The Bonfire of the Vanities
Short description
Sherman McCoy is a successful Wall Street bond trader with a Park Avenue apartment, a wealthy wife and a mistress named Maria Ruskin. One night, driving through a part of New York he does not know, he and Maria have an encounter with two young Black men; Maria is at the wheel when one of them is struck by the car, and the two drive away. When the incident becomes public, McCoy finds himself at the centre of a scandal, with a reporter named Peter Fallow chasing the story and various interests seizing on it for their own purposes.
Brian De Palma directed and produced the film, working from a screenplay by Michael Cristofer. It was his fourteenth feature as director, following Casualties of War and preceding Raising Cain. Tom Hanks plays McCoy, Bruce Willis plays Fallow, Melanie Griffith plays Maria, and Kim Cattrall, Saul Rubinek and Morgan Freeman appear among a credited cast of 86.
The production, released in December 1990, had a budget of 47 million US dollars and took about 16 million worldwide, a substantial shortfall. Audiences have been lukewarm: it holds 5.6 out of 10 on IMDb from around 28,000 votes and the same score on TMDB from a much smaller number of votes, while the critics' rating stands at 3.9 out of 10 from 54 reviews, lower than either audience figure.
What's left behind the scenes
- Assistant director Eric Schwab filmed the Concorde's landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport hoping to impress director Brian De Palma. De Palma advised him against the idea and even bet $100 that the scene would be cut during editing. For an entire year, only on one day – June 12th – did the sun shine along the runway, with the Empire State Building visible behind it, and even on that day the window for filming didn't exceed 30 seconds. The film crew had to rent the Concorde from Air France and instruct the pilots to land at a precisely specified time. On top of that, they had to coordinate this with the airport controllers – of one of the busiest airports in the world – to ensure the runway was clear for the aircraft’s arrival at that moment. Schwab filmed with 5 cameras simultaneously. The scene cost $80,000 and lasted only 10 seconds on screen.
- Filming of the movie took place from April 16 to July 27, 1990.
- Bruce Willis was cast in the film for "box office draw," although relatively few non-action films with him had performed well at the box office. His fee, as was Tom Hanks's, whose name appeared first in the credits, was $5 million.
- Kim Cattrall was on a diet for 4 months to play the thin Judy.
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