Cutter's Way (also known as Cutter and Bone) is a 1981 thriller directed by Ivan Passer. The film stars Jeff Bridges, John Heard, and Lisa Eichhorn. The screenplay was by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, based on the novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg.
Synopsis
One rainy night, Richard Bone's (Bridges) car breaks down in an alleyway. He spots a large, mysterious car in the distance. A man dumps something into a garbage can. At first, Bone thinks nothing of it and proceeds to meet his friend, Alex Cutter (Heard). The next day, a young girl is found brutally murdered in the same alleyway where Bone abandoned his car. He becomes a suspect. When Bone spots the man he thinks is the murderer in a parade later that day —local tycoon J.J. Cord (Stephen Elliott)— Cutter begins to take an interest in the mystery that unfolds. His interest soon becomes a conspiracy theory that develops into a troublesome investigation with his skeptical friend and the dead girl's sister (Ann Dusenberry) along for the ride.
Production history
Jeffrey Alan Fiskin had a friend who told him about Paul Gurian, a man with some money to produce films, and that he should send him a screenplay. Fiskin didn't hear anything for a while and then Gurian called and said that he had bought the book Cutter and Bone, he'd be out in Los Angeles and to go buy the book.[1] Fiskin was broke, so he stole a copy of the book and read it.[1] He remembers, "The set-up's great, the characters are fine. But the last half of the book is an instant replay of Easy Rider. You cannot make a film out of this."[1] Gurian agreed and hired Fiskin to write the screenplay. Gurian got the studio, EMI, interested in financially backing the film with Robert Mulligan to direct and Dustin Hoffman to play Alex Cutter.[1] However, a scheduling conflict forced Hoffman to leave the project. This prompted Mulligan to leave as well. To make matters worse, EMI pulled their money once Mulligan and Hoffman were gone.[1] Gurian took the film to United Artists, where the studio's vice president, David Field, became interested in backing it.
Gurian gave Fiskin a list of directors and Passer's name was the only one the screenwriter didn't recognize. Fiskin and a couple of United Artists executives screened Passer's Intimate Lightning and agreed that he was the man to direct Cutter and Bone. The director was already involved with another film, but wanted to do it after he reading Fiskin's script.[1]
The initial budget was supposed to be $3.3 million, but then Field found out that U.A. would only make the movie if the filmmakers were able to reduce the price tag to under three million.[1] Passer and company played along. Then, U.A. said that the film needed a big name star for it to succeed at the box office.[1] The studio liked Bridges' work in the dailies for Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate and said that they would only make Cutter and Bone if the filmmakers got the actor to be in their movie.[1] Passer cast John Heard after seeing him in a production of Joseph Papp's Shakespeare in the Park production of Othello. The studio wanted a star, but the director insisted on Heard. Lisa Eichhorn was cast as Mo after she auditioned with Bridges.
Reaction
United Artists did not like the ambiguity in what was then titled Cutter and Bone. When U.A. executives, David Field and Claire Townsend, the film's biggest supporters, left for 20th Century Fox, the studio felt that they would get no credit if the film succeeded and no responsibility if it failed and so there was no interest in it.[1] Cutter and Bone became a victim of internal politics. U.A. senior domestic sales and marketing vice president Jerry Esbin saw the film and decided that it did not have any commercial possibilities.[1] Passer did not see his film with a paying audience until the Houston Film Festival many weeks later. He said in an interview, "They didn't do any research. I was supposed to have two previews with a paying audience. It was in my contract."[1]
If Passer felt that United Artists was not behind Cutter and Bone (they spent a meager $63,000 on promotion) it did not help that when it premiered in New York City in late March 1981 all three daily papers and the three major network critics gave it bad reviews.[1] Perhaps the most damning one came from Vincent Canby in The New York Times which was the nail in the coffin for Cutter and Bone in the minds of U.A. executives. He wrote, "it's the sort of picture that never wants to concede what it's about. It is, however, enchanted by the sound of its own dialogue, which is vivid without being informative or even amusing on any level."[2] The studio was so shocked by the negative reviews that they planned to pull the film after only a week.[1] Unbeknownst to them, the next week Richard Schickel in Time, David Ansen in Newsweek, and New York City's weekly newspapers would write glowing reviews. Ansen wrote, "Under Passer's sensitive direction, Heard gives his best film performance: he's funny and abrasive and mad, but you see the self-awareness eating him up inside."[3]
The positive reviews prompted United Artists to give Cutter and Bone to their "art" division, United Artists Classics, where they changed the film's title to Cutter's Way (thinking that the original title would be mistaken by audiences for a comedy about surgeons) and entered it into a number of film festivals.[1] At Houston's Third International Film Festival it won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor (John Heard). A week later, it was given the prestigious closing feature slot at the Seattle Film Festival. With a new ad campaign in place, Cutter's Way re-opened in the summer of 1981 in Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York City. Passer was bitter about the whole experience, commenting in an interview, "You can assassinate movies as you can assassinate people. I think UA murdered the film. Or at least they tried to murder it."[1]
Word of mouth helped the film turn a profit. In 1982, Fiskin won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.
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