The Hot Button by David Poland

Wednesday, 10 February 1999

RANTING & RAVING

It's round three in the Payback debate. As before (THBs 2/04/99 and 2/05/99 Box Office Extra), spoilers are in play. And as one reader astutely pointed out, I kind of do some spoiling of Point Blank and Conspiracy Theory as well. So beware if you are anxious to see Payback with fresh eyes. (Click here for a page of readers letter about the Oscars®.) Come on back after you've had a chance to check Payback out in that case.
For the rest of you, the columns last week have brought in info from various sources about what really went down in the Payback cutting room. I hope that this will be the most accurate version out there, using sources inside and out of the process. You are still, of course, welcome to add to the debate, but I suspect this will be the last full column dedicated to the subject.
To start with, it seems that Brian Helgeland was given free range to shoot his screenplay of Payback the way he wanted to shoot it. Mel Gibson was in complete support of his talented friend. (Helgeland joined the Joel Silver family at Warner Bros. with Assassins. Next, he had the big critical success of L.A. Confidential. And then, he joined Mel and Joel on Conspiracy Theory.) As I've covered before, Mel recovered from a Helgeland-scripted death in that film after testing showed that few people like to see Mel die. It was not the last time that Helgeland's work would suffer the indignity of resurrection, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Conspiracy Theory led to Payback, a Helgeland screenplay that he planned on directing from the start.
Production began in the early fall of 1997. By November, Helgeland was close to wrapping production on Payback at Warner Bros., Joel Silver and Assassins director Richard Donner were steamrolling through Lethal Weapon 4 in an attempt to stem the blood flow at Warners with a sure-fire summer hit. For a while, they actually had Helgeland working on the Lethal Weapon script while he was shooting Payback. But not for too long. Whether Helgeland broke away to concentrate on his directing debut more closely or because Lethal wasn't gaining Helgeland-like weight is unclear. But as the Lethal Weapon express rolled through, Helgeland got together the first cut of Payback for screening.
So what happened in that January screening? Well, one participant seems to have felt that the tone was pretty serious, with a few attempts at humor and Lucy Lui's character as the most significant comic relief. But another participant explains that the tone was that of humor so black that the audience wasn't sure they were supposed to laugh. So they didn't. Lucy and the Asian gang were in that version, and with some minor editing variations, appeared exactly as they have arrived in the final print and in the Helgeland screenplay. The only significant variation seems to have been the scene of Gregg Henry's character being distracted from a business call by Lucy's character's professional efforts. The cops were also in the original much as they ended up in the release version. John Glover was also a part of the original, though the re-shoots added to his screen time significantly after being killed off earlier in the January '98 cut. James Coburn also got added screen time in the re-shoots, his only scene in the original being the scene where Mel shoots his luggage.
Pacing was also quite different in the January '98 cut. Helgeland apparently took his tone from Point Blank, a movie that takes its time. Included in this was some actual effort by Mel to break into the mob's Oakwood Arms Hotel. In fact, he took two or three steps of throwing off the thugs to get up to Gregg Henry's room, including setting fire in a garbage truck to distract the guys at the front door and some hand-to-hand action during his elevator ride upstairs. And yes, it is true that Angie Dickinson, who co-starred in Point Blank, was just a voice on a phone as the top bad guy that was later turned into a three-dimensional character (kind of) in the person of Kris Kristofferson.
But this is where it gets really interesting. In Helgeland's earliest version, Mel doesn't get away cleanly with the money and the girl. They didn't specify that he was dead, but he seems to be right on the edge, falling into a dream/hallucinatory state. And who is he shot by? A woman, who is the only person in the scene (at a train station) that he doesn't gun down (matching the irony of Dickinson as the mob boss.) With Mel out of it, a bum comes along and takes the satchel of money that he spent the entire movie trying to get (of course, with $130,000 and not the requested $70,000). Now, according to one source, the version he saw started with Mel roaming about ripping off people on the street, including a bum. (I believe that it's still in the picture.) Was that bum the bookend to the Helgeland version? I haven't gotten a clear answer on that yet, but if he wasn't, it would have been a cool idea for him to be that. Start with petty theft against the guy, loose your loot to him in the end in the ultimate comeuppance for the "bad guy" hero.
Maria Bello arrives in that early cut, as Mel floats in and out of dream and hallucination. They are headed to a veterinarian as the film ends, so maybe he lives and maybe he dies, but it definitely ain't a happy ending. And if you want to see a bit of the original ending, all you have to do is to look at the poster. That shot of Mel is him on the ground at the train station in the original climactic scene, shooting at the woman who just shot him. Isn't it ironic?
How different are the two versions of this film? One source says that both cuts were almost exactly the same length (1:42) but that at least 30 minutes of the release version is material that Helgeland didn't shoot. Premiere claims that Helgeland's cut tested better, but no one I've talked to believes that. Gibson made the film more accessible, for better or for worse. Whether it worked or not, Helgeland's version was certainly more daring and classically noir. (As was his ending for Conspiracy Theory.)
In the end, was the "Gibson version" of Payback (as re-written by Terry Hayes) designed to make Mel more likeable? The answer seems to be no. What does seem to have changed is the amount of Mel-style action. More escapes, more smooth killings, clean ending. Do I think that Gibson and co. did the wrong thing? Well, they had the guts to make the film in the first place and to let Helgeland have his day. When the audience didn't like the ending and Helgeland wasn't interested in resurrecting Mel's character, changing the overall tone of things, Gibson went all the way and rebuilt the film in the most commercial way possible. Sure, it's too bad that the darkest film of Gibson's career since The Road Warrior didn't end up being as dark as intended, but that is the story of Hollywood. Next time, I guess, Helgeland will kill someone who audiences don't mind seeing die.
READER OF THE DAY: Here's a letter about me being a tough guy. From Pvt. Ryan: "I just wanted to tell you that it is interesting that you said people think you are a wrestler or something. They are just having fun with you. I've been thinking to myself for a few days that you are going through a macho rush of some type. Remember, right as you got to Sundance, you were gonna kick someone's ass and, then, the other day you were going to rough this guy up? I think people are just responding to this line. So what's up? It does sound like you are trying out for the WWF. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing you take on Ted Casablanca. I think you could take him out. Anyway, Macho Man, just wanted to give you my take. Take it easy. Don't beat up too many people. By the way, I'm game for barbecue, but I can do without the black eyes."

E ME: I am hiring someone to rewrite the column each day to make sure that am more likeable. And actually, some friends suggested that I wrote something recently that could get me killed, so I'd like to avoid that too, if possible. Actually, I think that the Hot Button banner has been on the WCW site, so people decide that I am a wrestler. It would be good cross-promotion, wouldn't it? I better start working out. Thoughts, attacks, jibes, half nelsons or pile drivers anyone?

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