively wrong became a production by a well-meaning creative team where everything went expensively wrong.
I guess they should have seen it coming?
Not exactly this…
The troubled production of
The Money Pit is well known, but the extent of troubles has long been opaque thanks to various legal and contractual agreements. The underlying story was finally revealed with David Giler’s recent HBO documentary
The Pits, which outlines the challenges and disasters of the production. Now, ten years later, the full extent of the troubled production can finally be examined.
The Money Pit began life as a fun comedy screenplay by veteran writer David Giler based upon some frustrations he’d experienced as a homeowner. He initially took it to Amblin Entertainment in late 1984, but they had just spent a lot of their liquid funds playing the White Knight for Disney and thus regrettably turned down the script, though Spielberg put in a good word for them at Paramount[1]. Giler’s own Brandywine Productions thus partnered with Paramount to produce the film, and all got to a good start when Shelley Long of
Cheers fame was tapped to play the girlfriend Anna. Veteran director Ted Kotcheff was brought on board to direct and Long’s co-star Kelsey Grammer was placed in the lead, Kotcheff hoping to take advantage of the two actor’s acrimonious screen chemistry. A modest budget of $11 million was assigned to the project.
Right from the start there were troubles. Based on Grammer’s accent, and his and Long’s associations to Boston via
Cheers, they decided to move the film’s location to New England. The scouting team was unable to find a house in that region or of that regional style that met the three requirements of 1) accepted by Giler, 2) accepted by Kotcheff, and 3) with homeowners willing to have their property systematically destroyed and rebuilt during filming. With pressure mounting on Giler and Kotcheff to start principal filming on schedule, they made the fateful decision to build a custom set. The new house set cost hundreds of thousands to build, and hundreds of thousands more to establish the required trap doors and breakaway effects. An accident on the set that injured a crewman delayed production. A later fire totaled the set, requiring it to be rebuilt from scratch.
Completing the set was only the beginnings of the troubles. Kelsey and Long notoriously did not get along. Though both professional actors, their dislike for each other, amplified by the stress of working around the perilous fall-away sets, began to carry over into the crew, with factions building up on either the Grammer or Long side. After nearly falling in with the bathtub in a breakaway floor effect, Grammer and Kotcheff got into a loud verbal confrontation that caused filming to be suspended for the day. But mostly the arguments were between Grammer and Long, who began to refuse to work with each other, resulting in the need to use shot/counter-shot and stand-ins for their scenes together and thus double the filming time.
Then the production crew got notice that Long was taking an extended leave of absence. She was pregnant and had started showing symptoms associated with preeclampsia and so her Obstetrician ordered her to take some weeks off for rest. She blamed the stress on the set. By the time she returned she was visibly pregnant, and the shot workarounds to conceal the baby bump became a challenge for Kotcheff, who was already in an increasingly foul mood due to artistic interference from Paramount and pushback from Grammer. Soon Long was on maternity leave and gave birth to a healthy daughter, but she then requested another 4 months off until the baby was on solid foods. The studio demanded that she return after 6 weeks and threatened to sue her for breach of contract, but her lawyer threatened countersuit based upon “reckless endangerment and undue stress” that “put risk on her child”. The two parties agreed to terminate the contract with no penalties.
By this point the production was $6 million over budget and only about 53% in the can. The studio brought in Diane Keaton to replace Long, which required massive reshoots and resulted in a few remaining scenes with Long’s limbs or back in the frame, resulting in the common Hollywood term “The Other Anne” for when two actors have alternately filled the same role in the same film[2]. Keaton and Grammer got along, but Giler later complained that their dynamic lacked that “je ne se quois” of the Grammer-Long relationship.
And then Kotcheff quit. Sick and tired of meddling by Paramount, he stormed off of the set and Giler himself, who had only one film direction credit to his name, agreed to fill in. Kotcheff hid his involvement behind the classic go-to pseudonym for artists who disown their own work, Alan Smithee. The reshoots continued until December of 1985, now $10 million over budget and months behind schedule. But any relief came quickly to an end as an editing war broke out in post between editor Jacqueline Cambas, writer-producer tuned director David Giler, and Paramount studios, with three competing cuts circulating the cutting room at any given time. The studio ultimately ran Giler out of the editing room and demanded more reshoots using a studio director, to the cost of another $8 million.
But just as the final cut was ready, several of the Paramount executives associated with the production left for Hollywood Pictures at the invitation of Michael Eisner. The new executives, meanwhile, completely disowned the picture, which was released in September of 1986 to poor reviews (Siskel and Ebert called it “disjointed” and “joyless”). By this point the production troubles had become the talk of the papers (
People ran a story in the summer of ’85!) and, combined with the poor reviews and lack of meaningful promotion by Paramount, resulted in a sad $7.2 million showing at the box office against the $28 million final production cost.
Kotcheff would escape the fallout and go on to direct other things and Giler would continue to write for film and television, but never directed another feature. Long and Keaton would escape unharmed, Long returning to television and then going on to star in
Outrageous Fortune from Hollywood Pictures, and Keaton continuing her long working relationship with Woody Allen. Grammer, on the other hand, would see his film career stalled for years, not really returning to the big screen until recently.
And yet the details in this article are just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of this story, as relayed in excruciating detail in
The Pits, is so much more dramatic.
“A disaster like this comes along only once in a career,” said Giler in the documentary’s opening. “You have to see it to believe it.”
The Pits airs on HBO on Saturday, July 26th, at 8 pm ET/MT and 7 pm CT/PT.
[1] In our timeline Amblin took on the picture, resulting in the moderately successful comedy starring Tom Hanks.
[2] We’d call it “The Other Marty” after Eric Stoltz in
Back to the Future.
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