Sometimes it is a wonder that a film every got
made.
Such is the case with Arrow Video’s new 4K Ultra
HD/Blu-ray edition of director Brian De Palma’s 1993 film adaptation of Edwin
Torres’ 1975 novel, Carlito’s Way. It will street on Sept. 26, with MVD Entertainment
Group handling the domestic sales and distribution efforts.
Consider this — way back in 1980 — Barry Hanson had
just produced The Long Good Friday (featuring
a knockout performance by Bob Hoskins), with direction by John Mackenzie, and
was looking for his next project. To
that end, sometime in the spring of 1981 he made a packaged deal for writer Edwin
Torres two novels, “Carlito’s Way” and “After Hours.”
It gets a little murky, but Hanson couldn’t get the
film into production and somehow legendary Hollywood agent, studio head and
producer, Freddie Fields, ended up with the rights. He had just come off his involvement with
both American Gigolo and The Year
of Living Dangerously, so Carlito’s
Way looked to be the perfect fit (this is now
the summer of 1983).
He couldn’t get it done, so he dealt the rights to Gene
Kirkwood and the aforementioned filmmaker, John Mackenzie of The Long
Good Friday fame, would be directing. It’s now the summer of 1985 and the project
fell apart.
For the next three years Carlito’s
Way was in some sort of turn-around limbo, until
the mid-summer of 1988 and news surfaced that the Angel
Heart producer, Elliott Kastner, had plans for the
film.
If you are keeping track, we are now eight years
into this film’s journey with four different producers having been involved — Hanson,
Fields, Kirkwood and now Kastner. Didn’t
happen.
Enter film producer number five, Martin Bregman, who
was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar (with Martin Elfand) for his production
of Dog Day Afternoon in
1975, starring Al Pacino. It’s now the
spring of 1989 and Bregman had none other than Sydney Pollack, the winner of
both Best Director and Best Picture for Out of
Africa in 1985, attached to the film. He had not done any feature films since Out of Africa, so
this great news.
Stop a second, this is early 1989, Carlito’s
Way doesn’t hit theatres until November of 1993 …
what took so long? Can you say “lawsuit”
without cracking a smile at this point?
Producer number four, Kastner, filed a lawsuit
against Al Pacino — who had signed on to play the role of Carlito (aka: Charlie
Brigante) — accusing him of blowing up his production of the film. With this, Pollack exits.
Finally, in the fall of 1992, the director of Scarface
(1983), Brian De Palma, will reunite with Al Pacino and the film will start
shooting. Didn’t happen.
This time the delays have to do with some pre-production
issues in New York City and troubles with the script — a whole bunch of people
worked with Torres on adapting his film, but only David Koepp would get credit
(1993 would be a banner year for him, scripts for both Carlito’s
Way and Jurassic
Park).
Despite production headaches (shooting on location
in New York City), the film finished its four-month shooting schedule in
mid-July of 1993 and opened theatrically during the Thanksgiving run-up later
that year.
Only 13 years, five producers and numerous writers
and directors involved at one point or another to get Carlito’s
Way to the screen. That’s Hollywood!
As for bonus goodies, Arrow Video has prepared two new
commentary tracks. The first features
author Dr. Douglas Keesey (“Brian De Palma’s Split-Screen: A Life in Film,” “Twenty
First Century Horror Films,” “Neo-Noir: Contemporary Film Noir,” etc.), while
the second is with Matt Zoller Seitz (“The Wes Anderson Collection,” “The Soprano
Sessions”).
The companion Blu-ray disc (with feature film and
commentaries) has the additional bonus materials. This includes deleted scenes, documentary
filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau’s 2003 short film, The
Making of Carlito’s Way, an archival interview
with De Palma and four newly-produced featurettes — “Carlito and the Judge,” “Cutting
Carlito’s Way” “De Palma’s Way” and “All the Stitches in the World: The
Locations of Carlito’s Way.”
