Page 15 - JIMMY REARDON LETTER TO CHICAGO CRITICS

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In their cockamamie strategy, Fox set out to market exclusively to teenagers who

couldn’t even get into the theater without sneaking out of other movies at the mul-

tiplex. In fact, this is what they did, in droves. Even with this lack of box ofice

accountability, the movie grossed 6 million domestic theatrical, a sizeable number

for a low budget ilm, even today, out grossing River’s two other excellent ilms

that were released that year, and did get press screenings, including “RUNNING

ON EMPTY,” which got River an academy award nomination.

The reviews across America from those critics who went to see it, except for Sheila

Benson and a few others, were uniformly humiliating and embarrassing for my

young stars and me. “DIRECTOR IN DECLINE,” was a typical headline from

someplace in Indiana.

Thoughtfully, Fox publicity sent the negative reviews to my house by messenger.

A friend and I performed a Mexican beer ceremony, and burned them in the ire-

place.

Here’s my question: suppose you – or your predecessors, since we’re talking 20

years ago – had been supplied with a press kid laden with the facts about the mak-

ing of that original movie, with photos of River Phoenix and Meredith Salenger

and Ann Magnuson, Ione Skye, Louanne and the newcomer Matthew Perry – all

actors of interest – would you have come to a screening? I think you might have

attended, especially if you were familiar with my earlier

movies, like “WINTER KILLS” and “SUCCESS,”

“LAW AND DISORDER” or my documentaries

“Derby” and “A Dancer’s Life,” – even “The Happy

Hooker.”

Let’s further imagine you were told by the publicity de-

partment that the movie boasted an original score by

academy-award winner Elmer Bernstein, performed by

the London Philharmonic Orchestra; cinematography by John Connor; that Johnny

Mathis sang a song written for the movie; that the seventeen-year-old star of the

movie had written and performed the end-title song; that the screenplay was writ-

ten by a nineteen year-old Midwesterner, who grew up in and around Chicago, and

that it was taken verbatim from the novel published when he was 23; that the

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